NaNoWriMo

It's that time of year again, for budding novel writers to embark upon a journey where they wave goodbye to their internal editor and set sail for uncharted waters, waiting to be created with the stroke of a pen or a key.

For those not in the know, NaNoWriMo is Chris Baty's creation, National Novel Writing Month (although in reality, they should rename it InNoWriMo for all the international attention coming its way.  NaNoWriMo encourages everyone to write a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days during the month of November.  There are no losers, and thousands of winners as you challenge yourself (and possibly a few friends along the way) to beat the goal by the deadline.  50,000 may sound like a lot, but 1667 words a day is absolutely doable. Thousands of people each year cross the finish line, and then some. Some do it in 20 days and stop, others just keep going.  A few mainstream novels emerged from the NaNoWriMo phenomenon, with Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen as the first title off the top of my head.

NaNoWriMo a time of encouragement - like I mentioned, there are only winners here, and everyone is encouraged to encourage everyone else.  A few people comment that they cannot produce under that kind of pressure, but from what I understand of the publishing industry, you have less time than you think to churn out a novel you've contracted to write, and NaNoWriMo is as good an exercise as any to practice getting those words on paper in a hurry. First draft novels coming out of NaNoWriMo a lot like clay or a good block of stone. You have to have a mass of material ready for the hands and the tools to work it into shape (take it from an artist who works in the medium. Its kinda hard to chisel thin air).

So anyone who wants to join me and everyone else for the month of November, just visit www.nanowrimo.org and let the creativity fly, soar, sing!

For my NaNoWriMo, I have chosen a fantasy genre story set in a world quite similar to the classical Roman era:

A Filamene slave butts heads with Vindecen Consuls to prove that someone framed her wrongly-executed master for the murder of the Empress.