Archive for October 28th, 2010

28
Oct

It’s NaNoWriMo Time!

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality

November is NaNoWriMo time. What is that? It stands for National Novel Writing Month, an almost tongue-in-cheek project/competition organized and managed by the whimsically-named “Office of Letters and Light” to encourage writers (and want-to-be writers) to commit words to paper and write those stories they have always wanted to sit down and write “someday”. The goal? To write 50,000 or more words in exactly 30 days (from 12:01am on November 1 to 12:59pm on November 30). The task is very daunting; to stay on track, an average of 1,667 words must be written per day. While that may not sound like a lot, consider that this blog posting is a little more than 550 words…imagine writing about three times as much every single day for 30 days, and you can begin to get a feel for the size of the project.

What is the prize? Apart from some web “badges” and a print-it-yourself certificate, nothing of financial importance (i.e. no cash awards)…but “winners” do have the satisfaction of having finally put those words down, and hopefully the momentum from participating will carry them forward to finish their novels (if they have not already finished by the end of the month). Many participants over the past 10 years of the project have gone on to have their writings published, including some making it onto best-seller lists (for a rundown of this and all the other details, you can visit their website at http://www.nanowrimo.org).

Last year was the first time I participated in NaNo (as some people refer to it), and I had the good fortune to “win” (I finished the month with almost 52,000 words, and added more to it in December). My writing was not a true “novel” or work of fiction; instead, it was a form of autobiography I wrote about a very significant period in my life over 20 years ago, written as a favor for a close friend. The book is still being reviewed and edited, and I do not know when or if it will ever be published.

I have plans to participate this November as well, and hope that I will succeed in reaching the goal. My subject this time was originally going to be a fictional story I have had sketched out for several years, but following Stephen’s death in June (has it really been over four months since the funeral?) it became obvious to me that my original idea was not going to fly this time. Instead, I plan to write Steve’s story. I have little doubt I can eventually come up with more than 50,000 words; after all, I have 16 years of material to work with. The question is whether or not I will be able to write it all down in that short timeframe, which will be even shorter because we have made the decision to travel to Georgia for the first time in several years to visit relatives at Thanksgiving. I suppose I can find some time here and there to write while we are “on the road”, but my best course will probably be to write a little extra each day before and after the trip.

And with that, I will now go off and prepare for NaNoWriMo 2010. I probably will not be able to post anything elaborate here while I am off writing, but I will try to at least put up some brief updates on my progress as we move through the month. Wish me luck!