Sebastian’s Team Pick:
Have you ever wanted to write a novel? Has anyone ever told you you should be a writer? Has anyone ever called you self-involved? Do you jot down “creative ideas” in a moleskine or like to spend hours at an old fashioned typewriter? If you answered yes to any of the above, then you should probably write a novel this month. I’m going to!
Just like last year, November is National Novel Writing Month, or as the hip kids call it NaNoWriMo. And NaNoWriMo has a campaign to help all of us (recent) aspiring-novelists get those words flowing. They challenge you to write a 50,000-word novel between Nov 1 and Nov 31 at 11:59:99 PM.
[It’s] a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. This approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.
If you sign up at NaNoWriMo.org you get to update and track your word count online, you’ll receive pep talks from published authors, and you have access to the forums (and seriously there is a forum for everything – are you a queer chick looking to write queer scifi – forum for that…. single 20-something writing historic fiction? forum for that!) and regional groups. Plus the regional groups have meetups for caffeine-fueled writing sessions. And if you meet the 50k word goal, your name gets added to the official list of NaNoWriMo winners!
If none of this is selling you on the campaign, just think of how sexy you’ll sound when you tell women (or whatever gender you’re pursuing at the time) that you’re working on a novel. Think about it. Yeah, now you’re on board.
