NaNoWriMo

November is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.  One month of writing joy or hell.  In that month, you commit to writing at least 1700 words per day every day of the month.  The goal is to have a small novella of approximately 50,000 words finished by November 30th.  As I stated above, this can be pure joy or this can be unadulterated hell.  It's usually a mix of the two.  Some days are a delight to sit and quietly produce 1500 words while other days it is torturous to try and pull out even ten words that make sense.

There are no themes or guidelines to direct what you write.  The story is created as you go along.  Some writers spend time producing outlines and character studies prior to the month of November, while others dive blindly into the task not knowing what is going to be produced or where it will go.

For some, the idea of blindly falling into creation will seem pure abject horror.  To compose a story on the go with little thought to the ideas, text, characters or mood is a task in itself.  Sitting and staring at a blank screen and expecting to come up with something that is halfway decent will be a daunting task, even for many accomplished writers, but a task that will prove as adventurous as jumping off a cliff with little more than a 60 pound giant kite strapped to your back and hope that physics, dynamics and lift all behave as they are supposed to. 

But isn't that the same thing that a writer will do to his character?  The writer says, “Let me take an average Joe and thrust fate upon him to become the hero we so desperately wish him to be.”  Joe, a normal accountant, is used to working nine to five on the fifth floor of Barney and Chesterton.  Every day he manipulates numbers on spreadsheets and produces results that are fed to the directors on the seventh floor.  That is until the writer shows up and decides that Joe's life is exceedingly boring and he needs a little excitement to break him out of this dull and dreary existence and awaken him to life. 

Enter deadly, blind, zombie ninjas bent on taking over all ten floors of Barney and Chesterton.  Joe is not asked to make the decision to become a hero, but forced by the hand of fate to take up the mantle and successfully defend his co-workers, thus ending his dull and dreary existence and becoming the fully self-realized hero that he should be.  Poor Joe.  What a mean and cruel beast fate, I mean, writers can be.

But that is exactly what you are asked to volunteer to do for the month of November.  Put aside your dreary writing life full of outlines, deadlines, characterizations and punctuations and take up the mantle to become the writing hero you were always destined to be.

With little thought to carpal tunnel syndrome, you are tasked with slaving over a keyboard with lukewarm coffee sitting at your side accompanied by a bagel with only one bite taken out of it.  With the sacrifice of hot coffee to warm and guide you, you blindly type hoping the next word entered onto the screen before you will inspire you to continue to the next, in an effort to produce a story worthy of Steinbeck in less time than he crafted The Grapes of Wrath.   (That would have been about 100 days.)

We would all imagine that as we take up the sword of writing and begin to swing we could craft a story arc that would rival J.R.R. Tolkien, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway or George Eliot.  That our story would become legendary among all who will read it.  That our prose will be reminiscent of those that we admire, Dorothea Benton-Frank, Terry Brooks and Stephen King.

Alas, the true hope is that our stories will at least make sense and don’t end up in the annals of embarrassment like Brian Griffin’s Faster than the Speed of Love.

I’m looking forward to November to see what kind of writing chops I might have and hope that I don’t cower in fear and defeat after only finishing two pages while wishing I had never attempted to be the writing hero.

For more information on NaNoWriMo, please go to http://www.nanowrimo.org