As November nears, some people begin to think about Thanksgiving, spending time with their families and the upcoming blitz of the holiday shopping season. But for others, the focus for November is one thing only: getting to 50,000 words in 30 days. Yes, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is upon us!

Some say that NaNoWriMo is only for masochists. Others point out that it is more of a quantitative exercise then qualitative (and who but literary folk would use such words?). But I think the best description I've read of NaNoWriMo is that you are given 30 days to let your imagination roam free. Maybe aliens land in Mexico or you spend 1,000 words describing a stain on the couch, so what? The most important thing is that NaNoWriMo gets over 100,000 people around the world writing.

Started in 1999, NaNoWriMo may not have produced the best writing ever (to see a list of published NaNoWriMo authors click here) but it has generated a lot of fun. You do not win prizes for completing your 50k but you can bask in your own personal sense of accomplishment and heck, 50k is a lot of words! (To give you some perspective: in order to write 50k in 30 days, you'd have to write about 1,667 words a day, everyday in November to get there, this blog post is maybe one fourth of that number) NaNoWriMo is possibly the mother of all writing challenges.

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Why? Easy. Because my sister wins. Hands down. No contest. Every time.

You see, I'm the oldest. The responsible one. The one who always had the hand-me-downs until I learned to sew and make my own clothes and then started to work and buy them myself. The one who was expected to take care of everything (cooking dinner, babysitting, keeping my room clean) and follow the rules.

I'm not a very good oldest. I was a rebel and fiercely independent, resenting any attempt to force me to follow the rules or pigeon-hole me into a caretaker role before I'd even had a chance to figure out who I was. Left home at 17 and pretty much didn't look back for a long time.

You'd think I'd paid my dues. I earned scholarships to college, then worked all through medical school and became a doctor, taught at a prestigious academic medical center, almost died twice on helicopters flying out to get patients in bad conditions, saved lives, comforted the sick and dying....

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This week's episode of A Cup of Poetry features a dramatic reading of "The Raven" written the famous Edgar Allan Poe and read by Clinton Wilson.

Listen to A Cup of Poetry now and read the poem below!

About the collection: The Portable Edgar Allan Poe is a fully revised collection of Poe's work. The first new edition of this landmark anthology since 1945 presents a more complicated, perverse, and culturally engaged Poe. Along with the author's familiar masterworks in poetry and fiction, this new Portable Poe includes satirical tales that reflect his critique of American culture.

The Portable Edgar Allan Poe edited by J. Gerald Kennedy

Book: Paperback | 5.07 x 7.79in | 688 pages | ISBN 9780143039914 | 03 Oct 2006 | Penguin Classic | 18 - AND UP

$18.00 - Add to Cart

"The Raven"