NaNoWriMo

If you just took a look at the heading above and thought that I'd had an epileptic fit at the keyboard, don't worry, I'm fine and dandy. NaNoWriMo is actually short for National Novel Writing Month, and you can find out all you need to know at www.nanowrimo.org.  It's an online communtiy devoted to getting people to write - not to edit, not plan to write, but to actually write.

 

The whole idea is to have everybody sign up and start writing to the same deadlines and to the same goals. Starting on the stroke of midnight on the 1st of November, everyone who enters will try to write an entire 50,000-word novel by midnight on November the 30th. By focusing on sheer output, writers are free to churn out anything that comes into their heads without stopping to edit or fuss about it. There's an overwhelming surge of creativity as thousands of people across the globe start frantically pounding away at their keyboards, desperately trying to make their word-count. You can edit as much as you want later, but the whole point is to make the deadline.

 

I think I'm going to go for it. Those who know my personal circumstances will also know that the 1st of November might not be the best time for me to try and write an entire bloody novel in a month. But that's the whole point, isn't it? There will always be another excuse not to start writing and life will always interfere if you let it. If I can devote myself to cranking out 1,6666 words a day for 30 days, I might just have what it takes to keep going and polish my work up to a publishable standard, and then persevere even further and find an agent. At this point I'm not sure if I'm going to try and scale back the 100,000-word novel I've already outlined back down to 50,000 words or whether I'll start an entirely new novel from scratch, but I'm sure as hell going to write something.

 

I might not make it to 50,000 in time - few do. But who knows? It can't hurt to try, and the only thing I'm likely to lose is my sleep.