NaNoWriMo '11

Happy Halloween, dear readers! I hope everyone's having a great time dressing up, trick-or-treating, going to parties, or whatever it is you do to celebrate!

Halloween marks the last day of October, as you well know, and the last day before the writing craze NaNoWriMo begins. I don't mean to detract from Halloween here, but NaNoWriMo is a bit higher up on my list of priorities - and by 'a bit' I mean that I've been planning my novel for months, while I don't even have a Halloween costume this year (in case I need to go out, however, I can just grab my Hufflepuff scarf and say I'm studying charms and herbology).

HUFFLEPUFF.

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and in the 10+ years that it has been going on, it's grown into a well-known international write-a-novel-in-a-month project, with at least 200.000 members participating every year, and growing (and in case you're wondering, InNoWriMo sounds weird, so yes, we're keeping NaNoWriMo).

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50.000 word novel in 30 days, starting from 0:00 November 12st to 23:59 November 30th, the idea being that 50k words is the average length of a beginner novel (nowadays, I believe it's actually increased to 60k-75k). Participants can sign up on the NaNoWriMo website, which gets them access to weekly pep talks, a cool bar graph to check their progress, web badges, a funny web comic, a printable certificate if you 'win', and uber-helpful forums.

I'm a big fan of the NaNoToons.

This will be my fourth year participating in NaNoWriMo, and I've been lucky enough to win every year so far. The first year was a bit of an eye-opener. I planned out my novel, figured out who my characters were and what they'd be doing, and got partway through the month before realizing that there's a lot more room inside a novel that I thought. I hadn't planned out what my characters would be doing when they weren't solving the main plot, so there was a lot of wandering around, not making sense, and so on.

I was a bit more prepared my second year; I planned my novel down to the last detail. I knew all of my characters, exactly what they'd be doing and when, how long it would take in between events, and what would be going on in the downtime. It really helped that I was basing my story on a foreign miniseries I'd seen, too. I decided to go for 75k that year, but only ended up getting around 53k (which means I never actually finished that story).

Last year, I decided to go after a 100k goal. I did this because I had no job, and was only taking four classes at my local community college; compared to NaNoing during high school, I felt like I had so much free time, and I owed it to myself to write more. I managed to meet my 100k goal without nearly as much planning as the year before, though I meandered around for about 80k words and completely forgot to include a couple subplots.

See, the thing about the NaNoWriMo novel is that it's a bit less than a rough draft; it's a rough draft for your rough draft. While some people may have time to edit as they go, most NoNoers just shoot out words, hoping they'll be readable when they go back to edit. If you misspell something, there's really no time to go back and fix it. If this sentence is awkward or grammatically incorrect, or if it's totally impossible for the hypothetical reader to understand what you're saying, too bad; keep going.

[Sometime this month, I'll upload an excerpt from my novel, so you can see what I mean. It'll be fun.]

Some people criticize NaNoWriMo for that 'lack of quality' aspect, but honestly, how many people have written a full, complete novel on their first try? My guess is none. Or maybe one person, but his name is James Joyce and that novel is Finnegans Wake, and thousands call it 'quality writing' because their English Teachers forced them to (I'm not a fan of Finnegans Wake, or Ulysses, or anyone who would write that and call it a novel).

Most novelists edit out or change most of what they write in their novel's first draft (I wont bother giving you an arbitrary statistic, since I'll have made it up anyways). If there's no first draft, however, there's nothing to edit. Getting that first draft out on the blank paper is the hardest part, but once you've done that, you can finally mold your story into what you really want it to be.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to get people to write. I've heard people say they want to write a book, and never do it, and NaNoWriMo was created to give those people that opportunity, because left to their own devices, most people would give up on their novel, or never start it in the first place.

In fact, even with NaNoWriMo, most people never finish their novels. With 200.000 members online, only about 40.000 people passed the 50k mark last year. Even with the awesome support group that NaNoWriMo provides, many people lose heart and give up partway through.

The fact that I've 'won' NaNoWriMo the last three years makes me one of the lucky few who have persevered through it. This year, with still too much free time on my hands, I'm aiming towards a 100k goal again. With enough hard work and just a little luck, this will be my fourth NaNo win in a row.

By now, I've come to a bit of a routine when it comes to NaNoWriMo. For starters, I'll be heading to bed extra early this evening - sometime around 6:00 or 7:00. My alarm will be set for 11:30, so that by midnight I'll be good and ready to start my noveling adventure.

By 3:00 in the morning, I should be done with tomorrow's word goal, at which time I can either keep going or turn in for the night, to get a bit more sleep before classes tomorrow. Tuesdays tend to be busy for me, and with this schedule I wont have to worry too much.

My novel-in-progress is saved on whichever laptop I'm using, as well as a thumb-size 4GB jump drive, which I'll carry around with me all month (I'm thinking of wearing it on a chain around my neck, because it's small enough. People'll think I'm making a cyberpunk fashion statement, but really I'm just keeping my novel close). With the jump drive, I can easily write on the library computers or at any other computer I happen to find myself with this month.

I'll be giving specific updates on my progress over on my Tumblr account, and I'll add a chart or graph or something to the left for you to follow along with my daily word count here as well. I'll try my hardest to keep up with trice-a-week blog posts, but if I miss a few days, you'll know why.

Wish me luck! NaNoWriMo is a crazy writing challenge, and there's a chance I may die in the process. If you haven't participated in NaNoWriMo yet, and are thinking about it, I highly suggest it! It's not for the faint of heart, but it's so much fun and so worth it!