A thought for those people who get itchy at the idea of writing. National Novel Writing Month is coming soon.
Every November, for several years running now, large numbers of people have registered online to participate in the project. There’s no cost, unless you want to make a donation to the organization to facilitate the event.
At midnight, on the turn from Halloween to November 1, participants from around the world sit down at their computers and begin writing, with the goal of having 50,000 words written by the end of the month. They send their documents in to the NaNoWriMo web site every now and then, and the documents are checked for the number of words written, but not read. People can, in this way, show their quantitative progress on the site.
Everybody who reaches the goal wins. Everyone who tries is congratulated. There is no promise that any of the works written in the month will be published, or any guarantee that any of the results will be much good. The benefit seems to be in the experience, a kind of endurance run for people who want to prove that they can get words down on a page.
At a time when being entertained is increasingly the dominant American past time, I think that it’s worthwhile to spend one month each year trying to create something for oneself, by oneself.
If the idea of trying to write a short novel in one month awakens something perky inside you, give it a shot. You’ve got nothing to lose but sleep.
[Peregrin Wood / Irregular Times]
Friday, October 19, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month
Have you heard of NaNoWriMo? It's very popular in some circles, and still completely new to others.
Every November, thousands of people attempt to write a 50,000-word novel. This is actually a short novel; some people stretch the definition of "novel" to include other types of fiction or "creative nonfiction." A lot of fanfic writers use it as the inspiration for longer works of fanfic, while other aspiring writers use it to bang out a first draft. (Finishing a first draft is one of the most significant milestones that a new writer can achieve. Many run out of steam after a few dozen pages.)
NaNoWriMo, sometimes just called NaNo, is also a competition. You win by finishing: turn in at least 50,000 words before the end of the night on November 30. Almost one billion words were written, and presumably submitted, for NaNo last year.
But it's not until November!, you say. What are you doing posting about it now? I shake my head. Learn why, when you read more about NaNoWriMo after the break!
The NaNoWriMo site is open for signups for 2007 as of October 1. If you start on November 1st with no idea of what you plan to write about, you'll probably get nowhere fast. While the rule is that you cannot start writing your novel until November 1, you're encouraged to start planning your novel as far in advance as you like... even if that's December 1 of the year before you plan to compete.
Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, wrote a book with tips for success: No Plot, No Problem. (Don't miss Debra Hamel's review at that link!) This would be a perfect time to pick up a copy. There is also a No Plot, No Problem Novel-Writing Kit, which does not include the book. It's mostly motivational accessories, like a badge that says "Novelist" and a progress-tracking chart, all of which you could easily make by yourself.
Either version is full of encouragement for first-time writers, as well as writers who have never been able to make it past page 50. You'll learn how to silence your inner critic (your worst enemy, in NaNo terms), abandon economy of phrase, resist the temptation to ensure that your plot makes complete sense, go where your imagination takes you, and generally rock a first draft.
(Seriously: cohesiveness, solid research, and good writing is for the second draft. The first draft is supposed to be the one with all the problems. Get the story out of your head and on paper or screen, get in the habit of working on it every day, and then worry about making it good.
If you're writing for fun and not with an eye to being published, don't even bother with that! But a lot of fanfic writers fall somewhere in between: they're writing for fun, but they often want what they do to be as good as possible because they're publishing online.)
Every participant has a variety of support resources at their fingertips, regardless of whether or not they choose to purchase Baty's extra materials. Sign up, and you'll receive motivational emails through the month of November, have access to forums where you can talk to other writers (dangerous distraction, though!), and possibly have access to meet-ups in your area, depending on where you live. Some local NaNo groups have even gone on writing retreats together! You can devote an hour or two a day to the project, or you can really build your whole November life around it, even use it as an occasion to make new friends.
Since the idea of NaNoWriMo is to finish a novel-length work in a month, without regard to quality, it was inevitable that some people would want to go back over their novels and do something with them. For that reason, NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month: essentially, "a second draft in a month!") is in March. Mark your calendars.
[M.E. Williams / DIY Life]
Every November, thousands of people attempt to write a 50,000-word novel. This is actually a short novel; some people stretch the definition of "novel" to include other types of fiction or "creative nonfiction." A lot of fanfic writers use it as the inspiration for longer works of fanfic, while other aspiring writers use it to bang out a first draft. (Finishing a first draft is one of the most significant milestones that a new writer can achieve. Many run out of steam after a few dozen pages.)
NaNoWriMo, sometimes just called NaNo, is also a competition. You win by finishing: turn in at least 50,000 words before the end of the night on November 30. Almost one billion words were written, and presumably submitted, for NaNo last year.
But it's not until November!, you say. What are you doing posting about it now? I shake my head. Learn why, when you read more about NaNoWriMo after the break!
The NaNoWriMo site is open for signups for 2007 as of October 1. If you start on November 1st with no idea of what you plan to write about, you'll probably get nowhere fast. While the rule is that you cannot start writing your novel until November 1, you're encouraged to start planning your novel as far in advance as you like... even if that's December 1 of the year before you plan to compete.
Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, wrote a book with tips for success: No Plot, No Problem. (Don't miss Debra Hamel's review at that link!) This would be a perfect time to pick up a copy. There is also a No Plot, No Problem Novel-Writing Kit, which does not include the book. It's mostly motivational accessories, like a badge that says "Novelist" and a progress-tracking chart, all of which you could easily make by yourself.
Either version is full of encouragement for first-time writers, as well as writers who have never been able to make it past page 50. You'll learn how to silence your inner critic (your worst enemy, in NaNo terms), abandon economy of phrase, resist the temptation to ensure that your plot makes complete sense, go where your imagination takes you, and generally rock a first draft.
(Seriously: cohesiveness, solid research, and good writing is for the second draft. The first draft is supposed to be the one with all the problems. Get the story out of your head and on paper or screen, get in the habit of working on it every day, and then worry about making it good.
If you're writing for fun and not with an eye to being published, don't even bother with that! But a lot of fanfic writers fall somewhere in between: they're writing for fun, but they often want what they do to be as good as possible because they're publishing online.)
Every participant has a variety of support resources at their fingertips, regardless of whether or not they choose to purchase Baty's extra materials. Sign up, and you'll receive motivational emails through the month of November, have access to forums where you can talk to other writers (dangerous distraction, though!), and possibly have access to meet-ups in your area, depending on where you live. Some local NaNo groups have even gone on writing retreats together! You can devote an hour or two a day to the project, or you can really build your whole November life around it, even use it as an occasion to make new friends.
Since the idea of NaNoWriMo is to finish a novel-length work in a month, without regard to quality, it was inevitable that some people would want to go back over their novels and do something with them. For that reason, NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month: essentially, "a second draft in a month!") is in March. Mark your calendars.
[M.E. Williams / DIY Life]
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Write under the gun
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| Local author Margaret Fisk, above in her home office, wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo for the third time this year. PHOTO BY DAVID ROBERT |
There you have it--the NaNoWriMo Web site’s call to arms. The semi-acronym stands for National Novel Writing Month, but that label doesn’t quite summarize the event that has taken place every November for the past eight years. A more accurate characterization would label it equal parts literary marathon, writing workshop and stage for public humiliation. The cost-free event challenges aspiring writers to make a novel happen fast, with no apology for the outcome. It is quantity, not necessarily quality, that is the driving force behind NaNoWriMo.
The rules are as follows: Each participant has exactly 30 days--that’s 720 hours for the sleep-challenged--to write a 50,000-word novel. If that number sounds intimidating, here is bit of consolation. Writers are allowed to make reasonable preparations beforehand. Creating outlines and developing characters are fine, but not a word of prose can see the light of day until 12 o’clock on the night of Oct. 31--a fitting start date for such a frightening endeavor.
Participants can upload their novels to the NaNoWriMo Web site for a word count any time between the first and last days of the month. If the numbers add up, congratulations to the conquering hero/heroine. Along the way, braver participants are encouraged to post short previews of their novels for the world to critique. The event works on the honor system, so there are no NaNo police to enforce the rules. Cheating would be a hollow victory, however, since prizes for completion are tactfully limited to a downloadable Web icon, 50,000 words of one’s own making and, most importantly, bragging rights.
NaNoWriMo (na-know-rye-moe) was founded in 1999 by Chris Baty, a freelance writer from Oakland, Calif., who was determined to write a novel. Realizing that he required more than just moral support if he hoped to complete the project, he enlisted 21 friends to commit to the same goal. Not quite a decade later, Baty has a lot more company. An estimated 75,000 signed on to become novelists during the 2006 NaNoWriMo.
In the spirit of the event, I corresponded, in writing, with some local NaNoWriMo participants. Their responses not only gave insight into locals’ experiences of the event, but they also offered pieces of sample writing. Emerging from a variety of backgrounds, each local writer shared the common ground of suffering through the exhausting and rewarding experience of writing a book.
Profiles in courage
Tom Smith is a second-year English teacher at Coral Academy of Science, a Reno charter school. He was also a first-time participant in NaNoWriMo. His wife, Michele, did NaNo last year and served as Tom’s inspiration to take up the torch in 2006. In the misery-loves-company flow, Tom decided to invite Coral students to toil with him. By Nov. 21, Tom said the 61 Young Writers Program students participating had produced more than 475,000 words.
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| Yve Lambert wrote her novel for NaNoWriMo here, at Walden’s Coffeehouse. PHOTO BY DAVID ROBERT |
As for what the teacher and students hope to gain from the event, Tom said that he has several students who intend to hone their school writing projects into publishable works. He hopes to convince his administrators and the rest of the school--kids in grades fourth to 12th--to write their hearts out next year. Tom’s words of encouragement to potential NaNos are these: “Go for it! It is an amazing challenge and an amazing feeling to make those words flow.”
What does a computer programmer do for fun? In the age of prolific Internet writing, he becomes a novelist. Ron Overlist lives in Carson City, works with computers and has a family. He is also a self-proclaimed procrastinator. That potential writing impediment aside, Ron is an ideal NaNoWriMo candidate--it’s for anyone and everyone. The setting of his novel is late 19th-century Virginia City. The horror/western consists of “pure cheese, but fun cheese,” according to Ron. “It has ruthless mining barons, Pinkerton men, a few gunfights and ‘Nameless Horrors from Beyond Time and Space.'” It sounds like a healthy start on 50,000 words.
An important consideration for everyone who decides to write so profusely on a deadline is quality. Most of the local participants I spoke with voiced this concern. Most of them were also over it.
“Let go of your inner editor,” is Yve Lambert‘s advice to those who are considering writing a novel during NaNoWriMo. “Let go of any aspirations of writing the Great American Novel. This is a first draft, really rough. I’ve learned that the deadline is what I need. With it, I can let go of the need to edit everything while I’m writing. Soon, the creative mind takes over with no fear.” Lambert makes her living working in an office but is now basking in the personal glow of her new novelist status.
Completing a novel represents a life-altering experience for many NaNoers. The first under one’s belt can be a great confidence-builder, helping many would-be fiction writers gain the courage to come out of their respective closets.
As local participant Michele Smith noted in November, “I started out in the same place [as last year]--without a clue what to write about and with a lot of dread. Then the day dawned with the spark of an idea, and I took off and haven’t looked back … much. I hit 50,000 words on Nov. 11th and am still going.”
Smith was the first Reno-area NaNoWriMo participant to announce that she’d met the goal this year. After having pushed 20,000 words beyond the requirement, Michele has yet to run out of momentum.
The increasing popularity of NaNoWriMo is not limited to an audience of potential novelists.
Margaret Fisk is a local resident who had completed four novels before she jumped on the bandwagon. In fact, she was promoting her latest, a work in science fiction titled Shafter, while pushing toward her November goal. For Fisk, the challenge was not just to be productive, but also to work under the extreme time constraint. A NaNoWriMo participant must scribble down an average of 1,667 words per day to meet the quota within the allotted time. Fisk took on the challenge, successfully, for the third time in a row this year.
Writing is an inherently private process. NaNoWriMo does nothing to change that cold fact, but it does provide an inspirational public forum for writers. Benefiting from that extra support, some participants have gone on to edit and publish what they produce in November. With almost one year between us and next year’s event, there is plenty of time left for brainstorms, outlining and procrastination. So represent, Reno. Write away.
[Cheron Taylor / News Review]
Saturday, December 2, 2006
For a Block of Writers, 50,000 Words in 30 Days
The secret to writing a novel in a month is just to do it — and it’s a good idea to accept from the start that, barring miracles, it will be very, very bad.
This year about 80,000 people embraced that principle and agreed to try to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. They did not need to begin with a plot, characters, setting or any writing experience. What they did need was to commit to writing an average of 1,667 words a day in November, which was National Novel Writing Month.
NaNoWriMo, as it is known, goes against the time-honored cliché of the lonely, misunderstood writer laboring in isolation and agonizing over each word. Rather, it encourages its writers to commune online and to socialize in person at meet-ups and write-ins.
The sound of other novelists typing is a powerful incentive, said Chris Baty, 33, of Oakland, Calif., who has written a book every November for the last eight years. He started the novel-writing event in 1999, when only 21 people participated, and 6 finished. Since then it has expanded to 250 chapters around the world and has become a nonprofit corporation.
During National Novel Writing Month, quantity is everything, and quality is merely optional. As a result, participants are defined by, goaded by and obsessed by their word counts. Anyone who reaches at least 50,000 words is deemed a winner. Shortly after the clock struck midnight on Thursday, the results for this year were in: nearly 13,000 of the writers reported making it to the finish.
Each year exhausted and triumphant writers insert their novels into the word-count verifier — the words are encrypted in case anyone might want to steal that brilliant mess — on the official Web site, nanowrimo.org. It is done on the honor system, which means that someone could theoretically submit “The Great Gatsby” (about the right length).
Winners receive an online certificate, and “win or lose, you rock for even trying,” the site says. Even the nonfinishers are invited to the “Thank God It’s Over” parties, and they can have their words included in the collective final word count, which was 982,495,939 this year.
For many of the writers the month is as much a series of social events as a way to put together a novel. But that is not to minimize the true suffering that occurs. Every year more than 80 percent of those who sign up for the project do not finish, often because the experience is just too painful. First there is the toll on the rest of the novelist’s life, with friends, family, co-workers and living spaces sure to be neglected.
And then there is the sheer torture of trying to write fiction continuously for several hours every day. Week 2 is the worst, Mr. Baty said, because that is when the book can feel like “a truck parked on your face.” Forced to make hard decisions about plot and characters, many people give up: “They love their book so much they stop writing it,” Mr. Baty said.
In online forums and at get-togethers, NaNoWriMo participants complain, sometimes desperately, of plots that have ground to a halt, make no sense or have written themselves permanently into a corner. Characters have a way of boring their authors to tears, completely disappearing or, most perplexing of all, behaving in utterly unexpected ways.
At a meeting of writers in Manhattan this week, Josh Cacopardo, 24, described his dismay at discovering on Day 10 that almost every character in his murder mystery had been killed off. Only the pressure of the Nov. 30 deadline, he said, made him forge ahead and somehow find a way to revive his depopulated story line. (At least one person, fortunately, wasn’t really dead.)
The program’s novels span genres and points of view. At the Manhattan meeting Olga Kogan, 22, was finishing “a coming-of-age story about a pair of incestuous twins in Edwardian England.” Clarice Meadows, 27, was writing a story about three tattoos; it was partly a mystery, partly a story of a teenage pregnancy and partly “a romance about a guy without an arm,” she said. Alexis Camp, 23, was close to finishing a young-adult quest fantasy featuring a character known, for now, as “the Great Evil.”
During the month the writers use various tricks to keep writing when they have absolutely nothing left to say — internal monologues, for instance, or impromptu sex scenes or the sudden appearance of a new character. Collectively, novelists can challenge one another to write a certain number of words on a certain topic in a set span of time. The results may end up being pure drivel, but they do wonders for the word count.
Mr. Baty knows he will hear this question: Does the world really need another 13,000 bad-to-mediocre novels?
“I feel that is exactly what the world needs,” he said. That is because “everyone who tackles this challenge comes away from it changed in some way, as a writer or a reader,” he explained.
It is a way to “lose yourself to a challenge that is bigger than you are,” he said.
But is it any way to write a good novel?
Eric Puchner, who teaches writing at Stanford University, is not so sure. Many of his students put speed first and “don’t spend enough time on their drafts,” he said. Their hastiness prevents them from concentrating on individual sentences “and making sure they’re blocking each scene carefully with sensory details,” he said.
Mr. Puchner, who has published a book of short stories and has been working on his first novel for two years, said, “I’m a slow writer because I need to be, and it makes me a better writer.” But he can see the value of a program like NaNoWriMo as a way for a fledgling writer to gain confidence.
In at least a dozen cases, novels that began during National Novel Writing Month have been subsequently published. Lani Diane Rich, whose humorous romance novels “Time Off for Good Behavior” (Warner Books) and “Maybe Baby” (Warner Forever) got their start that way, said the experience helped her banish the perfectionist tendencies that had held her back.
Her edited and published novels, though, were a far cry from their NaNoWriMo forebears. In November 2003 the novel that eventually became “Maybe Baby” contained this paragraph:
“49,622. That’s my exact word count right now. I have to make 50,000 in order to put this horrendous thing to bed and never, ever, ever have to look at it ever again. That’s why I’m writing this bit to you, my reader. All maybe two of you. Since I probably won’t be showing this to anyone lest I die of humiliation. And if you’ve read it, you know I’m not kidding about how horribly, horribly bad it is.”
[PHYLLIS KORKKI via New York Times]
This year about 80,000 people embraced that principle and agreed to try to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. They did not need to begin with a plot, characters, setting or any writing experience. What they did need was to commit to writing an average of 1,667 words a day in November, which was National Novel Writing Month.
NaNoWriMo, as it is known, goes against the time-honored cliché of the lonely, misunderstood writer laboring in isolation and agonizing over each word. Rather, it encourages its writers to commune online and to socialize in person at meet-ups and write-ins.
The sound of other novelists typing is a powerful incentive, said Chris Baty, 33, of Oakland, Calif., who has written a book every November for the last eight years. He started the novel-writing event in 1999, when only 21 people participated, and 6 finished. Since then it has expanded to 250 chapters around the world and has become a nonprofit corporation.
During National Novel Writing Month, quantity is everything, and quality is merely optional. As a result, participants are defined by, goaded by and obsessed by their word counts. Anyone who reaches at least 50,000 words is deemed a winner. Shortly after the clock struck midnight on Thursday, the results for this year were in: nearly 13,000 of the writers reported making it to the finish.
Each year exhausted and triumphant writers insert their novels into the word-count verifier — the words are encrypted in case anyone might want to steal that brilliant mess — on the official Web site, nanowrimo.org. It is done on the honor system, which means that someone could theoretically submit “The Great Gatsby” (about the right length).
Winners receive an online certificate, and “win or lose, you rock for even trying,” the site says. Even the nonfinishers are invited to the “Thank God It’s Over” parties, and they can have their words included in the collective final word count, which was 982,495,939 this year.
For many of the writers the month is as much a series of social events as a way to put together a novel. But that is not to minimize the true suffering that occurs. Every year more than 80 percent of those who sign up for the project do not finish, often because the experience is just too painful. First there is the toll on the rest of the novelist’s life, with friends, family, co-workers and living spaces sure to be neglected.
And then there is the sheer torture of trying to write fiction continuously for several hours every day. Week 2 is the worst, Mr. Baty said, because that is when the book can feel like “a truck parked on your face.” Forced to make hard decisions about plot and characters, many people give up: “They love their book so much they stop writing it,” Mr. Baty said.
In online forums and at get-togethers, NaNoWriMo participants complain, sometimes desperately, of plots that have ground to a halt, make no sense or have written themselves permanently into a corner. Characters have a way of boring their authors to tears, completely disappearing or, most perplexing of all, behaving in utterly unexpected ways.
At a meeting of writers in Manhattan this week, Josh Cacopardo, 24, described his dismay at discovering on Day 10 that almost every character in his murder mystery had been killed off. Only the pressure of the Nov. 30 deadline, he said, made him forge ahead and somehow find a way to revive his depopulated story line. (At least one person, fortunately, wasn’t really dead.)
The program’s novels span genres and points of view. At the Manhattan meeting Olga Kogan, 22, was finishing “a coming-of-age story about a pair of incestuous twins in Edwardian England.” Clarice Meadows, 27, was writing a story about three tattoos; it was partly a mystery, partly a story of a teenage pregnancy and partly “a romance about a guy without an arm,” she said. Alexis Camp, 23, was close to finishing a young-adult quest fantasy featuring a character known, for now, as “the Great Evil.”
During the month the writers use various tricks to keep writing when they have absolutely nothing left to say — internal monologues, for instance, or impromptu sex scenes or the sudden appearance of a new character. Collectively, novelists can challenge one another to write a certain number of words on a certain topic in a set span of time. The results may end up being pure drivel, but they do wonders for the word count.
Mr. Baty knows he will hear this question: Does the world really need another 13,000 bad-to-mediocre novels?
“I feel that is exactly what the world needs,” he said. That is because “everyone who tackles this challenge comes away from it changed in some way, as a writer or a reader,” he explained.
It is a way to “lose yourself to a challenge that is bigger than you are,” he said.
But is it any way to write a good novel?
Eric Puchner, who teaches writing at Stanford University, is not so sure. Many of his students put speed first and “don’t spend enough time on their drafts,” he said. Their hastiness prevents them from concentrating on individual sentences “and making sure they’re blocking each scene carefully with sensory details,” he said.
Mr. Puchner, who has published a book of short stories and has been working on his first novel for two years, said, “I’m a slow writer because I need to be, and it makes me a better writer.” But he can see the value of a program like NaNoWriMo as a way for a fledgling writer to gain confidence.
In at least a dozen cases, novels that began during National Novel Writing Month have been subsequently published. Lani Diane Rich, whose humorous romance novels “Time Off for Good Behavior” (Warner Books) and “Maybe Baby” (Warner Forever) got their start that way, said the experience helped her banish the perfectionist tendencies that had held her back.
Her edited and published novels, though, were a far cry from their NaNoWriMo forebears. In November 2003 the novel that eventually became “Maybe Baby” contained this paragraph:
“49,622. That’s my exact word count right now. I have to make 50,000 in order to put this horrendous thing to bed and never, ever, ever have to look at it ever again. That’s why I’m writing this bit to you, my reader. All maybe two of you. Since I probably won’t be showing this to anyone lest I die of humiliation. And if you’ve read it, you know I’m not kidding about how horribly, horribly bad it is.”
[PHYLLIS KORKKI via New York Times]
Monday, November 20, 2006
How Writers Create Their Fiction: Chapter One
 |
| Don't let that novel go up in flames! |
Writing a novel is a lot like riding a bike. A bike with no brakes and no gears. You've got one flat tire. Maybe two. If you're on a tricycle, you definitely have three flat tires. You're pedaling up a hill — a steep, pothole-filled mountain. And the weather? Let's just say it's a dark and stormy night.
To help you along, we've asked fiction writers from all genres for the essence of noveling: how they write, how they overcome writer's block and their best written sentence. Each weekday this month, we'll publish another novelist’s thoughts. Check back for novelists as varied as Neal Pollack, Rita Mae Brown and Joyce Carol Oates.
[MELODY JOY KRAMER and MARC SILVER / National Public Radio]
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Writer's Clock
Until they pricked her with the anesthesia, Rise Peters planned to be writing.
The Bowie resident -- facing inflammatory breast cancer -- entered surgery Wednesday to have a growth removed from her liver. She is also approaching the halfway point of her novel, a mystery titled "Raised by Wolves." She must finish it by Nov. 30, averaging 1,667 words a day, cancer or no cancer.
"If you can't come up with a better excuse than me, forget it," Peters, 45, told attendees at the Oct. 29 kickoff party for the D.C. contingent of National Novel Writing Month. "We're all going to win this year."
Winning means simply writing 50,000 words (or 175 pages) in 30 days. Today participants should be hitting 20,000. If they were running a marathon, they'd be nearly halfway through mile 10.
"They," of course, are the WriMos, those reckless and ambitious souls who signed up for the undertaking, nicknamed NaNoWriMo, which started in 1999 with 21 participants and last year boasted 59,000. By the end of the month, an estimated 93,000 will have registered, a little over half of whom are from the United States.
Now, some fuzzy math: If this growth rate is constant and participation is cumulative, then every American will be writing a novel in November 2027. We'll be a country made entirely of boozing, tortured authors.
"Mr. Secretary, North Korea finally has a viable nuclear warhead."
"Hold on, I'm almost done with this sex scene."
Time and Punishment
The output needn't be as textured as Faulkner or as impeccable as Nabokov. It can be drivel. Swill. Dreck. Dross.
Chris Baty, program director for NaNo, has one piece of advice for the 2,500 or so WriMos in the District, Maryland and Virginia: "Get out of the 20,000s as fast as you can. If you can do it in three days, great. The 20s are like a swamp of the soul. Charge through them. The 30s start to feel wonderful."
But who has time for this? There are 40-hour workweeks, romantic relationships, episodes of "Deal or No Deal," transient and chronic illnesses and life's little duties and distractions.
Dan Fowlkes, 28, of Stafford has three children younger than 5, and his wife is pregnant with a fourth. So this year he's writing during the commute on Interstate 95 to his Defense Department job by using voice-recognition software.
"I'm dictating 2,000 words a morning," Fowlkes says. "Although, in the evening, I'll have to go over those 2,000 words and look for the places where the computer misheard me."
For those without a dead commute hour to devote, sacrificing that last ounce of free time can often open up a whole new perspective on your day-to-day routine.
"A lot of people discover the month they're writing their novel that they have more time for everything else in their life than they did
before," Baty says. "Once you decide to really prioritize something, whether that's novel writing or learning a foreign language, you tend to cut out the superfluous bits."
Even though making outlines and slaving over structure can be helpful, WriMos agree that an amateur novelist's best bet is to write fast and free, whether or not it's during November.
"Some sentences are really good, some are stinkers," says Peters, who is NaNo's municipal liaison for the District and does her fair share of 9-to-5 writing as a lawyer. "But none of them have that overworked, labored characteristic you get when you're second-guessing yourself."
[Dan Zak / Washington Post]
The Bowie resident -- facing inflammatory breast cancer -- entered surgery Wednesday to have a growth removed from her liver. She is also approaching the halfway point of her novel, a mystery titled "Raised by Wolves." She must finish it by Nov. 30, averaging 1,667 words a day, cancer or no cancer.
"If you can't come up with a better excuse than me, forget it," Peters, 45, told attendees at the Oct. 29 kickoff party for the D.C. contingent of National Novel Writing Month. "We're all going to win this year."
Winning means simply writing 50,000 words (or 175 pages) in 30 days. Today participants should be hitting 20,000. If they were running a marathon, they'd be nearly halfway through mile 10.
"They," of course, are the WriMos, those reckless and ambitious souls who signed up for the undertaking, nicknamed NaNoWriMo, which started in 1999 with 21 participants and last year boasted 59,000. By the end of the month, an estimated 93,000 will have registered, a little over half of whom are from the United States.
Now, some fuzzy math: If this growth rate is constant and participation is cumulative, then every American will be writing a novel in November 2027. We'll be a country made entirely of boozing, tortured authors.
"Mr. Secretary, North Korea finally has a viable nuclear warhead."
"Hold on, I'm almost done with this sex scene."
Time and Punishment
The output needn't be as textured as Faulkner or as impeccable as Nabokov. It can be drivel. Swill. Dreck. Dross.
Chris Baty, program director for NaNo, has one piece of advice for the 2,500 or so WriMos in the District, Maryland and Virginia: "Get out of the 20,000s as fast as you can. If you can do it in three days, great. The 20s are like a swamp of the soul. Charge through them. The 30s start to feel wonderful."
But who has time for this? There are 40-hour workweeks, romantic relationships, episodes of "Deal or No Deal," transient and chronic illnesses and life's little duties and distractions.
Dan Fowlkes, 28, of Stafford has three children younger than 5, and his wife is pregnant with a fourth. So this year he's writing during the commute on Interstate 95 to his Defense Department job by using voice-recognition software.
"I'm dictating 2,000 words a morning," Fowlkes says. "Although, in the evening, I'll have to go over those 2,000 words and look for the places where the computer misheard me."
For those without a dead commute hour to devote, sacrificing that last ounce of free time can often open up a whole new perspective on your day-to-day routine.
"A lot of people discover the month they're writing their novel that they have more time for everything else in their life than they did
before," Baty says. "Once you decide to really prioritize something, whether that's novel writing or learning a foreign language, you tend to cut out the superfluous bits."
Even though making outlines and slaving over structure can be helpful, WriMos agree that an amateur novelist's best bet is to write fast and free, whether or not it's during November.
"Some sentences are really good, some are stinkers," says Peters, who is NaNo's municipal liaison for the District and does her fair share of 9-to-5 writing as a lawyer. "But none of them have that overworked, labored characteristic you get when you're second-guessing yourself."
[Dan Zak / Washington Post]
Friday, November 3, 2006
Who let the YAWP out?
Want to write a novel? Don't think you're talented enough? Still finding your muse? Prevaricating again on why it hasn't happened yet?
Stop. Drop everything. And sign up for National Novel Writing Month.
November is the month for your closet Great American novelist to break free and sound out a barbaric YAWP. If you don't know what that is, you need to check out www.nanowrimo.org online and Walt Whitman from the local library --- or "Dead Poet's Society" at the nearest video store, for the Cliff's Notes and Hollywood version.
NaNoWriMo was founded in 1999 by an Oakland freelance writer. The goal is simple: write a 50,000-word (175 pages) novel in 30 days … and voila, you're a novelist.
That's it.
Just ask Diann Tongco, Temecula resident and a second-year participant of noveling madness. Her NaNo novel last year wound up being 62,000 words -- and it all started with one character.
"I started role-playing this character," Tongco explained, "and she was just too awesome to role-play and have people doing whatever. She started yammering in the back of my brain, saying, 'You have to do my story.'"
This year, the Powers That Be at NaNoWriMo headquarters also appointed Tongco the region's municipal liaison -- the head cheerleader, mentor and organizer-of-local-write-ins -- for the Inland Empire region, in which 155 "WriMos" call home.
For the next couple of Saturdays, Tongco is hosting write-ins at It's A Grind coffee shop, 33215 Highway 79 South, in the Ralphs shopping center at the corner of Butterfield Stage Road. It's a chance for WriMos to get together and write in some semblance of a social setting, since writing tends to be a fairly solitary affair. The write-ins start at 12:30 p.m. and usually last a couple of hours, she said, "until people need to go or get tired of looking at each other."
After that, it depends on how everybody's schedules go, Tongco said. There's an event calendar for the region on the NaNoWriMo Web site where WriMos can check for future write-in dates, she added. She operates under the screen name "kalindria."
NaNoWriMo has grown from 21 participants its first year in 1999 (of which six crossed the "finish line") to 59,000 participants in 2005 (of which 9,769 finished). And while the group's volunteer spirit means it relies on the wallets of WriMos and generous sponsors to keep the event going year after year, one of the other aspects to NaNoWriMo that impresses Tongco is the organization's crusade for literacy. Half of the proceeds the group receives this year as a newly minted 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization will go toward building libraries in Vietnam, Tongco said.
Last year, the group raised $14,000 toward building seven libraries in Laos. This year, WriMos have donated nearly $100,000, halfway toward its goal of $200,000.
Though Nov. 1 has come and gone, it's not too late to join in this year's madness.
"Just write," Tongco advises WriMos. "Don't think about it, don't go back and fix it, just plow forward. If you want to finish, just go -- go, go, go."
Fifty thousand words. Thirty days.
Do it. Your Great American novelist is begging to sound out.
[CINDY HUNG / The North County Times]
Stop. Drop everything. And sign up for National Novel Writing Month.
November is the month for your closet Great American novelist to break free and sound out a barbaric YAWP. If you don't know what that is, you need to check out www.nanowrimo.org online and Walt Whitman from the local library --- or "Dead Poet's Society" at the nearest video store, for the Cliff's Notes and Hollywood version.
NaNoWriMo was founded in 1999 by an Oakland freelance writer. The goal is simple: write a 50,000-word (175 pages) novel in 30 days … and voila, you're a novelist.
That's it.
Just ask Diann Tongco, Temecula resident and a second-year participant of noveling madness. Her NaNo novel last year wound up being 62,000 words -- and it all started with one character.
"I started role-playing this character," Tongco explained, "and she was just too awesome to role-play and have people doing whatever. She started yammering in the back of my brain, saying, 'You have to do my story.'"
This year, the Powers That Be at NaNoWriMo headquarters also appointed Tongco the region's municipal liaison -- the head cheerleader, mentor and organizer-of-local-write-ins -- for the Inland Empire region, in which 155 "WriMos" call home.
For the next couple of Saturdays, Tongco is hosting write-ins at It's A Grind coffee shop, 33215 Highway 79 South, in the Ralphs shopping center at the corner of Butterfield Stage Road. It's a chance for WriMos to get together and write in some semblance of a social setting, since writing tends to be a fairly solitary affair. The write-ins start at 12:30 p.m. and usually last a couple of hours, she said, "until people need to go or get tired of looking at each other."
After that, it depends on how everybody's schedules go, Tongco said. There's an event calendar for the region on the NaNoWriMo Web site where WriMos can check for future write-in dates, she added. She operates under the screen name "kalindria."
NaNoWriMo has grown from 21 participants its first year in 1999 (of which six crossed the "finish line") to 59,000 participants in 2005 (of which 9,769 finished). And while the group's volunteer spirit means it relies on the wallets of WriMos and generous sponsors to keep the event going year after year, one of the other aspects to NaNoWriMo that impresses Tongco is the organization's crusade for literacy. Half of the proceeds the group receives this year as a newly minted 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization will go toward building libraries in Vietnam, Tongco said.
Last year, the group raised $14,000 toward building seven libraries in Laos. This year, WriMos have donated nearly $100,000, halfway toward its goal of $200,000.
Though Nov. 1 has come and gone, it's not too late to join in this year's madness.
"Just write," Tongco advises WriMos. "Don't think about it, don't go back and fix it, just plow forward. If you want to finish, just go -- go, go, go."
Fifty thousand words. Thirty days.
Do it. Your Great American novelist is begging to sound out.
[CINDY HUNG / The North County Times]
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