Write your novel in one month or less!
Forget the presidential elections. Forget the historical economic crisis we are facing. In one month (actually, it’s now less than a month), perhaps the most important even of the year will take place: National Novel Writing Month (more popularly known as NaNoWriMo)!
For those writers who have been living under a rock for the past several years, NaNoWriMo is a writing marathon event where writers everywhere try to write a complete novel in the timespan of one month. I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty details here, because this cool website pretty much explains it all.
I first heard about the annual contest during the fall 2004, in a small poetry club I belonged to at the community college I attended (right before I transfered to the university). My reaction was one of excitement and a little skepticism.
Why NaNoWriMo is a good thing
Perhaps one of the best features of NaNoWriMo is that the event forces writers to turn off their inner critic and just write! If you don’t, you’ll never be able to finish a novel in one month. In that context, this is a great exercise.
Furthermore, the event helps writers to forgo traditional ideas of plot, setting, characters and just about everything else you though you knew about novels. "No plot, no problem" is the official rallying call. Even the seed of an idea can be fleshed out into a full-length novel.
Perhaps another benefit of NaNoWriMo is that it gives unmotivated writers a goal to accomplish, with a very real deadline looming on the horizon. First-time novelists often face the problem of motivation. Writing is something you do on your own, with no one breathing down your neck to get the thing done. And with no firm deadline in place (unless you already have a contract with a publisher), it becomes easy to put off writing that next chapter.
Can NoNoWriMo be a bad thing?
When I first learned of this annual writing event, I was intrigued by it, and at the same time, a little skeptical. Being in college at the time, I went to an English Literature professor whom I really admired and gave him the skinny on NaNoWriMo. He laughed it off and said it’s too gimmicky, and almost mocks those serious novelists who work hard to create works of literary art.
While I knew this was an elitist answer, I couldn’t help but agree with it on some level. The concept of a national novel writing month, where your full-length novel must be written in a month did seem gimmicky. And there are many serious novelists out there toiling year-round to write their masterpiece, not just one month a year.
But I still concluded that NaNoWriMo offered more good than bad. Writing a novel is a noble goal, and if it take something like NaNoWriMo to get it done, then more power to all those writers who finish a complete novel.
I have always maintained on this blog that the real writing is in the editing. And this contest definitely embraces that spirit. You spend a stress-filled month to get your novel out of your system, onto paper (or computer), and after that you can spend all the time you want editing, tweaking, and re-writing.
Have you participated in NaNoWriMo? If so, leave a comment and let us know how your experience went. Don’t be shy!
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