A Novel November
I’m gonna take a break from my faith-themed posts for a while (I was starting a trend, if you hadn’t noticed) to announce that once again, November is nearly upon us! This means that in a few days’ time, National Novel Writing Month will begin! Woohoo!!
If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, then you’re probably not a writer and so this post will not interest you. But since my zee got me a shirt that proclaimed me to be “Feeling Writer”, I feel obligated to at least try to write something this month. It’ll be my first time participating in NaNoWriMo (I signed up just today), and while the task does seem daunting – to write a 50,000-word novel in one month, that’s 1,667 words a day – I think I should be able to manage.
If you’ve ever thought for a moment that you had a story in your head that you wanted to see in actual words, I suggest you visit nanowrimo.org and give it a try. The goal of the activity is simply to churn out word after word, with little or no regard for quality, just to have your very own first rough draft. Don’t worry about your messed up prose, that can be fixed in December. The important thing is not to let the story stagnate in your brain. It could run out of food and die.
It is nice to know that the people at nanowrimo aren’t professional novel authors. They’re normal people like you and me, with regular classes and day jobs, trying to churn out the stories they fell in love with.They’re funny, supportive and admirably positive, even though a lot of them have failed at hitting 50,000 year after year after year. They vent their frustration with adorable little haikus, ask for mentors to nag them when they’ve been idle, and even have meet-ups and chat sessions for people in your region. (The Asia::Philippines region had a meet-up last Saturday, which I unfortunately missed.) If you’ve tried and failed at getting very far into your stories, there’s no better month than November to try again.
And if you feel like giving up along the way, check out the pep talk by some famous authors, like this one from Neil Gaiman. It’s nice to know that even the most successful writers feel like losers sometimes too. ^_^
So.
What to write?
Hey! Thanks for visiting my site and the Pinoywrimos website.
I’m glad you decided to join — it’s going to be a fun November!
We’ll be having a write-in/meet up mid-November, so you can still meet other Pinoywrimos then.
Hope to see you there!
Tina
28 Oct 08 at 6:02 pm
hi frank, somebody also gave me that “feeling writer “shirt from artwork, di tingali ko writer, feeling lang, heheh,=).. im gonna check the site later, the best of luck sa imong novel! =)
akosikai
1 Nov 08 at 2:04 am