30 Days of Pure Insanity: It’s NaNoWriMo Time!
(If you already know all about NaNo, feel free to skip ahead to the good parts, where I beg for your participation. Again. )
No, NaNoWriMo is not some sort of exotic disease. It’s far more mundane than that. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.
Doesn’t sound horribly impressive, does it? Just a silly label for an ordinary month, dedicated to the art and science of noveling, right? Wrong!
NaNo is a creative feast of frustration, insanity, and productivity. The goal is daunting… each participant has 30 days to write a 50,000 word novel from scratch.
It doesn’t have to be a good novel. It doesn’t have to be coherent, publishable, or even readable. It just needs to be 50,000 words presented in the vague shape of a novel, and written entirely in the month of November.
Some of the novels do turn out coherent, of course. The best seller “Water for Elephants” was a NaNo novel, for instance – but there’s no pressure to be that good. Most of us quickly admit that our results are less than spectacular, but still, we trudge madly ahead each year, fueled by caffeine and the snack foods of our choice.
So what’s this got to do with MindTweaking?
There’s something about the NaNo format that encourages wild and wacky yet productive creativity - especially if you hook up with the right bunch of co-writers to conspire with. Writing that much in 30 days means setting aside fantasies of perfection and applying a single minded focus on the goal: reaching that magic number words
The lessons I learned last year have been invaluable. It sped up and loosened up my writing style. I learned to “eat an elephant one bite at a time” and most importantly, I ate the whole thing, reached the goal and proved that I could do it.
There’s just something about taking on a challenge of this size and accomplishing it that does something to your brain, and helps you to believe that maybe, just maybe anything IS possible.
In fact, I’m so inspired this year…
I’m considering using NaNo as the trigger for my new and improved productivity habits.
Here’s what I’m thinking… focus on Nano. Start up a regular writing routine. Include my brain-training routines. Work household tasks around the writing routines. Include NaNo output in my computer backups. Any posts to MindTweaks will likely have to do with NaNo in some sense… either writing/creativity tips, software/quotes, and so on.
In otherwords, writing that 50,000 words becomes the focus, and for a month, the rest of my life becomes the support system.
Sounds wacky, I know – but it’s just the sort of odd approach that just might work for me.
And the benefit is that if it works, when done? The time spent on NaNo can be easily transitioned back to project development, blogging, and other stuffs.
So what do you think? Willing to bear with me for 30 days while my posts veer into stranger territory than usual?
Better yet, are you willing to come along for the ride?
I would dearly love it if we could get a group of MindTweakers together to do NaNoWriMo - Several of you talked about participating last year, and several more expressed an interest during the year.
We could arrange a thread on the NaNo forums, and/or do open-thread comments here each week. We could nudge each other forward via Twitter, do live chats through AIM, or urge each other on via all out word-wars and challenges.
Just drop me a line in the comments, letting me know if you’d like to participate directly, or if you think you’d get a kick out of writing/creativity tips, Nano updates and excerpts here on MindTweaks…
(If you’d rather I just got back to more mundane software reviews and whatnot, that’d be ok too, but let me know. Otherwise, it’s full NaNo steam ahead!)
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve never heard of the event, but it sounds fun – unless you’re the lucky type like me who slaves for hours over 500 words. In order to prevent the inevitable mid-month meltdown, I think I’ll participate in the cheering section only. Good luck! – and I personally would love for you to write about the experience.
I’ve had friends participate in this in the past. They typically report in for the first week, and then vanish for the next three and then are sort of there for the two weeks after it is over. I don’t think I have ever read (or even been offered to read) their product output, however. They all said it was a remarkable experience and would consider doing it again.
“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” — Blaise Pascal
Tori, I had heard of this event from an article in the New York Times maybe a year or two ago. It sounded like a lot of fun and just crazy enough to try. I just visited their website and I was intrigued.
I’ve never finished a single novel I’ve started. I see great benefit in trying something like this. I’m not sure this is the year for me however. I am in the throes of launching a new blog which has turned into more of an online web magazine and I am already working round the clock with little sleep and household chores not getting done!
But I did want to share this with your readers as the statistics on the number of participants is staggering!
1999: 21 participants and six winners
2000: 140 participants and 29 winners
2001: 5,000 participants and more than 700 winners
2002: 13,500 participants and around 2,100 winners
2003: 25,500 participants and about 3,500 winners
2004: 42,000 participants and just shy of 6,000 winners
2005: 59,000 participants and 9,769 winners
2006: 79,000 participants and 13,000 winners
2007: 101,510 participants and 15,333 winners
“Winners,” by the way, means participants who actually completed a novel in 30 days and met the 50,000 word count requirement.
I hope you do this and write about it. In fact, I think from a marketing perspective, you should actually try to get a newspaper to follow your progress and write about it after November 30th. That would be so cool. Just imagine the exposure it could give you, especially if the novel turns out to be worthy of publication.
I wish you luck. I wish I could be doing this with you!
Oh, and by the way, you probably already have plenty of interesting plot lines stored away, but I do think that the image of roving gangs of extremist evangelicals in Walmart has possibilities as a novel. (It can always be turned into a film script later.) So does the story of a Barbie doll-like governor of Alaska, short on intellectual curiosity, a self-described Joe Six-Pack, who, despite an upgraded wardrobe of $150,000 worth of clothes from Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, nevertheless loses her bid for Vice President and becomes the most popular daytime right-wing evangelical-like TV talk show host since Oprah came along for the left. Think Carl Hiassen or Tom Wolfe.
You have enough material here for 2 novels!
Erin It is a lot of fun, and best if done in a group, on or offline. As for being the sort who slaves over 500 words, that’s EXACTLY who NaNo is best for! It forces us to stop focusing on quality, and force quantity. I do a lot of “WordWars” which is a mini-competition to write as many words as possible in a set time.
You should dive in. Really!
Richard, I certainly fell off the map during NaNo last year, and I can’t promise it won’t happen again this year. I’m hoping the structure I’m putting around the whole thing will help, but if not… you all know where I’ll be
Diane, The numbers are astounding, aren’t they? And one of the things I admire most about NaNo is their Young Writer’s Program: last year, over 14,000 kids and teens participated.
I shall do my best to work at least one roving gang of Evangelical teens into the story. And at least one moose, in honor of Caribou Barbie and her inevitable future in entertainment
I’m game for this! I write in my journal every day and carry a scribbler with me wherever I go. I could use that material to write from. So where do I go from here? I join in on Gather.com and participate in their 100 word stories and a few of their other contests.
Tori – I’m just too far out of my depth on this one. The WordWars sound interesting. Reminds me a little of AP English and the weekly timed writing.
Ooooo I want to join and get support and help support others!
Maureen, awesome! The first step is to sign yourself up at http://www.NaNoWriMo.org – the NaNo site will be somewhat overloaded from now till a week or two into November; if you have trouble, late nights or early mornings are best.
Erin, I totally understand about it being a bit much. A lot of people (myself included) lurk for a year or two, then dive in. I’ll likely be issuing a few short challenges here, and maybe you can participate in that way : )
Amanda, welcome to MindTweaks, glad you found me, and…. Yay!
I’ll be writing more here tomorrow, setting up a MindTweaks group on the NaNo Forums, sharing more about my preparations and tools, and working out some details on how folks can participate here, too.
This is going to be one fun month!
Ooooh, you need lurkers? I can lurk with the best of them
i’m very excited to live the experience vicariously through you, but i’m not a fast writer nor one who does well with pressure when it comes to writing. i have other daunting goals in november, too, though i admire you so much for doing it again this year. you do realize, however, that this completely verifies that you are indeed deaux-ranged if admirably so, right? you geaux, deaux! yes, you can!
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