NaNoWriMo
I've heard about this NaNoWriMo that comes around every November for a while (for the record their motto is: "Thirty days and nights of literary abandon" which makes them awesome from the get go). They have been doing it since 1999 and essentially it is a challenge in the month of November to write 50,000 words of a novel from scratch. The point is not to write an amazing novel, or even a good one for that matter, the point is to get a bunch of crazy novel aspiring/writing people together, and through the thrill of the challenge, force them to crank out a novel that they might end up throwing away entirely, but forcing the creative juices to get flowing either way. As they put it, "The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly." I love them for this, but I haven't yet worked up the courage to do it. Every year I have the great debate and every year I find one or more marvelous (albeit occasionally far fetched) excuses that prevent me from participating. And of course this year is no different; even though I'm coming a little late the party this year, I haven't made up my mind whether I'm actually going to give it a go or not. I keep running into the fact that, a: I barely have any time as is, and b: I am a big fat chicken. I don't know if I'm ready to pull 50,000 words out of my head at the risk of simply throwing them all away.
I'll let you know by the end of the month if I took the challenge this year or succumbed to my many excuses, but I wanted to share it all the same just in case anyone I know who is a closet writer like me would like to take them up on it.
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano
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2 comments:
Go for it Haley, you are a fantastic writer! As for me I have written 1500 blog posts in the last 3 years, does that count? Slow and steady works for me but the thought of the challenge is a good one. I just don't think I'd be good at fiction. But then my truth is stranger than fiction most of the time!
So come on out of that closet...blaze the trail. Maybe I'll do it next year.
Writing it already! Already cheated and used the 20,000 words I had worked up since last year! But I have to account for the other 30,000, so that's where the abandon comes in!
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