Get Ready to Write
If you're seeing some writerly types walking around looking a bit more haggard, worn out and overly caffienated than usual it's only because November is NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. For the entirety of November, NaNoWriMo participants are tasked with writing a 175 page (50,000 word) novel. That sounds like a lot, but as the founder and leader of NaNoWriMo, Oakland's own Chris Baty, points out, it comes down to writing two hours a day, five nights a week. So easy. And the point of all this? From the Web site:
"valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved."
In other words, Just Do It.
NaNoWriMo was started in 1998 when Chris Baty, wondering why he had yet to write the Great American Novel, thought it would be a cool idea to write a novel in a month and get friends to join in with him. Over the years, word spread to the point where the thing has over 40,000 participants of all ages and from all over the world.
How this thing works is that all the wanna-be novelists, or NaNos, sign up on the NaNoWriMo Web site and as soon as November comes, they write away, posting the number of words they've written each day. Included on the Web site are forums for people to talk about their experiences and to give encouragement. There's also inspirational words and advice given for those who need it, including a weekly pep-talk e-mail that goes out to all the participants (some words of advice given out- "be sure take lots of walks and bike-rides" and "putting on special clothes makes writing feel more like a festive event." Once the end of the month comes, those still writing send in their manuscript to get verification that they’ve achieved their goals and from there, it's party time. And while some people have actually been able to sell a novel or two to publishers, for most people, the pot of gold at the end of the NaNoWriMo rainbow is to just say that they've written a novel. Which, we think, is a pretty cool.
For the next few weeks, Friend of Sfist, Brenda, will be sharing her experiences as a participant in NaNoWriMo. Her thoughts and observations about taking part in it, her fourth time, comes after the jump.
So this is my fourth time doing the National Novel Writing Month or Nanowrimo. This is the fourth novel I’m attempting to write, the fourth year I’m subjecting myself to spending every day banging out 4-5 pages of text or 1,667 words a day to reach 50,000 words by the end of November.
So what’s it’s like to do Nanowrimo … some random thoughts
- Sketching out an outline of your novel on November 1 while riding home on the N-Judah. In 30 minutes, I’ve got a plot, the barest of outlines, 12 chapters with titles and a title for my novel. Not bad for 30 minutes on MUNI, that commute has to come in handy for something right?
-Next is planning my day around when I think I can write and trying to come up with places where to write. Much as I hate the Starfucks the Darth Vader of the coffee bistro world, I end up writing there because it’s just around the corner from where I live and I can order coffee, sit at a table and write away.
- The other dilemma is every Nanonwrimo participant’s life is what you’ll write with. There’s the old fashioned electronic luddite pen and paper camp, who will illegibly scrawl pages and pages of text, and then have to either then type the text into computers so they can count the words or count the words by hand themselves. There is something more freeing about writing by hand because you’re used to writing and don’t stop. Then there’s the modern electronic camp who debates laptops versus pda or other small electronic device. I’m the pda type with a foldup portable keyboard that I can slip in my purse and take everywhere.
-Why do I do it? I don’t know. 1) torture and I have an s&m fixation 2) because I can 3) because I’m a basically lazy ass writer who sees Nanowrimo as an opportunity to teach myself to write every day, never mind that in 3 years I still don’t write every day, but one can dream and hope can’t one 4) because I like a challenge 5) because there is something incredibly freeing about not worrying about the quality of your writing and instead focus on the quantity – why spend a month editing one chapter when you can spend a month writing a small novel 6) because yes at the end it makes me feel good and it makes up for the rest of year I haven’t been writing and at least I can tell all my writing friends that wrote something this year.