NaNoWriMo is coming up.
For those of you who don’t know, National Novel Writing Month is a project that some guy, Chris Baty, and his friends just started doing one year. Like all writers at one time or another, they decided to bite off more than they could chew.
“Hey! Let’s write a novel in one month! Fifty thousand words! YAHHHH!”
Could it be done? Should it be done? Much like aficionados in any extreme sport, they ignored their internal editors and forged forth, writing and delighting themselves and despairing of ever being writers. Ever. And either finishing or not finishing their novels.
Some people dropped out.
Some people decided to do it again the next year. And the next. The word spread, and the NaNoWriMo format of extreme writing became more popular. There are more extreme ways to do it–writing a novel in a week, for example–but NaNoWriMo happens to be a fairly reasonable way to do it.
This year, I’m going to help at the Pikes Peak Writers NaNoTryMo, in which you can set yourself any goal, hang out at the Citadel Mall Imagination Center on Tuesdays from 6:30-8:30 p.m., and write with other like-minded (insert hand gesture of spiral next to skull here) writers for a couple of hours. We’ll also have a full day write-in on November 19th, but I’m not sure what the exact hours are yet. By “help” I mean set up chairs and egg people on.
Because PPW membership is free, if you feel like joining us, just show up. There’s a Starbuck’s down the hall and shopping therapy if your characters break your heart.
Me, I’m going to be working on Alice’s Adventures in Underland (finally!). Life is good. How about you?
I’m going to finish the novel (or first draft thereof) that I started and got 80-90% of the way through last year, and then do some concerted editing on same.
Good! Do I get to read it later?
I think I’m going to use the time I’d normally use for NaNoWriMo to finish a novel I started a couple of years ago. It won’t count toward NaNo, but at least my poor novel will be finished and my poor characters won’t be in limbo anymore!
I wonder if it’s the year for it…