By Sharon

November is NaNoWriMo time—national novel writing month where writers aim to write 50,000 words during the month of November. Challenging? Oh yeah, this is the last week and I’m dreaming about word counts.

I learned about NaNo last month when a friend decided to use the competition to stop procrastinating and get words on the page. I’d never heard of NaNo, but thought it was a great idea—for her. Then NaNo started popping up everywhere. Calls for writing buddies went out over the TRW’s writing loop. In my virtual world writing groups, NaNo members came out of the woodworks to inspire writers into action.

The popularity of the competition throughout the writing community was enough to convince me to at least learn a bit more about it. Thank God for Google. On the NaNo website the competition is described as a fun seat-of-your-pants approach to writing. Since time is limited, production is about quantity not quality. At first, I didn’t like the suggestion that writing crap really doesn’t matter.  But then I started to think about the inner critic in me that slows me down. What would it be like to just write: no editing, no research, no tearing down? But what about waste not, want not? Could I justify a month of free-writing? The practical, anal side of me needed satisfaction.

Then I realized I had a book outlined. I’d used Karen Wiesner’s Rough Draft in Thirty Days to fully outline a novel. I’m still finding my way in the novel writing business, seeing what best works for me. I wrote two books as a seat-of-your-pantster, and had decided to try the outline approach for a change. The last step in the outline process is to put your draft on the shelf for as long as you can—two weeks minimum—before you start writing the book. I could use that draft for NaNoWriMo and not feel that I was wasting time.

Write 50,000 words in a month? The idea had merit. I’d have half my novel written, something to work with at least. Who knows what creativity is stifled in my usual obsession to rewrite each scene before moving onto the next.

I registered with NaNo on October 31st, added writing buddies, joined the NaNo group with Second Life, got a handle on how many words per day this entailed—about 1,700. I mulled over the first scene of my book, ready to start writing the next day. 

I just want to say the task wasn’t nearly as daunting during the first week. I kept to my daily word count, rooted for my writing buddies, took encouragement from the NaNo support group. I live in the Toronto region where people were meeting in cafes to write together; a great idea if only I could get there.

I’ve found this writing process both grueling and freeing. It’s definitely a challenge for me to write nearly 2,000 words a day, seven days a week. Inevitably life happens, and I’ve gotten behind a few times, actually I’m always behind. But it’s still doable and I’m not giving up. Having no time to re-write means constantly moving forward, telling the story, getting to know the characters, and I can see the merit in that.

When the competition ends, I know I won’t keep up this pace, but I’ll try to keep to the philosophy as I write the next 50,000 words. No rewriting. Let the story be told in one fell swoop. It will be a different experience to edit an entire book at once, and for me this is all a learning experience. So, in keeping with NaNoWriMo, I’m posting this article as is, no re-writing. I don’t have the time!          

Learn about National Novel Writing Month at: www.nanowrimo.org

Image is from the Nano website