Writing Novels in a Month

I'm thinking about participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I've wanted to do it in the past, even though I think I easily complete the equivelent of what is expected all the time, as one story I'm working on I did a word check with and its at 400,000 words.

So what is NaNoWriMo you ask? National Novel Writer's Month. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, between November 1st and November 30th. You are to start from scratch, having an outline or an idea is okay, but you aren't supposed to start writing the actual novel until November 1st.

Well, this year, while I was on leave, I came up with an idea in my head for NaNoWriMo and fine tuned it while I was driving around DC and New York City. I'm wondering, if using the subject matter I wish to write about, if I can make it readable, because I tend to write about things that would make people question me and my sanity and wonder why I would even wonder about things like that. I think. I don't know, I guess they get to be sensative topics, but its these sensative topics that perks my interest and gets me to keep writing.

People ask me if they can read my books all the time. I tell them no. But I'm going to TRY to write this novel with the intent of letting people read it when I'm done (it will likely not be publishable, but readable is the key). I just have to reign myself in and say, 'no, that is not necessary to the story to do that to the character.'

So I was thinking, some of my month of November will be cut off because I will be traveling home and taking my time traveling home, so I was wondering how many words I would be able to write to reach that 50,000 word cut off.

See, before I started the book, I put it in my head. And I outlined it.

The outline is 10,000 words.

Okay?

I got interested in aspects of the story that I decided to write a little backstory on one of the side characters in the story, because I am apparently pretty good at creating backstories for all of my characters in my head.

I wrote this little 'side story' over the weekend, making it pretty much unreadable because it deals with touchy issues and all, and I checked the word count after about four days of working on it (no, its not done).

It's at 25,000 words.

Um, I should have NO problem completing this goal. As long as I can stay on task.

I tried to do a NaNoWriMo a couple years ago and couldn't stay on task because the novel idea interested me at first, but I lost interest in the story I was writing. I think I got to about four thousand words. Maybe. I'd have to check.

But if I can finish an outline (and even plot out an eventual ENDING to the story, because this in itself is a major rarity on my part) and the idea holds my interest enough to actually finish it, I think I can do that.

But if the outline is 10,000 words, I'm thinking that this is likely NOT a 50,000 word Novel. Based on my outline, I'm guessing it will probably reach close to 200,000 words if not more.

Um, I'll give you a summary later, you can tell me if you think it is an interesting enough idea that you would want to read it. For some people, it might make them squirm.