National Novel Writing Month

If you’re reading this now, than it’s already too late for you to participate—this year. However, if you like writing, like making things up on the spur of the moment, and like bragging to people, than here’s an explanation:

People tend to be “one day” writers. As in, “one day, I would like to write a novel.” This is both mentioned and frowned upon in Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem!, the how-to guide to National Novel Writing Month.

November first, the journey began. A thousand starved writers cried out for vengence as they used the single most powerful creative writing technique to date.

National Novel Writing Month (commonly abbreviated to “NaNoWriMo”) was invented by the previously mentioned Chris Baty, who claims that stupid ideas were in abundance in 1999, and he takes no responsibility for NaNoWriMo (but all credit). The goal is to write a 175-page novel (50,000 words) by midnight November 30. It grew to international popularity, though originally conceived as a bit of a joke.

Baty had thought that the one thing keeping thousands of people worldwide from writing large amounts of passable prose was not lack of talent, but lack of a deadline, and so the Writing Month began. The novel can be about whatever you want, although the staff asks that it is a novel (defined as a “lengthy work of fiction”). There is no fee to participate, you do not have to give up the rights to anyone, and at the end of the month you get unlimited bragging rights and your own, personal work of fiction.

The international community of speed-novel writers is incredibly supportive. The website is full of everything from deep, spiritual wisdom to word dares (such as, “make a character use the phrase ‘cheese whiz’ at least ten times during your novel”).

Now, this is important. You cannot—absolutely cannot—participate in NaNoWriMo if you are going to take it seriously. What you sign up to do is completely impossible anyway, so you rock for even trying. Think your plot is too serious? Throw in some singing minstrel ninjas. Hate the way your characters are developing? Kill off the ones you don’t like and ressurect them as necessary. Worried about length? Give a character a short attention span and force your other characters to repeat themselves ad nauseum.

This is your book. It’s not War and Peace. No one else has to read it if you don’t want them to. You could can it and get it published if you want to (Water for Elephants was a NaNo Novel, for example). The most important thing is having fun. Who cares if howler monkeys can’t actually be heard from space? It’s your novel.

See you next year.

One Response

1. 7:42 AM on November 20th, 2006deshawn freemen:

   lol

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