It comes just once a year—and I’m not talking about Christmas, or the just-passed Halloween. The subject today is NaNoWriMo, and as it just started yesterday, November 1st, you’re really not too late to jump in and catch up.
NaNoWriMo—its full name is National Novel Writing Month, but it’s commonly known as NaNoWriMo. It’s an annual challenge to writers to complete the first draft of a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. If you’re curious to learn more, or ready to jump in with both feet (or both typing hands), go to http://nanowrimo.org/.
Meanwhile, let me tell you a little more about it. Although it’s National NOVEL Writing Month, I have heard of writers of memoirs or other sorts of nonfiction participating. But technically it IS for fictioneers…and after all, fiction is the more popular form of books over nonfiction.
Myself, I have never participated. To begin with, I’m primarily a nonfiction writer. Secondarily, with my workflow so unpredictable, I can’t commit to finishing 50,000 words in a month. In some 30-day periods it would be breezy-easy, but other times my paying work (freelance writing and editing for clients) takes my every minute of a 12-hour workday, a seven-day workweek, and for someone who starts her days typically at 5 AM, by the time 5 PM rolls around, I’ve had it. At times like those, no way could I keep up with my paying work and also complete a 50,000-word book. Then there is the fact that damn few of my books are 50,000 words long. And you don’t win the challenge if you don’t complete 50,000 words in 30 days.
I don’t feel guilty about not participating. Hell, I’ve had over 100 books published! It’s not like I’m slacking off. But I’ll write what I want, when I have time, in however many words it takes me to say what I have to say on the subject.
So once again this year I am not participating in NaNoWriMo.
But that doesn’t mean YOU shouldn’t.
If you’ve had the idea for a novel rattling around in your brain or a desire to see a printed book (or e-book) with your byline on the cover, here’s the impetus to plant your tushy in your computer chair and get those fingers busy typing.
The premise of NaNoWriMo is to complete a first draft in a month. You don’t go back and revise and refine it till the month is over. THEN you work on the second draft…and beyond, if need be. (Few indeed—if any at all—are the writers whose first drafts are perfect.) The object here is speed, not perfection. Perfection comes later.
So…do you have the premise of a novel welling up in your brain? Or ideas for a couple of characters to inhabit the pages of a character-driven book of fiction? Jump on the bandwagon—your late start is really only a day late. You can catch up.
Start writing that novel today!