National Novel Writing Month 2013

It's nearly November, which is, as the title suggests, National Novel Writing Month, commonly abbreviated to NaNoWriMo.

NaNo, for those who don't know, is a contest--if one could use that word--wherein you write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. 30 days for 50,000 words. (some crazy people get it done in 3 days. I'm not one of them.) It is a month of wild abandon, building worlds, making characters and killing them off, bringing them back, sending in plot ninjas to increase your wordcount, valiantly fending off plot bunnies, sending your main character to the top of a volcano and back just because you can, and other such reckless creative energy.

It is so much fun.

It takes you from saying "I want to write a novel" to "I have written a novel" (at least...if you can manage to edit it...but that's for December. and January.) and inspires confidence, no matter if you do or do not reach the goal of 50,000 words. If you write two chapters, two paragraphs, two sentences--that is more than you had before, more than existed in the world before. They went from being in your head to on paper (or computer screen, yes, but paper is the traditional way of thinking of it. You can write it out, if you want).

There are rules, and there are sticklers for them, but NaNo is about creativity more than rules, and you can bend them however you like. Don't want to write 50k? Then don't. Want to write two novels? Write them. Writing nonfiction? Fanfiction? Scripts? Plays? Whatever you do, it is probably more than you have done and it is going to be a blast.

I personally am going to try to write my entire novel within the first 6 days of November. (So as to reward myself with going to see Thor: The Dark World on the 7th when I finish. Christopher Eccleston makes one brilliant word count reward, what can I say.) I'm furiously scribbling thoughts and sketching out characters and building my universe and figuring out how things work there and envisioning sequels and waiting for midnight, October 31st, to begin writing. Or is that midnight, November 1st? That night. As soon as I can begin. That's when I'm going to type out my story and see how fast my fingers can truly fly.

Oh, this is going to be fun.

The official website can be found here: http://nanowrimo.org/