Nanowrimo, for those who haven't heard, stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's an annual challenge that was begun by Chris Baty from San Francisco in 1999, and has since become an international writing event. People from around the world huddle around their humble laptops and clicketyclack out the 50 000 words required for the challenge, staving off the various quotidian elements of life - the jobs, the socialising, the family, the sunlight - for a chance of that congratulatory electronic certificate that says 'You did Nanowrimo, and that makes you okay!'. (On that international note, it really should be Innanowrimo nowadays, but that's a little less catchy.) I love Nanowrimo not because it forces people to produce tonnes of unpublishable writing. It gets people used to the idea of it, the strain and emptybellied stress of it. It's as much about the journey as the challenge. So there's a tonne of helpful content on the site (here) about writer's block, plotting and writing endurance.
And if you don't have any idea of what to write, then that's okay. The offical slogan of Nanowrimo is 'No plot? No problem!'. So what are you waiting for? Get off your figurative arse and put your figurative fingers to work! Tap those keys, squeeze that pen, take your writerly self out for a mindwalk.
Now to the point of this blog post. I have wanted to win Nanowrimo since I heard about it five years ago, and I have decided that this must be the year. I have not yet started however, and it's almost the middle of the month...
So what I'm proposing is EXTREME NANOWRIMO! Writing 50 000 words in fifteen days. It's going to be tough, unusual and unnecessary, but it's going to be FUN. And I want you, any of you, to join me on the quest for novelism. It will start on Monday, and we could maybe meet for coffee and sleep deprivation stories that are related to the stories we struggle with.
Also, the above picture is a reference to Arrested Development, the television show. Michael, a real estate company manager, promises the board that he will build a new model home in six weeks, but his brother Gob (pictured) in a spectacularly misguided effort at oneup-manship declares that he will build it in three weeks. Then since Gob is a magician by trade pennies suddenly appear in his hand and he throws them on the boardroom table. So come do the EXTREME challenge and I will throw pennies at you.
I will also update this blog entry as I continue on my journey.
Sj Finch
for dotdotdash
and extreme noveling
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I did NaNoWriMo last year and I'm a little ahead of schedule for completing it this year too, and I have to say that there's only really one trick you need to make it. And that's: write. There's nothing else to it. There's people that do the 50,000 words in the first week, there's even people that do the 50,000 words in the first day (don't ask me how...) But yeah, I'll probably monitor this blog to follow your progress, as the 50,000 in 15 days is quite an achievement. Not impossible, but quite an achievement. I'm actually aiming for around 75,000 words this month for my own novel, so it should be a pretty interesting month to say the least! Good luck, you crazy son-of-a-gun.
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