Monday, November 3, 2008

Nano, Nano

It's that time of year: trick or treating, voting, tofurkey day and writing a novel. November is National Novel Writing Month, and I for one am ON BOARD.

The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. That's about 1500 words a day. That's about six double spaced typed pages a day. Why write a novel in a month, you ask? Shouldn't novels baste slowly like a Thanksgiving dinner?

Well maybe. But the problem with most novels is they baste too slowly, like never come out of the oven. By writing six pages a day, NaNoWrimo removes some of the blocks to completing the first draft of a novel, such as—

1.) Perfectionism. Who cares if it's crap? No time to worry about that when you have 1100 more words to write today. And 1500 tomorrow, and 1500 the next day and on and etc...

2.) Sloth. You record your word count every day and upload your pages to the NaNoWrimo site (which I believe is a little overloaded because I can't get on it tonight to update my word count. Oh well, I'm cheating this process anyway.)

How does one cheat? Well first NaNoWriMo wants you to write a novel from scratch, not continue one you've started. I am continuing one I've started. I'm 52,000 words and 206 pages in and I want to get the dang thing done (meaning approx 25,000 more words). According to NaNoWriMo, bringing a partially finished manuscript to the table destroys the "gleeful, anything-goes approach that makes NaNoWriMo such a creative rush." Agreed, but I've got get this thing done. My partner's tired of hearing we're going to be rich. She wants to know WHEN. Next year I'll do it NaNoWriMo's way.

If you want to jump on board, head over to NaNoWrimo to sign up. You've only lost two days. It's not too late. Registered users receive rah-rah emails to inspire us along, and a little dashboard to monitor our progress. You can share your dashboard with your friends and they can cheer you on too.

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