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Oct 17, 2006
"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." --E.L. Doctorow
Writing A Novel in 30 Days
Ever feel like there's a book inside you waiting to be written? Chris Baty and 21 of his friends did. In 1999 they started National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in San Francisco. Meeting every night for one month, they held themselves to a 2000-words-a-day requirement. No coffee refills or bathroom breaks if you didn't make the count. Something about the process worked: people who'd never imagined they could write a book had a completed first novel in their hands. Today, NaNoWriMo is an online organization that hosts regular sprints to finish a 50,000-word novel from scratch during the course of one month. Last year, 42,000 people signed up, and nearly 6,000 finished on deadline. Organizers expect 60,000 writers this year. In the end, NaNoWriMo is not concerned with trying to write great literature, in Baty's words it's really more about "the joy of creation."
BE THE CHANGE
Do you have an unwritten novel, an unsung song, or unpainted picture inside you? Find a way of creating a NaNoWriMo-like structure around an activity you value but haven't made room for.
