Getting prepped for NaNoWriMo... ten months early

Something that I like to do these days, now that I've got loads and loads of time on my hands, is watch people play video games while they make fun comments about the game.  So I was watching John Green play FIFA 11 on YouTube, and in one episode, he talked about NaNoWriMo.  NaNoWriMo is basically this event where a bunch of people from all over the world try to write a 50,000-word novel within the month of November.

I remembered that this was something that I wanted to do some time last summer (when I had time and actually believed that I'd be able to pull something like that off), so just now, I went to the NaNoWriMo website and was reading it, and -- I dunno, I want to see if I can do it.  I've had this idea for a novel since the end of my senior year...  The novel would have been about a Chinese girl who's, like, trying to figure out who she is.  Like, I dunno, for me, being Chinese-American, I always felt not totally American, but obviously not Chinese either.  I'm not sure how this conflict / quest would have been resolved, since it's based on stuff that I'm experiencing -- even now, and I still don't really know the answer.  Maybe I thought the answer would come to me while I was writing.  Haha!  I don't know.

Another idea I had was to write a mystery, because my favorite author of all time is The Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie.  I also admire Isaac Asimov, not only for his robot stories (which are amazing!), but also for the fact that he was able to combine science fiction with mystery, something that editors and publishers believed was near-impossible at the time.  Mysteries are freaking hard to write, though; ugh, all those plot twists and red herrings and everything.

Anyway, since I've never actually written any real fiction, I figured I should practice before the event.  So to prep myself for NaNoWriMo, or even Camp NaNoWriMo (which is basically NaNoWriMo that takes place during not-November), I was thinking that I'd try writing something short once a week, at least.  I've got a couple ideas; not sure if they're any good, but maybe I'll get better as November approaches!