November is National Novel Writing Month

Ah, November… the month of unceasing rain. Lucky us, it’s come early this year. Paraphrasing Bradbury:

It was a soft rain, a perpetual rain, a cold and melancholy rain; it was a mist, a drizzle, a fountain, dripping down the spine, soaking through raincoats; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains; and it never stopped.

November, and indeed most of the Pacific Northwest winter, reminds me of Bradbury’s All Summer in a Day, where children living on a foreign planet get to see the sun for only one hour every seven years. Forget Venus – come to Seattle.

So what are we to do to chase the chill from our bones and bring the memory of light back to our ashen faces? Why, write of course! The rain may keep us inside for a month (or seven) but that just gives us fewer interruptions to participate in National Novel Writing Month. What is NaNoWriMo? It’s the “Kamikaze” approach to Novel Writing. As I’ve mentioned before, everyone has a story to write and all we really need to get it out is a DEADLINE and a concrete goal. Use NaNoWriMo to get a big head start on your entry for the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association Literary Contest! (Due February 22, 2008, in case you forgot.)

Who: You, Me, and thousands of other poor sods around the world
What: Write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel
When: Between midnight, November 1 and midnight, November 30. Sign up between October 1 and November 30.
Why: Because Deadlines are Magic. I never wrote a paper through high school or college that wasn’t done the Night Before It Was Due. After, of course, cleaning my dorm room, doing my laundry, calling my parents, and bellyaching to my roommate. Without a deadline, nothing gets done. With a long, drawn-out deadline, nothing gets done. Here is your chance to get that story out of your head and down on paper. Your soul will feel better for it.

Think you are too busy to do it this November? I just signed up (friend me) and I’m spending my November traipsing around the world: London through November 6, Zurich November 9-15, and Denver November 21-25. That being the case, I’ve signed up for the NaNoWriMo regional groups for all three cities in addition my hometown. When will I have time to write? That’s what airplanes are for!

As a project-oriented perfectionist, NaNoWriMo is what I need to finally get my butt in gear: a deadline and a low-bar for quality. My biggest obstacle to writing is that I always feel it isn’t good enough, despite the fact that my rational brain knows the first step is getting the ideas on paper and editing-polishing-perfectionizing comes much later. Earlier this summer I started writing a paranormal romance novel, only to write the first three chapters and then rewrite the first three chapters and then start rewriting them again…. finally abandoning the project in frustration. I need to get. it. out. Most publishers are looking for 90-100 thousand words, so NaNoWriMo will get me half-way there. I’ll have December through February 22nd to polish the first 28 pages for my entry to the PNWA Lit Contest and March through July to write and polish another 50 thousand words for a complete manuscript. Wish me luck!

The NaNoWriMo people sum it up best – “Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.”

Explore posts in the same categories: Writer's Cramp

Tags: literary contest, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, rain, Seattle, writing

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