2. Write a book - November National Novel Writing Month

I love creative writing, and I also love a challenge. So when I heard about National Novel Writing Month years ago, I wanted to give it a try. 50k words in 30 days takes a fair amount of intention and planning. You have to write every day, you have to make a point of arranging your life so that you can write every day, and (if you're me) you have to have a plan of what you're going to write. We're living in a particularly odd period of time for writing and reading. On the one hand, reading is becoming more and more popular and there are so many amazing books being published. But at the same time there are truckloads of AI slop being generated and using the work of talented writers to regurgitate the same stories in different ways. So this goal isn't just about writing, but also being intentional about what we lose when we give over part of our creativity to generative AI.

In past runs at the NaNoWriMo goal, I've set milestones, meal prepped for all of my dinners for the entire month (as if anyone needs to convince me to spend an entire fall month eating soups!), and set a daily schedule for when I was going to write (often writing during lunch every day at work). I don't know quite what I'll do this year, but for this goal I am going to attempt to hit the 50k goal in November and edit the resulting text in December over winter break to hopefully have a readable draft at the end of this.