It is a fact we rarely stop to consider: Conan Doyle wrote his second novel of Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four, in under a month. While we may want to attribute this feat to his genius and literary skill being far beyond that of mere mortals, we would be completely wrong. This month, for example, over 115,000 people are undertaking that task. And a goodly number of them, I suspect, will succeed. For November is “NaNoWriMo” or National Novel Writing Month.

Having let me own literary skills get a bit dusty of late, running across a nationwide challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in a month seemed like just the sort of thing to blow the carbon out of my writing engine. Of course, I came upon it on November 6 th, having missed five full days of writing time, but what is life without challenges, right? Besides, do you think Conan Doyle used all thirty days of the month he wrote Sign in? Probably not.

Conan Doyle had the advantage, in writing The Sign of the Four, of having already fleshed out his main character in a previous book, A Study in Scarlet. Since I had to hit the ground running, I took a reverse approach – I borrowed the main character of a novel that I’ve been trying to write for years and put him in a prequel. Being forced to write 50,000 words about the guy, I figure when I return to the original, he’ll be as ready to go as Sherlock Holmes was in Sign.

As you can imagine, NaNoWriMo is not an approach that is going to produce a hundred thousand Sign of the Four quality novels this November. That’s not what it’s about. NaNoWriMo is a celebration of writing at its most primal, the mad rush just to get words on paper, the knowing that such a feat is possible. People don’t run 20K races to impress anyone with their running style, and so it is with NaNoWriMo. It’s setting a goal you don’t know whether you can handle and seeing what you’re made of.

So far, I’m up to almost 17,000 words and not nearly as far along as I need to be. That five days missed from the start really gave me a challenge to make up for. I can easily make 30,000 to 40,000 words at this pace, but the goal is still 50,000, so I’ve got my work cut out for me. (And feeling guilty about taking the time off to write this column.)

But I can already see that it will be worth the effort, whatever the outcome. I had fallen away from writing of late, letting other distractions take precedence. I can’t remember the last paper I wrote for a Sherlockian publication, which used to happen on a regular basis. I’m looking forward to November being over so I can try my hand at something besides this crazy novel again.

And then there’s next November . . . when I’ll have a full thirty days. It’ll be my Rocky II, the second round against the champ. And next year, I hope to drag some other friends and Sherlockians into it with me. Can you imagine a Sherlockian sub-contingent of NaNoWritMo, whose novels all have something to do with Holmes or Sherlockian life? Heck, we’re used to reading bad pastiches, and quality isn’t an issue with the collectors among us. Somebody will always have a place for our output.

Well, I’ve dawdled long enough! Back to work on that novel!

(By the way, you can find out more about NaNoWriMo at http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node )

Your humble correspondent,
Brad Keefauver