Thursday, October 29, 2009

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November

I heard about NaNoWriMo through the Barnes & Noble First Look Book Club. Another First Looker asked Katherine Howe, author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, if she had ever tried it. I looked it up and signed up - last Spring!

Here's the description of NaNoWriMo on its website:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking 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.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

Now it's nearly November and I'm still working out my main characters and plot. I just wanted to check if anyone else is planning on doing this too. I'm signed up as gaby317 - feel free to email, chat, join my buddy list.

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