I write to you today, breaking the silence of an unnecessary blogging hiatus, to ask you to consider something.
What will you make of your November?
Will it be, as many a November in the past, just another month? Will you, having reached yet another Christmas season, look back and have nothing to show for those thirty days but some extra Thanksgiving weight?
I want to propose an alternative. I want to beg you to consider making your November extraordinary. This November can be one you can look back on with pride, nostalgia, variations of disgust and anger, and lots of exhaustion, and say to yourself, even outloud, "I am awesome."
In short, it can be a truly epic month.
I know you're all asking yourselves now, "That sounds amazing. How can I become such a kick-butt ninja?" Well, the answer is simple, though it's name is not: NaNoWriMo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's the greatest thing since freewriting.
As I said, the principle is very simple. You write a 50,000-word novel in a month.
Yeah, I know. It sounds impossible. But it's really not. That's 1,667 words per day, This blog post is almost 500 words and I wrote it in under an hour.
It's not impossible, but it is hard. And it's most likely going to take over your entire life for thirty days. But those thirty days are some of the most amazing, challenging, creative, and just plain downright fun you'll ever have. 'Cause it's not just you and a word processor and a half-thought-out whim of an idea for hundreds of pages. There's a website with forums and tips and dares and motivational emails. There's even a twitter hashtag with its own 140-character bits of encouragement. And there's a huge world-wide community behind it all cheering each other on to the finish line.
You get to know an amazing cast of characters really well, to the point where you're not even sure this creation could have originated in your own brain. Plus, and this is really my point, there are actual people out there who do this thing.
I want you all, and I really mean you now, to consider trying out NaNoWriMo. It's really a ton of fun, and I want to have friends to share it with this year. You've got a month to start brainstorming and outlining. Check out these pages for more detailed info, and friend me here when you sign up!
What will your November be? I know my answer. And I'll see you all December 1 waving a couple hundred pages of terrible prose over my head with pride and calling myself a novelist. Won't you join me?
If you're younger or have a young writer in your life, check out NaNo's Young Writer's Program for more information and inspiration.
4 comments:
you forgot to update your numbers. Still, it is a lovely post, and is getting me motivated to start thinking about story ideas. Right now, my crazy idea is to write a long series of pataphors, but I still need a story. Love you!
So I read your comment and was like, "Sure I did. You must just be a real stickler and using a different word counter than I am." But then I read over it again and realized I'd only fixed it in Word and forgot to post it back into blogger.
So, um, after looking that up...
If you want my advice, that looks like a recipe for disaster.
Good luck with the ideas. Love you too. And friend me on NaNo.
I made an account, and friended you. We'll see what happens.
By the way, what are you doing for plot outlining before you actually write? I've got a story idea that wants to give it a shot but now the characters are restless, and I can't just make them sit on their hands for 3 weeks.
You can email me, thesojourner89 @ an obvious domain name, if you don't run into me. (I'm apparently hard to find.)
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