Nanowrimo

It’s gimmicky, it’s quirky, it’s artificial, but it’s fun.

November is National Novel Writing Month, often called Nanowrimo. The participants are called Wrimos.

People all over the world sign up to face the challenge of writing a novel of 50,000 words in one month.

The goal is to end the month with a rough draft, or at least a substantial portion of a rough draft.

Why November? I’m not sure. But with 30 days, to meet the goal, a person has to write 1,666.6 words a day.

That’s not really much. On a good day, I can churn out 5,000 words, especially if I tune down the internal editor who wants me to stop every few words and see if there’s not a better way to say that.

Some years I have signed up for Nanowrimo. Writing is often a very solitary activity. The organization provides a lot of support and the opportunity to meet other people who like to write. After I first signed up for it ten years ago, I met several other people who were interested in forming a critique group. We did so, and the core group is still together, still supporting one another.

Various regional groups schedule activities and write-ins. One person serves as the Municipal Liaison (ML) and coordinates an area’s activities, both in person and on-line.

This certainly isn’t for everyone. Many people are sufficiently self-disciplined to do their writing without such an artificial framework, or don’t want to have arbitrary perimeters set by an outside entity.

At a certain stage in my writing, I find the structure to be helpful and fun. I have a basic idea of what I want to write, how it begins and how it ends, and when I aim at 2,000 words a day (to give me a little wiggle room for days like Thanksgiving, when I’m unlikely to write at all) I have to keep plowing ahead instead of stopping to rework what I have.

I fear that, if I let myself do it, I could be one of those writers who come up with fifty versions of chapter one, and never get beyond that. Or even page one.

Last year I didn’t participate, and this year I’m finding I have all kinds of trouble with the website. I acknowledge that I’m a “technofeeb,” i.e. someone who has an inordinate amount of difficulty using modern technology. Most of today’s writers seem to instinctively know how to navigate the website, etc, but I’m still at the point where anytime I manage to find something on the website is coincidental, and I can’t remember how I managed to find it, so I can never find it again. At the present time, I haven’t yet figured out how to contact the people in my region, including a few who live very close by (but I can’t find that page anymore!) or how to post my word count. I’ll keep looking. And if I can find a write-in that is scheduled reasonably nearby at a convenient time, I will go meet some people in the area who are also interested in writing, which is, to me, the major advantage.

At this point, I feel like I’ve spent as much time fumbling around on the website as I have writing.

Of course anyone can set their own guidelines, any time, and many people achieve their results with no such external framework. And some people don’t want to share their writing experience in this way. We all have different ways of expressing ourselves.

I hope to come out of the month with 50,000 words toward a new novel. It will be 50,000 words dreadfully in need of editing, but it will be a good start.

Here’s a link to the website: http://nanowrimo.org

Have you ever participated in Nanowrimo, or considered doing it?