NaNoWriMo Countdown: 7 Days.

Well, it's only a week until the great noveling race begins and we're all bustling about in our attempts to get novel ideas out of our heads so that new ones may take root and flourish in our minds for next year. But, before that, we have the wonderfully awesome holiday of Halloween to consider. Tons of candy, little monsters showing up at your doorstep, and an excuse to watch the cheesiest of B-rated horror movies. What reason is there not to enjoy Halloween?

Why speak of the holiday though? Why not speak of the grand contest occurring afterward? Well, there are answers to these questions. These being, because I can, and I could be respectively.

For instance, there's much inspiration to be had in Halloween for any writers, young or old. I vividly remember in elementary school how our teachers would always challenge us to create scary stories to share in a darkened classroom, the bottom portion of our faces illuminated by those silly flashlights. Those were my favorite times. We weren't expected to write anything serious or school-related. We were only requested to have fun and write something we were proud of. Needless to say, it's likely that very few of these stories have stood the test of time, but all the same, there's the hope that the feeling remains. How does this tie in with NaNo? Easily. While the official reason why NaNo is held in November is to take advantage of rather poor weather, I'd like to think that it also wishes us to feed from the creative font of Halloween.