How Many Words was That? An Interview with Renda Dodge

Renda Dodge is a local writer, recently published novelist, liaison to the Seattle NaNoWriMo writers group and five-time NaNo champ. Recently, she took a break from churning out her sixth NaNo novel to answer a few questions for us about the event.

Joseph Lambert: How long have you been a liaison to the Seattle NaNoWriMo writing group?

Renda Dodge: I have been a municipal liaison since 2007, so this is my fourth year. I love the organization (Office of Letters and Light) and what they do for writers, especially young writers, and it’s my way of giving back. Anyone who knows me knows that September-December are sucked into the NaNo volunteer void.

JL: What was your original inspiration for participating in NaNoWriMo?

RD: In early 2005, I joined a writing group. That group wasn’t doing much for me. We’d have small assignments and put out some short stories, but I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to tackle the daunting task of writing my novel. The idea became a thing to be feared instead of something ambitious I could be excited about. I spent a lot of time in the writing reference section of Barnes and Noble, I was searching for a book that would make it all make sense. Even after years of college creative writing classes, I still hadn’t written anything longer than 4,000 words. I stumbled upon "No Plot, No Problem!" by Chris Baty. It wasn’t the title so much as the sub-title that got me "A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days." (I personally believe that no plot is a big problem, but that’s not really the point of the book.) I read it in a day (it’s really tiny), and I loved the concept of putting aside all inhibitions and writing 50,000 words in one month. Apparently, all I needed was permission. Luckily I found the book in October. My first NaNoWriMo was that November.

JL: How many years have you participated in NaNoWriMo?

RD: Every year since 2005, so this is my sixth. I didn’t "win" the first year. The goal is 50,000 words and I hit 24,000 (or so, I can’t remember the exact number any more). The thing is, I was really proud of those words. It was a lot more than I had ever written on a single story. I was giddy. The difference between my first year and the years following is that I didn’t reach out to the community. And really, the community is the reason I keep doing NaNoWriMo. Because while NaNoWriMo gave me permission to write a novel in 30 days, it also gave me the confidence to write novels outside of November. I write all the time now, as a career as a matter of fact, but I keep coming back and participating in NaNo for the community. Writing is such a solitary craft, it’s so exciting to see others as excited as you are about writing.

JL: Your first novel, "Inked," was written during NaNoWriMo. Did you keep working on the novel into December, or did you set it off to the side for a while? What was the process like after finishing the marathon of writing and having this massive stack of papers to sift through?

RD: I took about a week off, but I was too excited to set it aside for too long. It was the first novel that I wrote during NaNoWriMo that I was truly excited about. I knew that it had the seed to grow into something much bigger and better, and it did. It took five full rewrites, characters changed and plots became more fully developed. It took months. Writing the first draft took me 30 days, but revision took me about a year of full-time work. The term "National Novel Writing Month" is slightly deceptive. Yes, you’ll write a novel, it will have a story and characters, but there’s a lot of work to be done once you’ve finished. I tend to tell serious writers, who are often the biggest skeptics, it’s more like "National Novel Drafting Month." But the difference is that you now have something to work with, you got black on white, and you didn’t have that before you started.

Chris Baty interviews with Mark McDonald

It was a dark and dangerous night as I walked into the heavily draped Julia Morgan Ballroom near Chinatown, in the heart of old San Francisco's financial district.

More than two hundred darkly dressed shadowy figures hunched over closely packed tables, where eerie lighting from dozens of computers cast a sickly pall upon faces strained with intensity. It looked like a scene out of a film noir; at least one character would die tonight.

It was "A Night of Writing Dangerously" and we were the murderers.

From the mind of Chris Baty comes, "A Night of Writing Dangerously".

I was here to attend "A Night of Writing Dangerously", a party hosted by Chris Baty, who, ten years ago, created the idea of holding an annual Internet event called "National Novel Writing Month", where thousands of aspiring writers try to write a 50,000-word novel during the thirty days of November. This night, more than 200 writers donated $200 ($300 per couple) to attend the party. They raised $34,115.51 to benefit Baty's organization, and its associate organization, the Office of Letters and Light.

National Novel Writing Month began with the idea that people feel they want to write a book someday, but that day never seems to come. For those who sign up for the free internet experience, that day … or more accurately, 30 days, comes on November 1st, when they begin writing their novels, download them to the web site, and attempt to meet the deadline by midnight on November 30th.

Jennifer Anthony reached over 41,000 words.

During the month, they are encouraged to keep the words flowing, not in an elegant, refined, ready-for-publication manner, but in a mad dash to get 50,000 words downloaded in a rough draft of a book they could very well edit and one day publish.

When I walked into the Julia Morgan Ballroom, it took me a few minutes to find an open chair. And before I could sit down, a large school bell was being rung by someone who had just reached 50,000 words. It was about 6:30pm,the party already had writers reaching the 50k finish line, and it was only day 22.

Chris Wentworth of Southern Ontario, Canada celebrates reaching 50,000 words.

I spoke with Chris Baty, the originator of National Novel Writing Month:

"The idea of writing terrifies some people", he said. "But when you just write without being critical, just getting those words down shows you your capabilities. It takes you away from your day to day, and shows what happens when you stretch yourself." Back in 1999, he and a few college friends who thought they might someday want to write a book decided they would probably never get around to actually doing it. He figured if you write 50,000 words, you have a 175-page short novel. He put this idea on the Internet, and today there are over 120,000 registered writers and 600 schools participating in what is known as NaNoWriMo month.

I asked him about the Young Writers Program, part of the Office of Letters and Light, which helps kids and teens get excited about writing. In 2008, there were over 22,000 students taking part in NaNoWriMo's youth program, which provides workbook exercises, promotional materials and encouragement. (Young Writers Program)

"Being a kid has a lot of drudgery, but when they start writing, they build (their) world and come alive," he said.

Chelsea won, saying: "I can't stop crying, I just killed off one of my main characters!"

"About 6% of the participants who write through the thirty days have gone on to revise, find an agent, and pursue what they have written," he told me.

If 100,000 participate, 6% means over 6,000 of these "crazy writers" have gotten serious about writing, and want to see their work published, on the book shelves, and in the hands of readers. Many have been published already.

The night was filled with fun, the film noir theme was fun and adventurous, and we had lots to eat.

Figures from the site, 2008: 119,301 participants and 21,683 winners.

Number of words officially logged in 2008: 1,643,343,993
Current number of words for 2009: 1,924,987,017
This writer's current word count: 18,191 and counting…

[Mark McDonald / Santa Barbara Edhat]

Spotlight on NaNoWriMo.org

Learn the best ways to get connected, hone your skills and build your career on the Web in this expanded Q&A with the founder of NaNoWriMo.org.

Year founded: 1999
Member stats: 2008: 119,301participants and 21,683 winners. 2009 (projected): 140,000 participants and 25,000 winners.
Mission: To help people bash out a 50,000-word novel in November. And have a great time doing it.
How to sign up: Just head to NaNoWriMo.org and click the "sign up now" box. You can sign up anytime for the November event. We don't charge an entry fee, but we're a nonprofit, and do ask that ably-financed participants donate something to help cover costs. If you are 17-and-under, we encourage you to take part in NaNoWriMo through our awesome Young Writers Program, located at ywp.nanowrimo.org.
About the founder: Chris Baty (who fielded these questions) is the founder of NaNoWriMo and the author of No Plot? No Problem!

Describe the writer who can most benefit from involvement in NaNoWriMo.

I think there are two types of people who will benefit most from taking part in NaNoWriMo:
1) The first-time novelist.
2) The more experienced writer who can't find time to write.
For first-time novelists, it's easy to get discouraged by novel writing. A lot of that frustration comes from the fact that we've read so many great novels by the time we try to write one of our own. So our expectations tend to be very, very high. When our first drafts fall short of those aspirations, we assume something is wrong with our story (wrong idea, wrong main character, wrong point-of-view, etc.) or something is wrong with us (no-talent, tin ear for dialogue, horrible breath, bad dancer, etc.) It's demoralizing, and makes novel-writing such a slog that people abandon their books after a couple chapters.

The tragedy, of course, is that the books that made us want to write in the first place likely started out as dreadful first drafts. Most novels are born as ugly, confused creatures, and they only become the surefooted masterworks we love through a series of revisions and helpful interventions from friends, agents and editors.

With this in mind, first-time novelists should really be shooting for completion rather than perfection. They need to put aside all those dreams of elegant prose and snappy dialogue and just focus on getting an entire first draft down on paper. Then they can see where the juicy, beating heart of their story lies, and start building their second draft around that heart.

This is where huge community of writers can work wonders. There's so much camaraderie and encouragement on the NaNoWriMo site, and 99 percent of is focused on simply keeping writers moving forward. At any hour of the day in November, you can come to the site and find tips for writer's block, get recipes for mojo-boosting snacks, join an online word sprint, or find out where local Wrimos are meeting to write that week. Cumulatively, it creates a wave of can-do energy that helps keep novice writers committed to their books from start to finish.

The other group of authors who benefit most from NaNoWriMo are experienced writers who have been struggling to make time to write. NaNoWriMo is a little like a thirty-day writing retreat, but one that's plunked down in the middle of your everyday life. To make it work, you have to cut out a lot of procrastinatory pursuits, get creative about chore swapping and childcare duties, and adjust sleep schedules. But once you do, it's amazing how much you can get done in a month. Through that process, you realize that writing can happen even in the midst of a hectic schedule. And once you get into the rhythm of bagging those 1,667 words each day, it's easier to maintain a consistent writing schedule for the rest of the year.

Novel Experience: Reader turns writer in 30-day book challenge

Modesto Bee - Viki Sprague.
December 12, 2008 for Xpress yourself.
(Brian Ramsay/The Modesto Bee)

Viki Sprague always has been a reader and always has loved books.

But the Patterson resident didn't start writing until she saw an online story about National Novel Writing Month -- a month where people are encouraged to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

She did it last year, and she organized weekly "write-ins" in Modesto and Turlock this year.

"I knew by the age of 6 that I wanted to be a writer ... someday," Sprague said.

She completed her novel from last year, and she hopes to finish this year's novel as well.

Q: So, what made you decide to write a novel in November?

A: After a severe illness in October 2007, one that I was not expected to recover from, I read an online article about NaNoWriMo and I decided, "Why not?" I suppose it was a matter of finally giving myself "permission" to take the time for something that meant a lot to me. It was the best decision I ever made! I can honestly say that it changed my life.

Last year, I "won," which means that I reached my goal of 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. The name of that story is "Chasing Strange." I was hooked. The experience changed my writing and more importantly, my entire focus on writing. This year, it was a given that I'd to it again, and I ended up with 51,319 words. This year's story is called "The Sin-Eaters."

Q: So what is the novel about?

A: My 2008 story is a complete departure of what and how I usually write. It comes to me in what I refer to as "revelations," for lack of a better way to explain it. It has occurred to me a portion at a time. Uncanny in some ways, but very satisfying. It is the result of years and years of interest in civil rights, twins, the Great Depression -- an amalgam that came together as the "voice" of my main character. My story takes place early in the 20th century, is about a woman of Gullah heritage. She was separated from her twin at a young age, then told by her mother that he never existed. The rest of the story entails her search for him, and once she finds him, how both of their lives change, often tragically. This is a story about good people and the choices they have to make when pressed beyond their breaking point. I am approximately one-third of the way through what the finished book will be.

Q: How long has writing been a creative output for you? How did you get into writing?

A: My writing grew from an early passion for reading -- though, sadly, I never allowed myself to spend time on it as an adult. As a mother of three, working, commuting, etc., there never seemed to be enough time. But, as I mentioned, all that changed in 2007. I wrote a very short piece of fiction (1,000 words) for a writing competition early in 2007 and my story was one of the winning entries.

Q: How did you hook up with the Web site as far as being a moderator? What were your responsibilities on that end?

A: In 2007, I was so disappointed to discover that there were no local NaNoWriMo events in our local area: Kick-Off, Half-Way-There, TGIO parties, weekly "write-ins" -- because there was not a municipal liaison in Modesto. The weekly write-ins, where local participants meet together to write, talk about writing, commiserate and encourage each other, is an important and fun feature of participating. So, this year, I volunteered for the "job" and have really enjoyed meeting wonderful local NaNoWriMo folks from Modesto as well as many outlying areas. Several of us have agreed to keep on meeting every week to write -- we think that this group commitment/accountability will encourage us to keep our writing in the forefront of our busy schedules. We hope to begin sharing our work with each other for mutual feedback/critiquing in early spring 2009.

I was also privileged to attend a special event in San Francisco in mid-November -- it was called the Night of Writing Dangerously. Scores of NaNo people from all over the USA (as well as a couple of intrepid international ones) met together for five hours of writing together.

Q: What would be some tips you would give to somebody who wanted to try this out next November?

A: First, perhaps the most important one: Find your courage and just do it! Turn off those inner doubts, those inner editors. A beloved fellow NaNo writer who is now a close friend has a wonderful quote for her signature line: Winning is crossing the starting line.

Second: Sign-up begins in mid-October at the NaNoWriMo.org Web site -- on it, there are many forums with helpful, humorous advice. Sign up early and begin reading the wealth of knowledge and suggestions that are shared in those forums. They will go a long way to making your writing successful in the coming weeks.

Third: Have fun! This is all about having fun with writing. One of the best things about NaNoWriMo is that there is no expectation of excellence! This is all-out, over-the-top, unedited writing. It's OK if it's awful. This is, in effect, a first draft. Polishing and perfecting can come later. No pressure to be wonderful ... yet!

[Will DeBoard / The Modest Bee]

Two Science Fiction Writers Share Their 30-Day Novel Writing Experiences

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where writers attempt to write a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days, is almost at the halfway point. While some writers might be breezing through this writing marathon, others are starting to feel the strain on their creativity. We talked to James Strickland and Simon Haynes, two science fiction authors who have not only successfully completed NaNoWriMo, but have had the fruits of their labor published. They offer plenty of insight into how to finish that first draft in 30 days and survive the month with your sanity intact.

When we spoke to NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty about the project, he mentioned that 27 novels composed during NaNoWriMo have been published in print. James Strickland’s first published novel was his NaNoWriMo cyberpunk novel Looking Glass, which he followed up this year with Irreconcilable Differences. Simon Haynes (who answered questions via email) also published his NaNoWriMo novel Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch, the fourth installment of his Hal Spacejock series. We spoke with both authors about how they approach novel-writing, their experiences with NaNoWriMo, and their advice for aspiring novelists who find themselves in a creative jam.

What made you decide to participate in NaNoWriMo and try to write a novel in this way?

James Strickland: Well this is actually, I think, the sixth time I’ve done it, I’d have to check. But I did 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006. So it’d actually be the fifth time. And actually, what happened was in 2002, I’d been playing online role playing games a lot typing a lot, and I finally reached a point where I was starting to pull back from that. And I wanted to create some characters and had some interesting things that directly involved a role playing game. Plus, you know, I had a degree in writing and it always annoyed me that it had never actually earned me a dime. So I signed up for NaNoWriMo as soon as I heard about it and gave me a shot.

Simon Haynes: Initially it was the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month. I'm a procrastinator, and even with a publishing contract under my belt and a publisher keen for more of my novels, I still find it hard to settle down to write. This is because I'd rather settle down and tinker with all my software programs.
Initially it was the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month. I'm a procrastinator, and even with a publishing contract under my belt and a publisher keen for more of my novels, I still find it hard to settle down to write. This is because I'd rather settle down and tinker with all my software programs.

Do you go into NaNoWriMo with any sort of set plan or do you tend to go in cold?

James Strickland: No, I’m one of those writers who jumped in cold, basically starts writing and gets the narrator – I write in the first person almost exclusively – so I jump in get the narrator to talk to me. Normally for NaNo I wait until about a week in and I start writing an aimless roadmap of where I want the plot to go so I don’t get myself into corners. But no, normally I start with a blank page and somebody talking to me.

Is it easier for you to work with that deadline?

James Strickland: Yeah, it’s easier to bash the content out. Now, whether you’re going to get good content out is another matter. The NaNo novel that I’ve published took about another four or five months of work to polish it up and make it really sellable, because you know, it’s only half the length of a normal novel when you come out of NaNo, and there’s a lot of stuff in there that’s just…you’re in a hurry.

But do you come out with a better sense of where the story is going?

James Strickland: Yeah, as a first draft it’s great. It gives, at least for me, by the time I’m done with the NaNo novel, I’ve met all or most of my characters, have a general idea of the plot, a general idea of the emotional ebb and flow of the story, and it also nails down the world a great deal for me.

(To Simon Haynes) Your published NaNoWriMo novel features Hal Spacejock, a character from your previous books. Did you find that having that deadline changed the way you wrote about him? Did it change his world in any way? Was it more difficult to write a Hal Spacejock book with a 30-day deadline?

Simon Haynes: I'd say it's easier to get started, because I don't have to worry about the first chapter or so. My plot outline for chapters one and two can usually be described as 'Hal or Clunk makes a trivial mistake, with huge consequences' Then I spent the rest of the book torturing them with the consequences.

However, each Hal Spacejock novel is about 2/3 Hal and Clunk, and 1/3 someone else entirely. That someone else might be the antagonist who is trying to achieve some plan of their own, which inevitable leads to their crossing swords with our hero, or sometimes the other 1/3 of the book is written from the POV of another character with a major problem.

I believe that's what keeps the Hal books fresh. It's not just Hal-Hal-Hal…sometimes he's just background material for the real plot.

How long was the process from finishing the NaNoWriMo draft to publication?

Simon Haynes: Hal Spacejock No Free Lunch (released in June this year) was the first novel based on my NanoWrimo efforts. My novels evolve as I write them, so I can't point to Hal 4 and say 'I remember writing that section during November 2006' because it's likely only traces of DNA remain. I can say that I wrote and edited the novel between November 2006 and October 2007. (Yes, I handed it in last year and three days later I started on NanoWrimo again!)

NaNoWriMo's Chris Baty Explains How to Write a Science Fiction Epic in 30 Days

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), when amateur and professional writers alike scramble to write a first draft of a novel in a mere 30 days. For science fiction writers, that’s an especially daunting task, which can involve not only telling a story and creating compelling characters, but also craft an entirely new world. We talked to NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty, who told us how the process works and why science fiction writers should speed through their first drafts.

Baty, who also wrote the novel-writing guide No Plot? No Problem!, started National Novel Writing Month in 1999. Each November, participants attempt to write 50,000 words of an entirely new novel, with little or no planning. Sound impossible? We caught up with Baty, who explained how impossible deadlines can inspire surprising works of fiction.

What got you started on turning this whole thing into this whole national movement? It’s becoming really huge.

It wasn’t at first. It was really never supposed to be national. In fact, the first year that I did it, it was just a bunch of us in the Bay Area in 1999. And the name “National Novel Writing Month” was sort of an inside joke that I think made us feel better about our sort of dismal chances of success. It was nice to kind of have a big-sounding name for what I was pretty sure was going to a pretty small thing.

So I think the idea kind of came from my past both working as an editor and putting out a ‘zine that I had done from the time I was about 22 years old until I was 27 or so. And it just seemed that when you give someone an impossible deadline, miracles happen, and things that you shouldn’t be able to pull off you can if the deadline is scary enough. And I think that was sort of the idea that drove this notion of writing a novel in a month – was you know, writing a novel seems like an impossible thing, so let’s give it a deadline and maybe that will make it doable. And strangely that’s kind of what happened. It really did.

There were 21 of us that first year and the books that we ended up writing were not great, but they weren’t abysmally, embarrassingly horrible. And to me, that felt like this tremendous accomplishment and I thought if we can do this, anyone can do this. So I put up a better website and extended the call a little bit wider the following year and it’s just grown from word of mouth from there.

It’s funny. I’ve talked to a lot of people online who say “Don’t talk to me. It’s November and I’m writing my novel.”

I feel like we owe a great apology to the blog readers of the world because I think that a lot of the great blogs are affected by this NaNoWriMo virus where all of the bloggers are sort of taken out of commission for the month of November.

And beyond people finishing the 50,000 words – which I think is amazing – you’ve had a lot of people get their novels published.

Yeah and it’s been interesting over the years to see the number of people who have ended up selling their NaNoWriMo manuscripts grow, because I never thought that would happen. It was really just supposed to be a creative kick in the pants, an adventuresome month spent running naked through your imagination. But it’s fantastic. It’s actually a pretty great way to get a book written. I mean you have to write the first draft in a month and then you go and spend probably the rest of the year actually revising it and expanding it, because, you know, 50,000 words is not really a classic literary length. You tend to preferably end up adding anywhere between 30 and 100,000 words on top of it. But yeah, more and more people have been finding publishers. I think we have 27 people so far have sold their manuscript to print publishers, and another probably three times that many have sold them to ebook publishers. And last year we had our first New York Times number one bestseller in Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants. And it’s amazing. I mean, I go to airport bookstores and there’s Water for Elephants and it’s a NaNoWriMo novel. It’s pretty cool.

I was talking to someone whose first published novel was a NaNoWriMo novel, and felt he really needed that experience.

That’s kind of the interesting thing about NaNoWriMo as it’s grown. I think there’s definitely a large group of people who just do it for the sake of doing it, because it’s outrageous amounts of fun, because it pokes your imagination in really nice ways. I think because it also improves your reading ability in this really interesting way where once you’ve actually written a book you read on a completely different level. You are able to see both the really exquisite but you’re also able to see the seams of the book that couldn’t see before and that’s really fascinating. But there are, I would say at this point, 20 percent of us participants taking part in National Novel Writing Month really as part of this multi-stage process of getting that thing sold. And it works really well and we’ve had more and more published novelists come and take part in this just because you know everybody needs that deadline. And the really nice thing is that we’ve paired that terrifying deadline with a really supportive, fun, funny community that absolutely takes this goal of 50,000 words very seriously but does not take themselves so seriously as a lot of writing sites do, that it’s okay to have fun, it’s okay to make mistakes, and it’s okay to learn by doing. And I think that is such a great atmosphere both for book lovers who are giving this a shot for the first time as well as book writers who do this for a living.

Do you have any sense of what genres are the most common for NaNoWriMo?

It’s pretty evenly spread out. I think our top genres are fantasy, science fiction, and literary fiction, however you define that, and romance is also a big one. And in terms of science fiction, there’s always been a huge contingent of scifi writers that have done NaNoWriMo and they were really some of the earliest adopters. I think because the science fiction reading community has already had so many great online resources so they were already in some ways gathered together on message boards and websites and blogs. And so the NaNoWriMo virus that I talked about earlier was really able to take hold because these are connected people already and so the word can really go out. When one person’s doing it, there’s “Oh, maybe we should all do this.” And I think that’s been one of the reasons that we have had such a high turnout among the science fiction writers and fans.

Contest forces writers to think differently

NaNoWriMo. It's one silly little word with a lot of other words behind it - 50,000 words, to be exact.

November is National Novel Writing Month and this year marks the 10th anniversary of an organization whose mission is to turn people into budding novelists. Founded in 1999 by freelance writer Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo.org is a nonprofit literary crusade that encourages aspiring novelists all over the world to write a 50,000-word novel in a month.

"The 50,000-word challenge has a wonderful way of opening up your imagination and unleashing creative potential like nothing else," says Baty. "When you write for quantity instead of quality, you end up getting both. Also, it's a great excuse for not doing any dishes for a month."

Participants can log on to the Web site anytime between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30 - keeping in mind the 50,000-word challenge - and throw caution to the wind.

The purpose of the "contest" is to encourage people who normally wouldn't have time or patience to sit down and write a novel to actually do so, according to one local participant, Melody Smith.

"You have a deadline. You don't have time to be self-critical," she said. "What you write may not be the greatest, but you get it out."

Smith, 27, has had an interest in writing since taking journalism and English courses in high school.

"I read a lot. I love Dave Barry, and I'm inspired by people. I'm a people watcher," she said.

Smith, who is an office manager at River City Tavern and Grill in Marietta, has met other aspiring writers through the forums on the Web site.

"It's a great way to communicate, to ask questions and get input from other writers," she said.

Locally, according to Smith, there are about 10 to 12 folks signed up with the site, but she hopes more people will be inspired to give writing a try. She said the owner has even agreed to allow the local group to come together at River City Tavern and Grill and take advantage of a private room and Wi-Fi access.

Baty says he continues to be stunned by the number of participants.

"When we started, there were 21 of us. Now we have 120,000 in 80 countries," he said.

There is also a secondary Young Writers Program, which allows participants 17 years old and younger to set reasonable, yet challenging, word-count goals, according to the site. There are more than 18,000 young people who are involved in the program.

"A lot of what we do defies conventional wisdom," Baty said. "There's the belief that everyone under 25 is too busy playing video games and texting, but we have so many students who make time to write a novel and the only prize is the novel itself."

Some NaNoWriMo participants, however, have gone on to achieve more than just the knowledge that they have the ability produce a 50,000 word novel.

Sara Gruen's NaNoWriMo novel, "Water for Elephants," spent 12 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Gruen joins a growing list of "Wrimos" who have had their works sold to publishers.

"It's not something that I expected," said Baty, adding that some professional novelists use the Web site to get over a slump. "They need the terrifying deadline.

"There's a misconception that it (NaNoWriMo) is about writing bad books. It's not. It's about giving them a time frame to let them focus," he said.

The real idea behind National Novel Writing Month, however, is the love of words and the magic of storytelling, not making money.

"It's not done for fame or fortune," Baty stressed. "It's all about the love of creating.

"Novel-writing can be fun. It doesn't need to be cloistered agony. Everyone has a book in them," he said.

[Erin O’Neill / Marietta Times]

Can you write a novel in a month?

The Chicago marathon may be over and the race for the presidency has finally ended, but the adventure for writers has just begun. The destination? A novel composed of 50,000 words to be completed in one month. How to accomplish that goal? It takes some long hours, lots of coffee, endless typing and no looking back.

The National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) officially began at 12 a.m. Nov. 1 for its 10th year. The event will end on Nov. 30 when thousands of people will have completed a novel and somebody will have won the challenge. In 2007, 15,333 people crossed the finish line, completing a 50,000-word novel. Over a billion words written by the participants were officially logged into the website.

Chris Baty, creator and director of NaNoWriMo, started this challenge in 1999 with 20 other friends in the San Francisco Bay area. Now in 2008, there are over 100,000 participants signed up and committed to the challenge.

“Every year, National Novel Writing Month feels like a crazed wildebeest escaped from his pen and I am chasing after it and trying to catch that thing down,” Baty said. “We never have enough resources, and there are always more people than expected.”

Although it may be a high stress month for Baty, he continues to expand on the original creation of NaNoWriMo.

“I’ve always loved books,” Baty said. “I was an only child, and books were kind of my siblings. I never thought that I could write one though, because I was intimated by the idea. So I created this concept of stunt writing a book to make it less scary.”

After convincing some friends to create it with him, NaNoWriMo was off. Baty and his close friends often got together at coffee shops and bookstores during any free time to write together.

“Novel writing is an awesome social activity,” Baty said. “Doing it with other people increases your commitment and productivity.”

After a month of late nights and lots of coffee and encouragement, six novels were completed.

“I was amazed at how un-horrible the books we wrote were,” Baty said.

The second year then came with a website and 140 people ready and willing to commit to writing an entire novel in one month. On Dec. 1, Baty announced 29 winners who had completed their novels.

“I never thought that it would be a reoccurring event after that first year,” said Baty. “I thought the second year we had hit our peak and it would be all downhill from there.”

Downhill was the last direction NaNoWriMo was going.

During the third year 5,000 people had heard about the challenge and wanted to sign up.

“I am going to die,” were the first thoughts Baty had.

Instead of curling up into the fetal position and abandoning the huge task ahead of him, he embraced not only the challenge of writing his only novels for NaNoWriMo but also expanding the competition.

Through the grapevine, friends of friends, links on blogs and a lot of hype, NaNoWriMo has not just become a nation-wide event but also an international event, reaching over 80 countries.

So what � these people abandon their lives for a month and lock themselves in their rooms to write an entire novel? The old lady who lives with 20 cats now has a new hobby for a month? No. It could not be further from the truth. Here in Madison there are over 500 adults, students and teenagers (and possibly old, cat-loving women) who have signed up to dedicate their month to finishing a novel.

University of Wisconsin freshmen Amanda Detry and Michelle Czarnecki are attempting the challenge for the first time together in their residence hall. Detry was told by a teaching assistant to check out the website, and she then shared the challenge with her friend, Czarnecki.

“[NaNoWriMo] seemed a little daunting at first,” Czarnecki said, but once they started writing in the early morning hours of Nov. 1,” it seemed more approachable.”

Both agree all their schoolwork gets done before anything else, and then they spend their nights writing away.

“Homework takes precedence, and with NaNoWriMo there is no penalty, so I am not hitting myself over the head with it. But our late evenings have been dominated with NaNoWriMo,” Detry said.

Interestingly, every person who attempts the challenge does so for nothing more than his or her own pride and as a personal test.

“When you think about it, there are no prizes, no judges, and no one reads [the novels]. It is not the most promising writing competition,” Baty said. “But I think that because it is not for fame or fortune, people just do it because it’s so much fun, and that’s the best reason to be writing.”

Last year, Elise Larson, UW sophomore and second time participant of NaNoWriMo, finished her novel and celebrated by printing off her certificate and mounting it on the wall to admire.

To finally cross that 50,000-word finish line, she wrestled with attending college and writing a novel.

“Caffeine and chocolate definitely helped a lot,” she said. “I would want to procrastinate a lot [when writing] and would use that to get my homework done. If I ever got any inspiration at all, I would start writing so I wouldn’t get behind.”

How Baty can manage directing and managing NaNoWriMo, working at the non-profit Office of Letters and Light, reading numerous e-mails, responding to anyone who would like to pick his brain and writing a novel of his own is incomprehensible for most people. However, for Baty, “the busier you are, the easier things get done.”

“I discovered back in 1999 for the first NaNoWriMo that squashing an entire novel into a busy month somehow makes it easier to do than if you give yourself 10 years. It is a strange law of human physics,” he said.

The future of NaNoWriMo is somewhat clearer than Baty’s original plan for himself 10 years ago when he started a club with 21 members who had a goal to finish a novel in one month. The Office of Letters and Light is launching a new event in the near future. It will be a month challenge again that will consist of making neighborhoods a better place. A person would “take on a project, spending a month working on something,” Baty said. “It could be giving a ride to the grocery store or volunteering at the local non-profit organization.”

There is a lot of hope to get a large group to make a difference if NaNoWriMo was able to get 120,000 people to write a novel in a month.

“If we can get a fourth of that to do something like this challenge, we can make a great impact on the world,” Baty said.

If you’re considering writing a novel in a month, look for more information at www.nanowrimo.org.

[Lisa Kibiloski / The Badger Herald]

Write a novel in 30 days? Sure, says McKim

Whitney McKim of Lovettsville, Va., wrote a novel in less
than 30 days as part of National Novel Writing Month.

Whitney McKim is not a writer by trade. But last year, she finished a 50,000-word novel. In less than 30 days.

"It was awesome," McKim said by phone from her home in Lovettsville, Va. "I could not believe it. The creativity, the excitement. Getting out a novel in a month."

In November 2007, McKim, 28, joined more than 101,000 other writers from around the world in trying to write a 50,000-word novel within 30 days. The program, called National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, as it is affectionately known, is intended to encourage ordinary people to write a novel.

McKim is organizing a kick-off for this year's NaNoWriMo at Beans in the Belfry, a coffee shop in Brunswick, Md. The kick-off will be from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Nov. 1. The event is free; the public is invited.

The key to NaNoWriMo's success is providing writers with a crucial bit of managerial support: a deadline.

"NaNoWriMo is all about the magical power of deadlines," says the Web site of the National Novel Writing Month on its frequently asked questions page at www.nanowrimo.org/eng/faq). "Give someone a goal and a goal-minded community and miracles are bound to happen. Pies will be eaten at amazing rates. Alfalfa will be harvested like never before. And novels will be written in a month."

McKim said she convinced a close friend from Connecticut to write with her last year.

"We don't see each other very often, but we were on Facebook almost every night, 'Oh, my god, let me tell you what my character just did,'" McKim said.

"I never thought I could write a novel, but I did it last year, my first year," she said. "People tell me they don't have time to write a novel. I have a full-time job, a part-time job, I volunteer in my community. You don't have to have time. It just happens."

McKim said her writing routine took two forms. Whenever she and husband Steve would go somewhere in the car, she took her laptop and wrote as much as possible. Her other favorite writing spot: bed. She said she would tap on her laptop. Her husband role-played some of her plot's turns and twists.

"I would ask my poor husband, 'OK, what would you do if you were in this position?'," McKim said. "He'd act it out and I'd be writing at the same time."

McKim's 2007 novel was based on bank robberies. McKim said she ignored the boilerplate advice given to authors to write about what they know.

"I don't know anything about bank robberies," she said, with a laugh. "I'm the most law-abiding person you'll ever meet. But all my ideas were about people breaking the law."

McKim finished her 50,000-word novel by the deadline last year - one of 15,335 participants to do so - and thereby "won" the event. All writers who reach the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words are considered winners. There is no overall prize, no promise of publication - simply the satisfaction of having written a novel.

"They say no one is going to read your novel. I thought, 'Well, that's silly. Why would I write this if no one's going to read it?'," McKim said. "But it's a big self-gratification. It makes you feel so great to think you can do something like that."

Anyone who wishes to follow McKim's progress on this year's NaNoWriMo novel can read updates on her blog at 10-30-ltoaabr.blogspot.com/

-----

How to participate

WHAT: National Novel Writing Month

WHERE: The program is Web-based, but writers work on paper or computer at home or wherever they choose.

WHEN: Begins at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 1, and ends at midnight, Sunday, Nov. 30.

COST: Participation is free; donations are requested.

CONTACT: For complete information or to register, go to www.nanowrimo.org.

[CHRIS COPLEY / The Herald-Mail]

Novel concept: Aspiring authors sign up for madcap writing project

Ted Boone will be one of the Lawrence residents participating in National
Novel Writing Month. Participants will attempt to write a 50,000-word
novel during November, with encouragement and tips from the organization's
Web site, www.nanowrimo.org, and from local writing meetings.

Like a lot of people, Ted Boone had always wanted to write a novel but didn't think he had the time.

"I think people can sit down and watch a television show and think, 'I could have written that,' or 'I would have written it better,'" Boone says. "And I think we do that with books, too. There's a temptation to compete with the creative forces that are out there."

With one recent study showing more than 80 percent of Americans would like to write a book, it's obviously a common goal for many.

So if you're one of those who wants your own novel, get your laptop fired up - National Novel Writing Month is just a couple of weeks away.

The annual event, which goes by the shorthand NaNoWriMo, is pretty straight-forward: Write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November, then upload it to www.nanowrimo.org. A computer will count your words, and if you hit the 50,000-word mark, you'll get a certificate.

"There's no magic here," says Chris Baty, a Prairie Village native who founded the event. "All we're doing is giving people a little bit of inspiration and a little structure."

Baty, who now lives in San Francisco, started the writing event in 1999 with a group of friends. They picked 50,000 words as an arbitrary number that seemed attainable but would still qualify as a short novel.

It's grown to include a nonprofit organization and more than 101,000 participants in 80 countries last year.

"We all have dozens of books in us," Baty says. "Sometimes people get caught up that they don't have THE idea, the book no one's ever written before, and it has to appear before they start writing. That idea I don't think ever comes. You just have to start writing."

'Not great words'

That's the way it was for Lawrence resident Sara Lundberg. She attempted to hit the 50,000-word mark twice before finally attaining it last year with a fantasy story.

"It's probably going to be crap," she says of most of the NaNoWriMo novels. "Thirty thousand of the 50,000 I wrote last year are not great words. There are gems in there, though, that are amazing, that I didn't know I could write."

That may be the case, but NaNoWriMo novelists have had some luck in the past. Baty says 27 manuscripts have been sold to publishers, and the event can now tout a New York Times best-seller: "Water for Elephants," by Sara Gruen.

The key, participants say, is not to worry about quality - just get words on paper.

Daunting?

Writing 50,000 words might sound like a difficult task.

But Boone, a lecturer in Kansas University's School of Business who serves as the Lawrence organizer for NaNoWriMo, says it's definitely attainable. He's done it three years, all with science fiction stories.

There are different strategies to getting through.

"For me what works is writing scene by scene," he says. "Some days, I'll write a chapter that's 3,000 words, which is a lot of output for a single day. The next day, I might write a single scene that's much shorter."

Others, he says, just try to get through 1,667 words a day, which puts them on pace to finish the novel by the end of the month.

And there are resources available. The organization's Web site, www.nanowrimo.org, has tips and also lists local write-ins that will happen in Lawrence in November.

At those writing events, NaNoWriMo participants can get inspiration from one another and bounce ideas off of other writers.

"It's a really interesting crowd in Lawrence," Boone says. "You'll get people in full goth gear and makeup, and people who are professors. It really grabs the spirit of NaNoWriMo. People who wouldn't usually rub elbows with one another see they have commonality."

'Life of its own'

If you want to participate and don't have an idea, don't fear. Boone says he often doesn't choose his topic until a day or two before Nov. 1. And even then, he doesn't have the whole thing mapped out.

"I usually find I've got a good starting point, a couple of way points in the middle I'd like to strike, and I know where I want to finish," he says. "In the process, they'll get to the point where they feel like they're not telling the story. Literally the story will take on a life of its own."

Lundberg, an administrative associate at KU, plans to write a story about vampires to fill her November writing fix. She starts getting excited about writing every year around this time.

And even if she never gets anything published, it's worth her time.

"If I could make writing my life, that would be amazing," she says. "But most of my writing I do for myself. The thought of sharing it with the world is scary. But maybe someday I'll write something that's significant enough and I think is good enough I'll want to share it."

[Terry Rombeck / Lawrence Journal-Word]

There's a whole lotta writing going on

Plenty of people have dreamed of writing a book.

Dreaming is one thing.

Actually doing it is another.

But this year, at least a dozen Grand Junction residents have devoted the entire month of November to making that dream come true.

Welcome to National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, which kicks off on the first of November each year and ends at the stroke of midnight on Nov. 30. What began as a writing challenge in 1999 among a small group of friends in Oakland, Calif., has exploded into a global, caffeine-generated phenomenon. In 2006, nearly 80,000 aspiring novelists signed up, of whom almost 20 percent met the challenge by writing at least 50,000 words by midnight local time on Nov. 30.

This year, more than 100,000 would-be writers from more than 70 countries cranked up their laptops or bought a fresh pack of pens, ready to tackle another round of the biggest writing competition in the world. In Grand Junction alone, quite a few have made a habit of meeting weekly at Traders Coffee on Seventh and Patterson or the cafés at either Barnes & Noble or Borders. You can’t miss them: They’re usually clustered in a tight group near the wall — the closer to a power outlet for their numerous laptops, the better — around a handmade orange sign declaring,

“Caution: Novelists at Work.”

For Heather Nicholson, the unofficial organizer of the local chapter and a recent Mesa State College writing graduate, this year marks her third time participating in NaNoWriMo.

“This year, I’m not juggling work and school while (also) finishing a book, so I thought I’d take my time,” she said of participating in the 2007 challenge. “I can have a social life and still cook dinner.”

Her writing schedule finds her working well after midnight, which she said dovetails nicely with her night-owl tendencies.

“Working with a group is my chance to get out of my house,” she admitted. “I get encouraged by being around other people who are doing the same crazy thing, talking about (our) word count.”

As of Tuesday night, she was only 7,000 words short of the official goal of 50,000, and she’s confident that she’ll finish in time for the Nov. 30 deadline. Others in the group have already “won” the challenge but are continuing to write, adding to their word count while they finish their stories.

Amy Pittsford is doing NaNoWriMo for the second time this year and writes her “science-fiction/vampire” novel around her work schedule at Best Buy.

“My goal was to finish before Thanksgiving,” she said, “so I could take the whole weekend off. I didn’t want to have to worry about writing after work. Retail is crazy during the holidays.”

She’s already surpassed the 50,000-word mark, pumping out an additional 2,000 by Tuesday evening. While she likes the camaraderie of a group, she admits working with others can be distracting.

“When we first started (a few weeks ago), there were only four of us, and we swapped turns at people’s houses so it was a little calmer. When I’m writing by myself, I don’t feel as competitive; I’m not comparing word counts with anyone. It’s just me and my characters and my world.” Still, she enjoys writing with the group and looks forward to the Tuesday night writing marathons.

“There’s that social aspect of it,” she pointed out. “There are other people (here in Grand Junction) who are doing this, who like to write.”

Others in the group echo her sentiments regarding the group dynamics. Rodney Larson, a telecommunications engineer with the City of Grand Junction, has been participating in NaNoWriMo for a few years and was initially inspired to join while on a business trip to New York.

“I was in training there for three weeks, and I met some people up there who were doing it. (NaNoWriMo) gave me something to do with my nights.”

Like Pittsford, he’s already met the challenge but continues to write with the group. Writing three hours a day — two hours before work and an hour after — has allowed him to write over 60,000 words over the past month. He doesn’t limit his writing to November, however; his output is about “two to three books a year.”

“I’m not sure what to do with this (year’s book),” he said. A character-driven novel about a man slowly being driven insane by an undetected intolerance to gluten, it joins other manuscripts he’s written in the past and which he might edit for possible publication.

Megan Hansen, who graduated from Mesa State in May along with her friend and fellow creative writing major Nicholson, hasn’t quite met the challenge, but is enjoying the process all the same. Unlike the majority of NaNoWriMo participants, she’s chosen to write her novel in longhand, a technique she admits takes longer but which she relishes for the opportunity it gives her to really think about her story.

“I have a laptop, but like with Jane Austen or Shakespeare, so much great literature has come from hand-writing books. Technology has really taken away the whole idea of thinking about what you’re writing. You just type what comes to your head. Writing longhand gives me a chance to really think about what I’m writing.”

Like everyone else in the group, however, she carves out time each day to write. She and Nicholson also have a writing group that meets regularly throughout the year to discuss their projects and encourage each other’s progress. “We’re all English majors,” she said with a laugh. “What are we going to do with an English major? So we decided to use it and write.”

“It really helps to know there are thousands of other crazy people out there who are doing the same thing you are,” Nicholson added. “And it’s so cold, so you don’t want to be going outside anyway. You just stay inside and drink hot chocolate and write.”

When asked whether or not they’ll participate again in NaNoWriMo in 2008, the group unanimously agreed that they would. They’re especially hopeful others will join them next year in their quest to finish a novel in 30 days.

“Everybody should sign up and do it at least once in your life. Even if you don’t think that you’re a writer,” Nicholson said.

Hansen agreed. “Sometimes you have to be forced to do something you want to do. Carpe diem, man! Sometimes you just want to go home and rest, but then you have a writers’ group meeting and you go, and you think, “Wow, I really did something today,’ and you feel so good about it.”

[Marjorie Asturias-Lochlaer / Grand Junction Free Press]

Writers Race to Finish Novels by Month's End

For many of us, writing a novel is a lifelong dream we never seem to find the time to accomplish. But over a thousand Chicagoans, including students at a South Side high school, are determined to make that dream a reality. And they're going to do it all in the span of a single month.

F. Scott Fitzgerald spent eight years writing Tender Is the Night. Finnegans Wake took James Joyce seventeen years to complete. But this November, some Chicagoans are joining a global community of writers trying to finish novels in just 30 days as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo started in 1999 as a challenge among a group of friends in the San Francisco Bay Area. They found that writing a novel in a month was a lot more do-able than they'd expected, so they decided to try it every year. The event has grown from 21 participants in its first year to 79,000 people from around the world.
SAM: National Novel Writing Month kick-off party - 'I'm Sam, this is my first year…Okay, cool, I'm not the only one!'
Here in Chicago, NaNoWriMo participants meet throughout November at gatherings like these. Both first-time novelists and veteran writers, like Michael Goldman and Sarah Condic, bounce ideas off each other and offer tips learned from previous years about how to reach the official goal of 50,000 words.

GOLDMAN: Well, I started all purple prose everywhere, and then around chapter 2, I realized - I've written a thousand words in four days, I really gotta speed this up. And then it's like -'Tom said this, then she responded to Tom saying this!'

CONDIC: I replace all the contractions -'it's' is now 'it is.' You will never find a contraction in my novel.

The rules of National Novel Writing Month are simple. To win, you must write at least 50,000 words between midnight on November 1st and 11:59 pm on November 30th. You can outline and plan ahead, but you can't write a word of prose until the beginning of the month. Each day in November, novelists upload their most recent draft to the NaNoWriMo website, and the site then automatically detects and charts their word counts. It's not just adults who are getting into National Novel Writing Month.

RUSHEK: You're going to take an orange piece of construction paper, and you're going to write in the center a bubble diagram - My Novel - and then all of the ideas you could possibly do.

When Kelli Rushek heard about NaNoWriMo last year, she immediately thought it'd be a great opportunity for the Writers Workshop class she teaches at Corliss High School on the South Side. But it turned out the school didn't have the technology for the project.

RUSHEK: There weren't enough computers in the school for me to do it for the whole month. So, I brought it up to my kids last year and they were actually very excited about it. And then, when we weren't able to do it, they were kind of upset.

Then, earlier this year, she won a contest sponsored by the NaNoWriMo office to receive 25 laptop computers for use in the classroom. Two days before November began, Rushek surprised her students with the announcement that each of them would be writing a novel. Students like Allen Wallace and Kiera Torrey reacted with a mix of excitement and trepidation.

WALLACE: I was a bit shocked when she told us about it cause it came out of nowhere. She said the minimum was 50,000, and I kinda choked on my breath or something. But I'm going to do it anyway, because I like the challenge.

TORREY: I think it's gonna be fun. I'll get to see how far I can push myself and how much I can actually write. I think I might reach my goal, I don't know. If I reach it, I'd be happy. I might cry.

Allen and Kiera's teacher Kelli Rushek is confident that her students will make it to the finish line. They're motivated by the competitiveness that high-schoolers are famous for.

RUSHEK: So, there's going to be the student vs. student - "I'm at this many words, how many are you at?" And then there's the class vs. class. If period one is reaching their goal more quickly than period five - it's amazing what a pizza party will do.

To make the process as stress-free as possible for her students, she's letting them choose a word goal they feel is appropriate. She's also telling them not to let worries about grammatical errors get in the way of their creativity, as might happen in their other English classes.

RUSHEK: They might have had a teacher that said, 'Oh, you have to have a comma here, you have to have a period here. Your subjects and verbs don't agree.'

BATY: In some ways, it really should be called National First Draft of a Novel Writing Month.

Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month, agrees that simply writing anything is more important than worrying about the quality of the writing.

BATY: The lesson that I've learned from this is that you can edit a bad first draft into a good novel, but you really can't edit a blank page into anything but a blank page.

For most people, finding the time and inspiration to write even that first draft isn't easy, but Baty thinks that what you gain is worth the trouble.

BATY: You do come away from it feeling, "Wow! If I could write an okay book in a month, what else can I do?" That tends to be kind of the start of a lot more other kinds of adventures in people's lives.

And those adventures might just provide the plot for your next novel.

[The Archives / Chicago Public Radio]

INTERVIEW: NaNo’s Chris Baty, Part 3

That accelerating metronomic sound you hear is the NaNo clock about to blazon the start of this year’s NaNoWriMo competition. TOMORROW marks the beginning of the 2007 event, which means there’s still time for you to sign up if you haven’t already. (Visit the NaNo site HERE to do so.)

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing NaNo’s founder and fearless leader, Chris Baty, about what NaNo is, how it’s evolved and what’s in NaNo’s future. Missed parts one and two of our interview with him? Click HERE and HERE to catch up, then come on back. In this, the third and final part of our interview, Chris offers some last-minute NaNo advice pulled right out of his inspirational book No Plot? No Problem! and tells us a little more about his stunning philanthropic ventures–all in the name of creativity and personal growth. Enjoy!

Part 3: Interview with Chris Baty

Q: Tell us about your book, No Plot? No Problem! Is it meant only to help people striving to succeed during NaNo month? What prompted you to write it?

CB: I think for me it was the desire to have a book like this when I’d written my first novel. I kind of put everything in it that I’d learned from four years of NaNoWriMo and added advice I’d solicited from people who’d done it for many years at that point. A lot of it was to try to get at those ideas and those counter-intuitive lessons that you learn—that when you turn off your inner editor, you oftentimes end up writing better and this idea that it’s okay to be imperfect as a writer and in fact there’s a real power in imperfection.

Also, NaNo month tends to follow a familiar trajectory for a lot of people. Week one starts, and you’ve gotten your words down on paper, and you feel you’re a god and you have no idea why you haven’t done this your whole life and the world has waited far too long for your eloquent gift. Week two comes and that’s when you feel like a truck has kind of parked itself on your face, and that you are the worst writer who’s ever lived. This is because week two usually means making really difficult decisions about plot: you have characters and not you have to something with them. Even professional novelists typically struggle at that point, and they’re usually dealing with a timeline where that crossroads may not occur until the six month point or the one year point. They write at a more humane pace. It’s just flat-out a tough time, and that’s where a lot of people quit. I think No Plot, No Problem can help walk people through those phases and lets them know week two is going to be miserable and they should just accept and embrace it.

Q: All right, what is a “wearable, writing-enhancing object” anyway?

CB: Well, I think this kind of gets into the psychological realm, or as I like to think of it, the 30-day vacation from everyday living. I think wearing a special thing, like a hat or wig or a special writing jersey, can help to remind you that this is a special and crazy month where maybe the rules of everyday life do not apply. It’s easy to forget that and kind of let demands of life sort of wash in and take time away from writing. But it’s harder to forget that if you’re wearing a Viking helmet! It’s kind of like a memory device that helps you realize that this is anything-goes playtime, where you’re not necessarily taking the content of your writing too seriously but you are taking the process itself very seriously.

Q: How can stress propel a writer forward? Is there “good writer stress” and “bad writer stress”? How can you tell the difference?

CB: Really, there is a kind of “good fear” and “bad fear.” In order to tap into the good fear, you need to give permission to write bad first draft—with problems, with agonized embarrassing moments—and really the only bad thing you can do is actually stop writing. So at that point then you have good fear. You’re telling everyone you know that you are writing your novel, and that your fear is that you will not complete it. That then becomes a motivator, because you don’t want to fail at the task of completion.

Then there’s the task of perfection which sometimes opposes the task of completion. One fear drives you to sit down at computer and write; and the other fear drives you away from the computer as far as you can go because you don’t feel up to that challenge of perfection and you’re not living up to an impossible potential.

Q: Do you participate in NaNo yourself?

CB: Every year, yes, until I die.

INTERVIEW: NaNo’s Chris Baty, Part 2

If you missed part 1 of our interview with National Novel Writing Month’s founder and inspirational leader Chris Baty, click HERE for a quick remedy, then come on back.

In this, the 2nd of our 3-part interview with Chris, we talk about what NaNo ISN’T, why “30″ is a magic number, the secrets to NaNo success, NaNo communities and more. Enjoy!

Part 2: Interview with Chris Baty

Q: Are there any NaNo misperceptions you’d like to dispel?

CB: Yes. One of them gets back to idea that NaNo is basically committing a horrible travesty against the written word. I think you hear that from people who have not taken part in NaNo month. We hear that from people who’ve never tried to write novel before as well. I think some people have the idea that novels are written by a certain species of human, they were born to write novels. I think that first year of NaNo taught me that novels are not written by novelists, that they’re written by everyday people who give themselves permission to write novels. Once you see and realize the truth of that, I think the world becomes a much more magical place. The creative process is important for everybody and is enriching for everybody. The perception that people are wrecking books by trying to write them fast seems laughable. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around it.

Another misperception would be about publishing stuff. Even people who’ve not sold their novels have taken parts of it and have won prizes with it, a couple significant prizes with it. If you do want to publish a novel, there’s no better way than sitting down and knocking out first draft in a month and then going back and starting revision a month after that. At that point you’ve jumped a year ahead of schedule at least, with what I believe is no loss in quality. Your first draft is going to suck no matter if you give it a year or 30 days. I think more and more professional novelists who have book contracts and who do this for a living are taking part in NaNoWriMo because it is this gift from heaven and that is a deadline. It helps give you focus and structure and company, and that is something that has changed over the years—the idea that NaNoWriMo is also for professional writers, and it’s kind of neat to see people who really do make a living at this writing right alongside fourteen year olds who love Harry Potter so much they have to write the 8th book.

Q: So why 30 days? Why not 12 or 45?

CB: I think there are five good reasons for 30 days.

The first one is that you’re able to kind of turn off that editor’s voice for a limited amount of time, and it’s the time limit that turns it off. When you tell your inner editor that you’re going to write first draft of a novel in thirty days, it basically throws up its hands and decides that you’ve gone completely crazy and goes off to haunt somebody else for that long, some newspaper writer or something.

The other nice thing is that your significant other and your friends really get behind a 30-day novel, much more than they do a 5-year novel or 30-year novel. There’s sort of a stunt built into it, and I think that aspect allows people to sort of become your cheering section for a month, which helps to keep you excited about the project, but it also raises the fear of complete personal humiliation should you fail to get it done. People can keep track of you for 30 days—they will ask about it. That’s one of the tips I give people: When you set out to write a 30-day draft, you tell everyone you know you’re doing it and you encourage them to check in on you. It’s both wonderful and horrible. It gets people personally interested and invested in your writing habits, and it also gives you that extra incentive right around week two when what you want to do more than anything else is just pretend the whole thing never started, to keep going. And that’s really all you need. Usually there will be one point in the month, and for most people it’s right around week two, when you loose momentum. You’re exhausted, the novelty has worn off. But having the sense that you do not want to embarrass yourself in front of all these people you bragged to about your novel, really helps you get over that hump when nothing else will.

Then there’s the promise of it. It’s really irresistible—the promise that you can have a novel in 30 days that you didn’t have 30 days earlier. Which kind of sounds like a late-night infomercial: take this pheromone and suddenly you’ll be beating them away with a club! But, I think that’s part of the appeal.

The other part is that you really can have a completely un-horrible first draft of a novel in 30 days. It’s going to be a warts-and-all first draft, but you will be amazed at how much of it you actually really love and the sort of plot twists you come up with in these late night sessions. I have found that when you write for quantity over quality, you end up getting both because you have sort of turned off that inner editor. You can sort of tap into these worlds of improvisation and intuition that you don’t necessarily access when you sort of carefully reach out for each word and comma. For me, that realization was so strange: this idea that you reach for quantity, you also get quality. But it’s true. It also makes the process not hurt as much as it might otherwise.

That’s the other appeal, I think: the idea that writing finally gets to be fun again. I think we associate many words with novel writing. “Bleeding” is a good one, but “fun” should really be in there!

INTERVIEW: NaNo’s Chris Baty, Part 1

If you’ve never heard of National Novel Writing Month, you need to ditch that rock you’ve been living under! NaNoWriMo Fever has swept the nation, with writers renouncing sleep and a good chunk of sanity during the month of November in order to attain a single goal: finish an unimpressive draft of a 50,000 word novel.

Chris Baty, founding father of NaNo, began this writerly venture in 1999 with a few friends, and the NaNo competition has snowballed ever since. (The number of entrants may well hit 100,000 this year.) Chris is an ambitious freelancer and the author of the inspirational guide for NaNo-driven writers, No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days. And he is the heart behind some philanthropic ventures that have benefited people worldwide and continue to nurture the creative lives of American children.

On a personal note, I’ve got to say that of all the telephone interviews I’ve ever given–for WU and during my over twelve years of nonfic work for hundreds of articles–I’ve never enjoyed an interview more than the one I had with Chris. This guy is full of ironic wit, charisma, intellect and good-karma drive. And, in Chris’s words, “Why the hell not?”

Want to learn more about what NaNo actually is? Read on!

Part 1: Interview with Chris Baty

Q: For folks who may not have heard about it, tell us what NaNo is all about.

CB: It’s based on the somewhat ridiculous idea that everybody in the world should spend November writing a 50,000-word novel from scratch. No judges. Nobody even reads the manuscript you write in our contest. At the end of month, you upload your script, and we have a system that grabs it, counts it for words, then immediately deletes it. You’re basically looking at the worst writing contest in the history of writing contests—spending 30 days toiling away on a novel that nobody ever reads. But the fact that nobody reads it is a really empowering aspect of NaNoWriMo. You can turn off the inner editor that slows so many of us when we sit down to write a first draft. You really do have a chance to free yourself from the inner voice that says you’re a horrible writer and that you have no business doing this. You can run amok in imagination for 30 days. Once you’ve done that, it forever changes the way you write first drafts.

Q: So what does it do? What have you heard? What’s your feedback about this first draft phenomenon?

CB: Well, the problem with being a writer is that you are unfortunately also a reader, and by the time you sit down to write first novel, you’ve read hundreds if not thousands of beautifully crafted, world-abandoning novels that have been edited probably a dozen times by a host of different people. But you never get to see what that thing looked like when that thing first tumbled out onto the author’s page. I mean, they hide those things for good reason. So our expectations for the caliber of our own first drafts are set terminally high. We basically think that if what we are writing is not as good as what we are reading, then there’s something really, really wrong. And when you examine it, you realize how silly that is. You realize that every book that we have loved started out as a deeply flawed first draft. And this is straight out of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird or Stephen King’s On Writing.

Q: So NaNo helps to get that first draft behind you…as fast as possible?

CB: You cannot escape that first draft. The beauty of writing is that you have an opportunity to go back and find the best parts and hone those, and improve and revise and fine tune. As every writer knows, the second draft is often just a world away from what you came out with the first time. But you have to have a first draft in order to get to the second draft. You cannot edit a blank page. Unfortunately! I would love to edit a blank page, it would be so much more practical!

And I think we get so caught up in this crazy notion of competence: that if what we’re writing is not genius, then it’s just another confirmation that we are total failures. But you cannot write a book when you’re basically dragging this rhinoceros of self criticism behind you; it’s impossible.

National Novel Writing Month is based on this very simple idea that the inner editor that we all have is crucial, that it is a very important thing, but that it’s important when you get to the editing phase. But it can be destructive when you’re still in the creative phase to allow that editorial voice to second guess and criticize work that is comprised mainly of loose, still-forming constellations of plots and characters and ideas.

The write stuff: Novelists take on challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days

Andra Marquardt had a science fiction novel "banging around" in her head for the past year. She let it out last month.

The 36-year-old landscape surveyor from Mandan was one of thousands of wannabe writers around the world to take part in the National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

The idea is to write a 50,000-word novel in November. That's an average of 1,667 words a day for 30 days. It's enough to fit in a 175-page book.

"I made it - it's 50,315 words," Marquardt said of her novel featuring futuristic galaxy travel.

"The Red Dagger" was completed on Tuesday, a day before the deadline, she said.
She spent about three hours a day writing the novel on a computer about the size of paperback novel.

"I was pretty confident I was going to make it," she said. "I punched out 10,000 words in the last week."

Marquardt said there is no secret to speedy inkslinging "but it helps not to have a life."

Chris Baty, a 32-year-old freelance writer from Oakland, Calif., started NaNo-WriMo in 1999. That year, only a dozen people participated. Baty said he expects 59,000 people from every state and 30 countries to take part this year.

Baty expects 6,000 to reach the goal of being a "winner," the term used for the 50,000-word club. He's made the winner's list every year, including 2005.

Baty calls the project a "30-day kick in the pants for would-be writers." It's done in November because it's "generally ravaged with bad weather."

The goal is quantity over quality.

Baty said the 50,000-word first draft is a "blueprint for a second manuscript."

A few writers have turned their rapid-written novels into "big-time book deals," Baty said. Most just have bragging rights for having written a book.

"All you win is the satisfaction of having done it," said Derri Scarlett, of Bismarck. The 47-year-old copy editor at the Bismarck Tribune finished her novel, "In Search of Grace."

The novel "is about a woman searching for her missing daughter who finds herself instead," Scarlett said.

Scarlett, one of about 50 North Dakotans who participated in the project, finished her 50,600-word novel on Saturday.

Baty said people from all occupations participate in the novel-writing project and journalists make up a good percentage of them.

"Those are the people that are drawn under the magical and terrifying power of the deadline," Baty said.

The NaNoWriMo Web site offers help to novelists with writer's block. They can get tips from their fellow "caffeinated and frenzied" writers, Baty said, by posting questions.

A sampling ranges from such queries as "What happens to coal when you spit on it?" to "Am burning two of my characters alive, Yes, morbid and sad, but it has to be done. … I need to know how burnt flesh smells."

Crysta Parkinson, news editor at the Williston Herald, said Wednesday that she would not make the novel-writing deadline - she was hampered by the desire for perfection.

"I will finish it eventually, but not this month," said Parkinson, 26, the mother of three. "I only made it to about 30,000 words."

Her novel, which has yet to be titled, is about a little girl left on the streets of New York after her father killed her mother, she said. Fiction is more difficult to write than fact, Parkinson said.

Baty said the quest for perfection goes against the grain of the novel-writing project.

"Really, the goal is to turn off the inner-editor and embrace the idea of imperfection and allow yourself to make mistakes," Baty said.

Parkinson said about five people were writing the 30-day novels in the Williston area but none was expected to finish.

Baty said the goal of a 50,000-word novel is "very doable" and several have written two novels during the time limit. Three people have written three novels in a month, he said.

"Their typing fingers should be bronzed," he said.

[JAMES MacPHERSON / The Bismarck Tribune]

Chris Baty - Founder of www.nanowrimo.org

November is National Novel Writing Month. Why is it National Novel Writing Month? Because in 1999, Bay Area writer Chris Baty decreed it as so. He gathered up 20 of his closest friends and they each wrote a novel in 30 days. This year—seven years later—Baty's "NaNoWriMo" will see 60,000 people sign up at www.nanowrimo.org to take the novel-writing challenge (and you can still sign up; writing commences November 1). I caught up with Baty to find out why his vision has such mass appeal.

How did you decide that encouraging people to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days was a good idea?

The idea was to give yourself permission to write a laughably awful novel. You give yourself permission to suck and then you free yourself from those fears that you're a hack. That's the first step in writing a good book—giving yourself permission to write a bad book.

But I don't want to write a bad book...

I know, it's tough. The problem is that as we get older we shy away from realms of incompetence, but you really have to embrace this idea that not knowing what you're doing is totally fine, and to just write for word count.

So how'd you get this thing off the ground?

I love books and I thought it would be cool to get a group of friends together to just write a mediocre novel in a month. The name [National Novel Writing Month] was just a joke. It was a consolation prize for writing such crappy novels—we could at least run them under the banner of this fancy name. I've been running NaNoWriMo every year since and it's gotten more extensive but really it's the same event that it was in 1999—30 days, 50,000 words: Go.

Has the size of it all exceeded your wildest dreams?

Yeah. The common assumption is that as a culture people are becoming more passive and it's hard for me to be part of NaNoWriMo every year and feel that that's true, because here's a HUGE group of people who are giving over a month of their lives just to write a novel. There're no prizes! All they get is the finished book and the experience of doing it. I think that attitude is hopeful for our culture.

Hey, locals! Portland has one of NaNoWriMo's most active chapters, with tons of participants, plus fun parties, writing groups, and other cool events all this month. So sign up today, www.nanowrimo.org, and join your nearby peers in the pursuit of extreme novel writing. You are not alone!

[Justin Wescoat Sanders / Portland Mercury]