NaNoWriMo Starts

Posted by Colin Harvey Nov 1, 2009

November 1st marks the start of NaNoWriMo. It's a date I've had in my calendar for some time, and I've been watching it's approach with increasing trepidation.

For the unitiated (and *where* have you been?) NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write a complete novel of 50,000 words between the 1st and the 30th of November. That's not a full novel at commercial length for adults of course, so much as a rough first draft, and it's best approached after creating a detailed synopsis. As such, can it provide an excellent framework which can be revised to final draft status.

And it's a daunting prospect, even for an experienced author.

That's close to 1700 words per day, for 30 consecutive days.

I won't actually be formally taking the challenge, as I've written some 4000 words already, but the effects will be roughly the same.

Long blog posts will dwindle to almost nothing, and will probably mostly be simple word counts, or links to other posts. And I'll only be responding to urgent messages, for which I apologize in advance. If I manage to get on top of the word count --and there are complicating factors which I won't go into here-- then that might change.

Right, I'm off; time to get started.