Wednesday, October 5, 2011

National Novel Writing Month

NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, stretches from the first day of November every year and continues to the end of November which is my birthday. 

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time.  That averages out to about 1,650ish per day.  Most feature length articles that journalists spend writing for several days to a week are 2-2,500 words.  So writing that many words everyday from scratch with out editing everyday is a painstaking process.

Who: You! Everyone and anyone can do this and unless there are more people taking part it won't be as much fun as it will be.  "Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together."

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.  The site name is nanowrimo.org

I fully intend on participating and belting out a thrilling crap-tastic excuse for a novel with the goal of capping it off on my birthday, November 30th.  One more thing to add though, your piece must be fiction.  Anybody can write a nonfiction piece but, to build your own story, develop new characters and create and describe non existent worlds, towns, objects or anything really is much more of a challenge.  Good luck to everyone who is participating and I would love to hear everyone's ideas for the project.

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