November Means Write a Novel

For many, the month of November is about a change in seasons, the upcoming onslaught of holidays, hunting, and so on. For others however, November is all about writing a novel. A whole novel? Yes. Edited, polished, and ready for publication? Well, no. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) or NaNo, is all about quantity, not quality. It's for the person who longs to write a novel, but never takes the time to sit down and do it, gets bogged down in sentence number three of chapter one, or has a hard time conceiving the whole plot. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to pump out 50,000 words in 30 days. If you do the math on this, it works out to about 1666 words per day. If you want to finish early, shoot for 2000 per day. When faced with the monumental task of producing 50,000 words, the writer quickly abandons fears of imperfect sentences. Why bother? As a writer friend of mine says, "Editing is so much easier than writing." Once you have a blob of a draft on a page, you have something to work with, something to mold, cut, re-shape, and perfect. Not everyone agrees that NaNo is a good idea. I have argued with writers about the merits of NaNo. I concede that it's not for everyone, especially well-established, published authors. (Stephen King doesn't need NaNo personally, but he's welcome to encourage the rest of us). For the pre-published (as William Kent Krueger kindly refers to unpublished writers), NaNo is a terrific exercise. The first year I participated in NaNo, I conceived of an entire series of mysteries. While I like to read mysteries, I never thought I would try to write one, let alone a series. (Unfortunately, some time in December of that year, I inadvertently brushed the memory stick containing my 50,000 words into the garbage, and so Year 1 is somewhere in a landfill). Year 2 I decided to write an epic poem. This was the worst writing idea I've ever had. I don't think I even made it to 10,000 words that year. This year, I'm off and writing again, back to the novel idea. I'm currently at about 13,000 words, which is slightly behind, but I'm not worried. I'll let you know next month if I made it.