I figured while I’m on this writing kick, I’d post something about National Novel Writing Month, or Nanowrimo.  When I first heard about this years ago, immediately my adrenaline flooded into my bloodstream.  Write an entire novel in just 1 month.  No more, no less.

As Nike is fond of saying, “Just do it.”  It was such a simple proposition I just had to do it.  Problem was, I found out about Nanowrimo on October 30th, a scant 2 days before it started.  Most people spend the better part of the year preparing for it.  Needless to say, it didn’t go so well then.

Then real life had to rear its ugly head at me for a few years and it was put aside.  However it was always in the back of my mind to go back and do it again, this time with the goal of actually completing it.  2009 might not be the year for that, as I will most likely be out on tour supporting Horror Screenwriting, but I think that also gives me the opportunity to plan ahead for it.

The Nanowrimo organization has grown considerably since I was visitor to there many years ago, but the stated goal is still the same:

“National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.”

Still simple, only now it has a massive coordinated support group system all over the world.  It even inspired my own 48-Hour Screenplay Competition, which, admittedly, isn’t for everyone.  Both follow the same philosophy though: get it finished, worry about the edits later.

So why exactly am I posting about this in Februrary?  Because a lot of people who would otherwise do it forget and then find themselves on October 31st suddenly remembering and then saying, “Oh well, maybe next year.”  Rinse.  Repeat.  And it never gets done.

So if you think you’re up for the challenge for writing fifty thousand words in a single month (it’s not as hard as it sounds), then get prepared for it now.  Keep it marked on your calendars in plain view.  Start your outlines now and work on them in your spare time here and there over the next 9 months.  Then when November 1st rolls around, you’ll be armed and ready to hit that word processor, typewriter, or stone tablet running.

And just to give you a point of reference, this post is a little over four hundred fifty words, and it took about 10 minutes to write.  I had a plan going in about what to talk about and put it down in the WordPress editor.  That’s almost one percent of a Nanowrimo novel right there.

See?  That wasn’t so hard, was it?