November is National Novel Writing Month, affectionately and commonly known as NaNoWriMo. I’m horrendously inept at writing fiction, but I’m going to try it anyway.
What exactly is NaNoWriMo?
The goal is to write an entire novel in 30 days. The minimum word count to shoot for is 50,000 words, which means 1,667 words a day. The point isn’t to write the next War and Peace, it’s to just churn out a short novel.
As I said before, this isn’t really up my alley. I don’t write any fiction, ever, and I never have. This is extremely out of my comfort zone and realm of experience. But I’ve always wanted to write a novel, just so I can have accomplished it. It’s one of those “bucket list” items, you know?
My plan
I’m a blogger. I can write blog posts. So my novel is essentially going to be a series of blog posts. That’s the medium that I feel comfortable with, so that’s what I’m going with.
Next Tuesday—one week from today—is November 1 and the start of NaNoWriMo. I’ve started writing out a big list of “blog posts” that I’ll go through, and I’ll write one or two a day. All together, hopefully they’ll be something resembling a novel.
I’m going to write my novel using Scrivener, which is an AWESOME piece of software that I’ll talk about more at some point in the future.
What happens after the 30 days?
At the end of NaNoWriMo, I’ll have a crappy novel. I’ll spend some time going through it and editing it and stuff, and then give it away on the blog here and sell the Kindle version for 99 cents on Amazon. I’ll print out a copy of it and put it on my shelf to admire. And then I’ll never write fiction again.
NaNoWriMo resources
Here are some links and other stuff to inspire and help you out if NaNoWriMore is something you’re interested in.
- NaNoWriMo.org [The official site]
- How to Write a Novel in 30 Days [Squidoo]
- Matt Cutts from Google gives a short TED talk about trying new things for 30 days [YouTube]
- How to write a 50,000 word novel in a month [Scary-Crayon]
- How to Write a Novel in 30 Days [Abundance Blog]
- No Plot? No Problem! [A book written by the dude behind NaNoWriMo]
- Book in a Month [Another book]
Final words
Even if you have no desire to write a novel, how about just writing some kind of ebook in November? Instead of NaNoWriMo, you can call it NaEbWriMo (it doesn’t flow quite as well, though, does it?).
You can do it! If you need ebook ideas, I’ve got a big list here.
- Are you going to take up the NaNoWriMo challenge?
- Do you have any grain of desire to write a novel?
- Are you at least going to take up the NaEbWriMo challenge?
- What are some other writing and/or NaNoWriMo tips you’ve got for a poor writer like me?
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
“And then I’ll never write fiction again” . . . until next November! I’m predict that you’ll enjoy this so much you’ll do it again next year. It seems like a great way to spend a month!
This made me laugh. Good for you!! You may find the hidden talent you never knew you had :-)
sounds like quite a challenge ;-)
glad i got to read this, i’ve “still” got your ht make a video article up, and want to read it more carefully to see how i might be able to use a small camera like that to shoot a one-person shoot (of myself) talking
anyway, back to this article; i did have a question and a suggestion
first, the question, can a person offer their 99¢ kindle version for free on their site without amazon changing the price on their site? my layman’s read of their agreement seemed to say so, but if you find out for sure either way, please let us know, be good info
second, a suggestion for your month of novelizing ;-)
i’m using a similar method i’ll suggest, on some photo-poems i’ve been working on, which is to create a fictional character you like, that is doing “something” related to the blog posts you’ve chosen
like : 1) the narrator of the blogs has an “outside” life that creeps more and more into the blog posts, 2) the blog posts follow a fictional character’s public experiments that the blog posts are illustrating, 3) the blog posts and “a” personal diary get intermingled with unexpected results!
anyway, just ideas ;-)
my experience is to do the narrative, even if daily as you plan, then go back gestaltly and rewrite to make whole – this second phase is almost like fun-cheating cause you already have the full skeleton and lots of the muscles and shape
looking fwd to seeing what you come up with tristan ;-)
Time to do something which can be challenging for us.
Did you know that you can join NaNoWrimo by writing non-fiction instead of a novel? I’m joining this November. This is my first but I haven’t made up my mind yet if I’m going to write a novel or an ebook. I have both ideas I want to write. But I have to choose one! Sigh. And if you want to know more about it, check out http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/nano-rebels/threads/11164
or http://productcreationblog.com/385/nano4info-challenge-joining-information/
Hey dude. I’ve always wanted to do NanoWrimo, (Ive even aspired to be a novelist back in the day :) ) but I dont think I’ll have much time for it. Its pretty incredible to see people writing 500 page books in only 30 days! Wow, just wow!
Good luck :)
Thanks for the NaNoWriMore information, really intersting, I wanted to write a novel for long time now but I’m not sure I can do it in 30 days. I agree on the fact that a novel can’t be written over years but 30 days seems to short of a time.
Thanks for the NaNoWriMore information, really intersting, I wanted to write a novel for long time now but I’m not sure I can do it in 30 days. I agree on the fact that a novel can’t be written over years, because you will eventually lose track of the original idea but 30 days seems to short of a time.
Thanks for the NaNoWriMore information, really intersting, I wanted to write a novel for long time now but I’m not sure I can do it in 30 days. I agree on the fact that a novel can’t be written over years, because you will eventually lose track of the original idea but 30 days seems to short of a time
For those not up for a novel via NaNoWriMo, can try http://pragprog.com/news/november-writing-month-pragmatic-guide-to-git-in-print for technical writing ;)
Hey Tristan
I was gonna enter – but as always I’m TFB.
What we should do instead is set up a National Bloggers Posting Month – NaBlPoMo (LOL!). In this challenge the bloggers who entered would have to write a blog post every day! That would be a great one for encouraging bloggers to write more.
(Actually it’s something I’m doing for my offline business – creating a content rich post a day as part of the content marketing for that business).
Paul
Didn’t have any idea about this or I have come to know first time about this but as it looks more challenging, this will take some useful time but this link can be useful for getting some more useful ideas to keep in mind while processing as a blogger.