So, it’s November which means that it’s National Novel Writing Month. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s the one month of the year, thousands of people commit themselves to completing a novel of 50,000 words or more. It’s a fun, exciting, death defying, act of pressure writing. The focus is not on Quality, but Quantity.
I’ve looked at this competition for a few years though and even participated once. I fell short at 30000 words (here I can blame end year exams, procrastination, my faulty computer… take your pick) but, even so I had felt as if I achieved something (even though I haven’t really done anything with those 30000 words now). It gave me the confidence to put my thoughts to paper, the images in my mind to words and my work out there for the world to see. It was just after I participated in NaNoWriMo that I created my fanfiction.net account.
So, this year – despite having a hectic schedule, which is half the fun – I’ve decided to participate again and to my delight, I’ve noticed that there are other people in my country doing it as well. They meet twice a week to sit down and burn paper together. I love the idea and purely for that I’ll dive into it with open arms (or ready fingers).
There’s all sort of self help available for NaNoWriMo, lots of encouraging forums and hilarious stories. If you’re interested in getting some tips, a very good article to read would be this one:
http://www.wikihow.com/Participate-in-NaNoWriMo
If you are participating, good luck! If you’re not 😉 there’s always next year.
Alyssa's Blog 