By Heather Stromski
November has begun, and to most people, that means sleeping off their candy hangover, putting decorations away and starting to fret earnestly over the winter holidays. However, to a growing pool of aspiring writers, the first of November kicks off the start of 30 days of putting pen to paper – or fingers to computer keys, as it were – to knock out fifty thousand words or more during National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, for short.
November has begun, and to most people, that means sleeping off their candy hangover, putting decorations away and starting to fret earnestly over the winter holidays. However, to a growing pool of aspiring writers, the first of November kicks off the start of 30 days of putting pen to paper – or fingers to computer keys, as it were – to knock out fifty thousand words or more during National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, for short.
The premise is to take an idea for a novel and give it a jumpstart. In a typical novel, fifty thousand words is a drop in the pond – for example, that is less than a third of Dan Brown’s thriller The Da-Vinci Code. However, for some, that jumpstart is what helps to get them over the hump and get the most important ideas down: who their characters are, why they do what they do, and where they’re going, or what they’re aiming toward.
The official NaNoWriMo website offers tons of help: forums where you can get advice, find writing prompts, or even swap characters with another writer, arranged meet-ups with other local participants, pep talks from various published authors and much more. The website tracks your progress for you when you save your work in your personal area and tells you when you’ve met your daily goal or how much more you need to be on track. Participants who ‘win’ NaNoWriMo by meeting the 50,000-word goal gain access to a myriad of prizes that range from valuable discounts on writing software and publishing assistance to free copies of their finished works once they are published.
The official NaNoWriMo website offers tons of help: forums where you can get advice, find writing prompts, or even swap characters with another writer, arranged meet-ups with other local participants, pep talks from various published authors and much more. The website tracks your progress for you when you save your work in your personal area and tells you when you’ve met your daily goal or how much more you need to be on track. Participants who ‘win’ NaNoWriMo by meeting the 50,000-word goal gain access to a myriad of prizes that range from valuable discounts on writing software and publishing assistance to free copies of their finished works once they are published.
As with anything, NaNoWriMo has its rules: your work must begin on November 1st, and must be new, not a continuation of something you started writing beforehand, though a sequel to a previous work is allowed. The tracker is programmed to note whether what has been entered is only one or two words repeated thousands of times. Your work should be done alone, but you can become a NaNo ‘Rebel’ and work together; you just have to maintain your own accounts and validate your counts separately. NaNoWriMo is by no means an English-language only project, you can write and validate in your preferred language.
Think you have what it takes? It’s not too late to start! Visit http:www.nanowrimo.org for more information!
Keep an eye out this week for the first blog entry from our very own Charlotte Fraser, as she tackles NaNoWriMo 2013!
Think you have what it takes? It’s not too late to start! Visit http:www.nanowrimo.org for more information!
Keep an eye out this week for the first blog entry from our very own Charlotte Fraser, as she tackles NaNoWriMo 2013!