So what? Well, October 1st is the day when you can first sign in to the NaNoWriMo forums. If you are not a writer or have been living at the top of a very high mountain somewhere, you may not know the meaning of NaNoWriMo or why I'd be so excited about it. NaNoWriMo stands for
National
Novel
Writing
Month. The idea is that you join NaNoWriMo and you write a 50,000 word novel in the thirty days from November 1st to November 30th.
Is it possible? Yes, it definitely is possible. I have finished three times now (2003, 2004, and 2007) and participated four times. I don't know what happened in 2005 and 2006. I think it was a combination of lack of motivation and lack of time.
Can you write a GOOD (meaning publishable) novel in 30 days? Maybe. While I don't think any of the three novels I've done so far are "ready for prime time" I do think that each was better than the one before it and that the last one was pretty close to what I'm looking for. I haven't picked the story I want to write this year, but I'm thinking that it might just make the cut and be good enough to send out after some editing.
I have seen novels that were written as a series of short (or even short, short) stories. I'm considering trying that this year. Instead of writing one large 50k piece, I think my goal is going to be to write a separate but related 1600 word story every day. That means that I will have 30 very short self-contained chapters rather than 20 or so longer chapters. If I consider that each small chapter is one or two closely related self-contained scenes, it might make the process easier.
Are you familiar with NaNoWriMo? What will you do this year?
Post a Comment