NaNoWriMo (or, Why My House Is a Mess and My Deadlines Haven't Been Met
By the time you read this I will have completed my first novel. And I will have written the entire manuscript in thirty days or less.
What? You say that's crazy? That no mere mortal can write an entire novel in just one month? Not long ago I'd have agreed with you, but that was before I knew about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.
NaNo, as it is often called, is the brainchild of Chris Baty, a Bay Area writer who got the hare-brained idea in 1999 to challenge himself and his friends to write a 50,000-word novel in the space of a month. A few of them, Baty included, succeeded, and the challenge became an annual event, taking place each November. It has grown by leaps and bounds and spread across the globe, with some 40,000 participants anticipated this year, and I'm one of them.
I have wanted to be a writer nearly all my life, but for one reason or another I never did much about it until I joined the staff of Mosaic Minds last year. The work I've done for this 'zine has helped me believe that I really could make a go of this writing business, but I still wasn't convinced that I had what it takes to write fiction. NaNo changed all that.
Along with tens of thousands of comrades in arms, er, pens, I started writing a novel bright and early on November 1, nearly four weeks ago. As I write this article--nearly two weeks past my deadline; thank goodness I have an understanding editor--my word count is 40,025 and I can see the end of my first book glimmering ahead of me in the distance. It's an exhilarating feeling.
True, I've been doing almost nothing but write for the past four weeks, and honestly, I'm looking forward to December, when I no longer have to pound out some 2,000 words every day. And my family is doubtless looking forward to my washing the dishes and doing the laundry on a semi-regular basis again. But I wouldn't have traded this experience for the world -- it's made this dreamer into a novelist!