Apparently this has been going on for years. I just found out about it a couple of days ago.
November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNaWriMo.
The objective is to write a novel during November. Not necessarily a good novel, but a novel. The guidelines are straight forward.
To recap from the NaNoWriMo site:
What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.
Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.
Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.
When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.
As of today, there are over 517 million words written as a part of this contest. It’s a slam dunk guarantee that not all of them are good words.
I love this idea. There’s no time to spend on extensive plotting or character development. It’s just write, write, write.
I was made aware of this contest on the 5th of November on Twitter. Richard Castle, a fictional charater from a pretty good TV show, posted the following:
If I had started this on the 1st, I’d only need to write an average of 1,667 word a day to get to my goal of 50k by the 30th. Since I’ve started late, I’ve got a bit of catching up to do. (I expect I’ll be caught up this evening.)
Since it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll be able to neatly wrap up everything on the 50 thousandth word, I’m allocating 2000 or so words a day, once I get caught up, to give me some leeway.
It’s been interesting so far. What started out as a run of the mill murder mystery has had mob killings, FBI, Witness Protection and a fledgling relationship between the lead detective and the Chief Coroner show up, and I’m less than a quarter of the way through.
Who knows what may happen.
But I will get to the 50,000+ words, and then some, and when I do, I’ll post the final results.
You can follow my progress here.
Mark your calendars and bookmark their site. Give it a go next year.
