In just 12 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes, and 58 seconds (or less depending on when you read this) NaNoWriMo will begin. What is NaNoWriMo, you ask? NaNoWriMo is an abbreviation of National Novel Writing Month. I call it NaNo for short. NaNo is a thirty day challenge for anyone who wants to write a novel. Starting November 1st your goal is to write fifty-thousand (50,000) words by the end of the month. All those who reach this goal are deemed winners. Although if you do not reach this goal you are not a loser. Pretty good deal if you ask me. The only rule: Thou shalt not EDIT! (at least not until December)
I will be participating this year. My second NaNo. I participated last year and I am very glad to say I won! My exact word count having been 50,511. I won't soon forget that!
What I love about NaNo is that it forces you to write. No dillydallying. No Spellchecking. No editing. No time. The no time part is what save me. My current novel has been in the works for about four years if I remember correctly. Why? Because I kept dillydallying, spellchecking, and editing. And I had lots of time to do it! I was going nowhere fast (or slow, for that matter). Actually, I was going nowhere.
When I dove into NaNo, however, that changed. I threw my inner editor in a cardboard box and shipped it to the moon. No more editing until my first draft was finished! However, my novel wasn't completely finished last year. Even though I'd reached my goal I still had a lot left to the story but I was determined to finish.
...Then February came...and my inner editor broke in and stole one of my characters away. And that was okay. She needed to go. I had realized that after NaNo had ended. She had exhausted her usefulness in one of my previous rewrites (I changed the whole idea of the story about four times before NaNo) and I was only holding on to her because she had been there from the beginning and I was feeling a bit nostalgic. At least, that's what my inner editor told me. And so away she went. And with her went the entire beginning of my NaNo rough draft. Why? Because even though she wasn't a main character anymore she was the reason all my main characters met up in the first place. And so what was my only option? Rewrite it.
After many months I have finally cooked up what I think is an equally (if not, more) interesting kick-off for my story. So this NaNo I will continue my rewriting because after this new beginning the middle and "end" (it's not really and end because I never got there) don't make as much sense. But I'm okay with that now because I feel that I've finally found a solid base (or at least a less rickety base) for my story.
NaNoWriMo is a time when writers go mad. And when writers go mad we have a blast! It's crazy, but if it weren't why would we do it?
NaNo saved my novel. But if I ever get my hands on the creators of this thing I'll have a hard time deciding whether to thank them or chew them out for organizing this thing in the middle of the SCHOOL YEAR!!! Seriously! "Thirty days has September, April, June, and November"! Why not June? WHY?
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