NaNoWriMo
Posted on September 27, 2009
Last year, one of the bloggers I follow signed up for something called NaNoWriMo, which I had never heard of. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, and it’s a contest where participants try to write a novel during the month of November.
This is the 11th year of NaNoWriMo it gets bigger every year. The goal seems simple – write a story of more than 50,000 words. According to the FAQs, anyone who writes 50,000 words is declared a winner, and there are no prizes other than a certificate (as a PDF file). However, the real prize is the satisfaction of having written 50,000 words of a story. That doesn’t mean the novel is good, or coherent, or publishable, or interesting, but it is over 50,000 words, so that’s gotta count for something ;-) Apparently, 50,000 words is about 175 pages, which doesn’t seem very long IMHO, but according to Wikipedia some novels around 50,000 words include The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Brave New World, and The Great Gatsby.
If one is writing according to the rules of NaNoWriMo, writing on the novel begins on November 1st and ends at midnight local time on November 30th or 50,000 words later, whichever happens first. The author can do research, make notes, and do whatever before November, but the novel writing must begin in November. They encourage people not to worry so much about editing (that is what December is for), but to concentrate on getting the words out and reaching the 50,000 word mark. It’s more about quantity than quality, but the story might be a diamond in the rough. It can be polished into something better.
For me, I’ve got some rough ideas and some basic characters floating around in my head, so maybe they can be coaxed into 50,000 words or more. We’ll see what November brings.
