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National Novel-Writing MonthPublished: Sun, 01 Jan 2006 09:00:00 -0500 “I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.” – Isaac Asimov Few have heard of the peculiar event known as the National Novel Writing Month, commonly called NaNoWriMo. Originally started in 1999 by Chris Baty of San Francisco Bay, he and twenty of his friends set out on the foolhardy attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words or more in the month of July. Obviously under the ludicrous impression that anyone can be an author, they started off the event with the hope of “making noise” and to occupy themselves, having nothing better to do. Halfway through the month, caffeine intake had risen to a frightening level, and their characters began to rebel, acting up as they tore gapping holes in their creator’s plotlines. Amid this quagmire of seemingly insurmountable problems of misbehaving characters and broken plotlines, fifteen of the original participants dropped out, leaving their unfinished novels and characters to dangle haphazardly from dusty bookshelves or computer folders. Even with the writer’s block, plot holes, and unrealistic characters, the six remaining participants eventually made it to the 50,000-word goal. They knew they were onto something. Though the all-too-evident hardships they encountered were difficult to overlook, the winners were all surprised by how much enjoyment and can-do spirit the writing experience had brought them. Sure, as they readily admitted, their novels were by no means worthy of the Pulitzer Prize, but they weren’t half-bad, and this moderate success energized them to continue on with the writing madness the next year, the year after that, and every year since. From that day on July 1st, 1999 when it all began to the present, NaNoWriMo has continued to draw thousands upon thousands of innocent writers into this beautifully enslaving experience. With November having more rainy weather that is, as we all know, perfect for melodramatic, sappy writing, the event was moved from July to this month to take advantage of the natural shift in climate. Now with an official website that is free-of-charge to all participants, writer’s paths converge daily on the freeways of the Web to exchange encouragement and inspiration. This year alone, nearly 60,000 writers participated from such areas of the world as the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, India, and many others to write a total of just over 700,000,000 words. In addition to the website, the 250+ NaNoWriMo chapters around the world are “governed” by Municipal Liaisons, participating writers that organize write-ins and other activities that bring publicity, donations, and support to the event. This past November, approximately $120,000 was raised by voluntary
donations. In the spirit of NaNoWriMo and its goal of higher literacy
and writing ability, half of this money has been donated in turn to
Room to Read, an organization devoted to changing the world through the
education of children in underdeveloped countries. The money that
NaNoWriMo has donated is being used to build and equip four libraries
in the Asian country of Laos. More information about this program can
be found at Room to Read's official website. JonathanW3, a Potter’s School student, devised a fantasy plotline in which his heroine, a vampire bat, “devotes her life to breaking through the darkness of Esoteria, weaving her way through the web of deceit and crime.” As the heroine travels through the story, “she meets various other mythological beings, such as a geeky werewolf, a lot of fairies, and some nice old geezers.” While still in the fantasy genre, the plotline AbigailS, another Potter’s School student, chose for her novel included a blind heroine who is bestowed with Second Sight, a gift often seen in myths, who is the military leader for two ethnic groups as well as a prophet figure. The conflict of her story is the dilemma of situational ethics and whether the end can ever justify the means. Sarah Hayes, another Potter’s School student, chose a historical-romance genre for her novel and told the fictional story of a fifteen-year old girl, Gabrielle Farber, living in the south amid the crises of the Civil War. Sarah tells the story of Gabrielle and of her love for a man in the North. Both of their parents prohibit them to contact each other as they are on opposite sides of the War, and the story shows how Gabrielle decides who she will marry under these trying circumstances. We all faced challenges of one kind or another during this maddening month of writing. Sarah says that the largest challenge for her was finding enough time to write each day. Since the goal of NaNoWriMo is to reach 50,000 words in the thirty days of November, 1667 words must be written each day to keep on track, and finding the time to write them is a real concern for most participants. Sarah advises that anyone interested in participating should “try to make time, even if it doesn’t seem like you have any.” The challenge that I faced every single day of the event was to be consistent in my daily writing. While fairly good at giving small spurts of energy to a short-term project, NaNoWriMo forced me to be consistent and determined to get those 1667 words out each day, even when it became harder and harder as each day passed. The main challenge that Lauren Mousolf, a Potter’s School student, encountered was “keeping all my facts straight. There are so many characters, creatures, places, names, storylines, and descriptions that it’s impossible to remember it all. Add that to trying to keep the sequence of events in order and you’ve got a real mess.” Because of the many challenges we faced, we had to devise our own little ways to overcome them. The many details in Lauren’s story made her decide to keep several documents on her computer detailing character profiles, important information for various places in her story, a timeline, and even a history of her fantasy world. These documents helped her in that she didn’t have to keep mountains of information about her story in her head; simply accessing the right document produced all the information she needed. Because the single-largest challenge that most WriMos, as NaNoWriMo participants are called, encountered this year was having a deep enough plotline in which to write 50,000 words, Sarah plans on having “a complete plotline in base” before she begins next year. Lauren made a similar discovery. She says that if she were to do this all over again, she would plan “months in advance so that I could think up a reasonable plot.” Not entirely knowing where we wanted our stories to go and what we wanted to say presented a serious inhibition to our writing, and mapping it all out in advance would undoubtably result in much more ease in the process and much higher quality in the end. Listening to music is one way of keeping yourself going through the month as the beginning excitement begins to wear off, too. Music recharges your creative batteries like nothing else will, and it is, as KatrianaD, who is another TPS student, said, “the best invention ever in the history of writerkind.” We all learned many things this month. Lauren says that the thing she’ll take away from having participated in NaNoWriMo is the “opportunity to learn more about writing.” MicahS, another participating Potter’s School student, learned that if you “make a deadline for yourself, you will get more done.” That is the beauty of this whole experience. Make a deadline for yourself, share the resulting suffering and travails of setting a high goal for yourself with your fellow compatriots, and then plunge in, not allowing yourself to get in the way of your true writing potential. Jonathan eloquently states the process of NaNoWriMo as making you “write so hard that you die and resurrect as a linguistic zombie, feverishly pecking away at the keyboard to achieve the desired word count.” In other words, we all learned that NaNoWriMo is a process of life, death, and resurrection as a writer. As you begin, the month looks pretty good, but the true test is yet to begin. At one time or another through the month, you hit a wall, and it seems as if you can go no further. It is at this moment, though, that the true journey is just beginning, for this wall requires that you find a way to scale it and find the writing freedom that lies beyond. The eloquence and elusive beauty of NaNoWriMo, then, is of forcing yourself and your writing abilities up to a level that you didn’t think was attainable. From this, I learned that writing is not only for the “professionals,” but that writing is a hobby that can be enjoyed by everyone, though maybe more for the experience than for the end result. After finishing up the month, we noticed in hindsight several things we’d like to have done differently. The main thing I wished I’d not done was checked my word count every five minutes. It is very important to simply let yourself write freely and not stop to check how many words you’ve written. Once you’ve overcome your internal editor in the first few minutes of writing, don’t let it back in by stopping yourself from your writing, even if your curious to know how many words you’ve written. In the end, you’ll have written a whole lot more than you thought possible. Like I said earlier, doing some serious prewriting strategies like brainstorming, outlining, and research before ever putting “pen to paper” is helpful in that it cuts down on the amount of time spent thinking about what to write. Creating character profiles for each major character in our stories is another thing that would have been helpful. For those readers who might be interested in participating in NaNoWriMo next year, I would like to offer a little advice I’ve gleaned from my experience this year. I started NaNoWriMo this year with very little prewriting under my belt, which resulted in more difficult writing as the month progressed. Because of this, the first suggestion I would give you is to start in October and brainstorm some ideas of what you want your novel to be about. This is crucial to the actual writing stage that is to come in November. After you have some ideas of what you want to write about, go back through them and create a rough outline, showing all the events that need to be present in order to get your story from the beginning to the end. With your rough outline done, pick out three or four important characters in your story and fill out one of the many character profiles that are available on the Internet. One such profile is available at this website. Basically, develop who your characters are, what kind of personalities they have, what their role(s) is/are going to be in your story, and how they interact with each other. After you’ve done this, you may find that your outline is a little outdated. If so, go back and revise it, adding any more details you may have collected from the character profiling. I believe I speak for many of us when I
say that as November 30th came and went, we felt slightly dazed by the
whole experience. We’d written thousands upon thousands of words for
our novels, which require serious revision and/or more content to
finish the plotline, and now we are asking ourselves, “What now?
Is this all there is?” We’d had a blast, and we needed to know where to
go from here. Well, it turns out that since Chris Baty started
NaNoWriMo back in 1999, several similar programs have been started
indenendantly by other writers. Below I’ve summarized a few of the
major programs, listed when they start and end, and shown what they’re
all about.
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