Can youwrite a novel in under a month?
Well, the organizers of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as its known, think you can and should.
NaNoWriMo is an annual internet-based creative writing project which challenges participants to write 50,000 words (roughly 175 pages) of a new novel between November 1 and November 30 (or so says Wikipedia).
The project, launched by Chris Baty back in 1999, has since grown from its initial 21 participants to over 200,000 participants at last year’s event.
To participate, you must register with NaNoWriMo’s website and submit until November 30th a 50,000 word novel: it can be about anything, in any genre and in any language. And it doesn’t even need to be a complete novel: you can simply submit the first 50,000 words of a novel to be completed later.
The trick to achieve this daunting task is to write about 1,700 words each day or, if like most of us, your job will wear out any energy or imagination to write at the end of your day, try to cram 12,000 words each weekend (and since I’m posting this a little late, that’s a weekend less to count on…). You must submit as you go along and you’re not allowed to go back and edit what you've already written.
Although this seems to promote the infamous “quantity over quality”, the idea is to free people from the usual writer-blocks and inner-editor and –censurer: just start writing. Stop polishing and rewriting and editing… Just unleash your creativity and write. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be a start. The deadline is a mere incentive to get the story going and to put words to paper.
No official prizes are awarded for length, quality, or speed and don’t even consider cheating (i.e. pre-prepared writing) as an option: no precautions are taken to prevent cheating; since the only significant reward for winning is the finished novel itself and the satisfaction of having written it.
It’s no easy task: last year, only about 10% of participants reached the 50,000 word goal. But at least every participant had at least the start of something satisfying.
What are you waiting for?
Well, the organizers of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as its known, think you can and should.
NaNoWriMo is an annual internet-based creative writing project which challenges participants to write 50,000 words (roughly 175 pages) of a new novel between November 1 and November 30 (or so says Wikipedia).
The project, launched by Chris Baty back in 1999, has since grown from its initial 21 participants to over 200,000 participants at last year’s event.
To participate, you must register with NaNoWriMo’s website and submit until November 30th a 50,000 word novel: it can be about anything, in any genre and in any language. And it doesn’t even need to be a complete novel: you can simply submit the first 50,000 words of a novel to be completed later.
The trick to achieve this daunting task is to write about 1,700 words each day or, if like most of us, your job will wear out any energy or imagination to write at the end of your day, try to cram 12,000 words each weekend (and since I’m posting this a little late, that’s a weekend less to count on…). You must submit as you go along and you’re not allowed to go back and edit what you've already written.
Although this seems to promote the infamous “quantity over quality”, the idea is to free people from the usual writer-blocks and inner-editor and –censurer: just start writing. Stop polishing and rewriting and editing… Just unleash your creativity and write. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be a start. The deadline is a mere incentive to get the story going and to put words to paper.
No official prizes are awarded for length, quality, or speed and don’t even consider cheating (i.e. pre-prepared writing) as an option: no precautions are taken to prevent cheating; since the only significant reward for winning is the finished novel itself and the satisfaction of having written it.
It’s no easy task: last year, only about 10% of participants reached the 50,000 word goal. But at least every participant had at least the start of something satisfying.
What are you waiting for?
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