No Go on the NaNo

There is an old saying that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. This is unfortunately true.

I took on the challenge of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, with a plan and a schedule for writing. I had everything ready to go, complete with a semi-autobiographical account of my family dramas told with a touch of humor. Just as I was getting into the swing of things and two days ahead of schedule, two family tragedies hit within days of each other, and just as my husband learned he’d won the election to City Council. Our excitement about his election faded quickly in the loss of the newborn child of one of my nieces. Two days later, my daughter’s world fell apart. One by one, my young children still living at home came down with a terrible flu-like virus going around. By the time I was able to think, let alone write, I found myself hopelessly behind schedule with NaNoWriMo.

In this season of being thankful for what you have, it has been challenging to find reasons to be grateful, given the tragedies facing my loved ones. It seems trivial in the face of the losses suffered by both my daughter and my niece for me to whine and moan about not being able to finish a speculative novel that’s been percolating in my subconscious from the time I was eight-years-old. It’s just fiction. It can and will wait. People take precedence over projects. At somewhere around 25,000 words in two weeks, I can forgive myself for being human.

As my writer friends have reminded me, there’s always next year! That is something I am thankful for.

Around the Writing World in 30 Days

I’m going to attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

It doesn’t have to be a good one, it just has to be a novel with beginning, middle, and end, with characters, conflict, and resolution. Oh, and it has to be from scratch, no cutting and pasting of previous words because that would be cheating.

What madness is this, you ask? November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. http://www.nanowrimo.org/ 

NaNoWriMo is all the buzz on the writing forums these days as veterans and first-timers are gearing up for the annual challenge. Founded in 1999 by Chris Baty and 20 other “overcaffeinated yahoos,” NaNoWriMo is now run by a non-profit organization called the Office of Letters and Light, whose stated goal is to encourage adults and children to reach their creative potential. Since its inception, NaNoWriMo has grown to over 500 chapters worldwide with more than 200,000 participants last year.

The blogs stress the importance of quantity of words over quality. In a complete break from traditional writing practice, from November 1 through November 30, participants are encouraged to churn out words with abandon, no editing, 30 days of uninhibited writing. All you have to do is tell a story in no less than 50,000 words. That works out to roughly 1600 words per day. Not only does this take discipline, it also takes time. Planning is essential.

Why 50,000 words, you ask? Because that is the magic number for most mass-market paperback novels.

Why is quantity stressed over quality? The idea of pushing volume of words is geared to free the writer creatively from the self-editing that leads to writer’s block. If it doesn’t have to be good, then you aren’t limited by genre or believability. If you get stuck you can always have a group of crazed penguins armed to the teeth fall through the ceiling, slap your main character with a herring, then shimmy back up a rope humming the soundtrack from “Spamalot.” Writers tend to get silly when they get blocked. This allows the silliness to spew forth unchecked.

The idea is that maybe, just maybe, you might have a decent first draft when you’re finished that you can shape and hone into a marketable novel. It’s happened before, roughly 90 times! But the goal isn’t to get your novel published. The goal is to write a novel – good, bad, or indifferent.

If you’ve ever had the idea of writing a novel, I invite you to join me in the attempt. I’m not sure I can complete a novel in 30 days, but I’m willing to try. Who’s with me?