I’m late to the game for this year, but next November NaNoWriMo is going on my calendar; what a wonderful thing! I had heard about it via Dan Ward’s blog, and from Rich Griffith. You go guys! I’m rooting for you!
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.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
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.
How can you resist?
With my Ho‘ohana on parenting on the brain, when I poked around the NaNoWriMo site, this page caught my eye: It’s a fabulous Letter to Parents:
Dear Parent,
It’s among a parent’s worst nightmares. A child comes home and declares that he or she wants to write a novel in November. You’re asking yourself where you went wrong in raising a child who would want to attempt such a foolish feat. After all, the National Novel Writing Month website specifically says that participants aim for quantity, not quality. A rushed and sloppy novel may be the last thing you want to encourage your child to create.
But there are many great reasons to embrace your child’s literary leanings (and maybe even give NaNoWriMo a shot yourself!).
Click in to read those reasons why. Good stuff.
“How long did it take you to write it?” is one of the most frequently asked questions I get about Managing with Aloha, and if you take my answer as an example, the focus that NaNoWriMo encourages does work.