It's mid-October which means it's time to start thinking about NaNoWriMo! If you happen to be reading this and don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it National Novel Writing Month during which thousands of people from around the world write a 50,000+ word novel in November. This will be my fourth year participating. And winning. (Shut up, I'm going to win.)
To some people, the thought of writing 1667 words a day for 30 days sounds like a slow, painful torture. Heck, it sort of is. But it's torture with a satisfying outcome. There are lots of reasons to do NaNoWriMo, but here are some of my reasons for doing it as a person who spends little to no other time writing:
1. Discipline. I have none. I've been having thoughts of maybe writing a novel for longer than I can remember. At twelve, I was working on a gripping novel about a girl who lost her parents to a September 11th plane crash. It was actually mostly about how she didn't fit in anywhere and was full of angsty angst. I know, shocking that I would write something angsty. I think I wrote three or four chapters of that and abandoned it. I think I was also trying to write a fictionalized version of my grandpa's near death at the same time. Everything that I had ever worked on before November 2010 went unfinished due to lack of discipline. NaNoWriMo sort of forces discipline into you. When you have such a short time to write so much, you have to plow through those days when you don't want to write. If you don't, you will A) Lose or B) Find yourself with a big pot of tea and mounds of snacks as you write into the wee hours of the morning to burn out 25k in day. I don't accept defeat and found myself choosing B last year. I definitely didn't have discipline throughout the month, but I sure as crap did on that last day (my mom kept asking me to watch TV with her). And now I will never do that again.
2. Community. The people who decide to write a novel in a month are cool people and there are lots of them. Struggling through something like this really brings people together in cool ways. I've made several friends through people finding my NaNoWriMo video and tweets and tumbls about it, and I've gotten closer to friends I already had by doing it. No one really understands the pleasure and pain of November except other novelists. Last year I sent out postcards of encouragement to all my friends who were participating. I'm going to pretend that helped. I have also put together playlists and had writing parties via the internet. Friends are cool.
3. Challenge. I love me a good challenge. Ride every ride in Disneyland in one day? Done. Drive from the Bay Area to Oregon in one day? Sure. Watch every extended version of Lord of the Rings in one sitting? Extra done. The moment something becomes slightly crazy, I want to do it just to say I have done it. Writing a novel in a month is a little crazy, but when you're done you have this thing that you've made. It may be terrible and no one else may ever read it, but it's there and it's done and that's beautiful.
The reason this blog is currently coming at you is because I haven't done any writing recently and I need to re-learn to articulate myself in more than 140 characters. This has also just been a time of a lot of self-reflection and discovery in my life. Due to those and that whole challenge thing, I'm going to be writing a post everyday from now until November. We'll see how this goes!
I made a video about NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago in which I give tips and advice for those participating. I un-privated it just for you.
This is fantastic. The point about discipline is really key. There's a great Neil Gaiman quote where he more or less says, "You can't be a novelist if you only write when you feel inspired, because when you're inspired you may not always be in a position to write things. To be a novelist you need to write always, even when you don't want to, because that's what will bring you success." And the video is great. Just great.
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