Hip, Hip for Novel Writing Month
And they're off! November 1st kicked off the eighth annual novel write-off month, more endearingly known as NaNoWriMo. The challenge? Write a novel in thirty days (30 days hath November), which is, in the case of NaNoWriMo, 50,000 words you call a novel. Not necessarily a masterpiece or something you should expect anyone to read, but supposedly a whole lot of fun and a way to kickstart your writing if you've been finding lots of ways to avoid it lately.
NaNoWriMo began in San Francisco in 1999 with 21 young writers who thought writing a novel would be a good way to get girls. Their motto? "No plot? No problem!" Their 21 novels may not have gone anywhere, but when they realized how much fun it was, they decided to spread the fever. And hundreds of thousands of words later, November is officially novel writing month. As a space that fosters the productivity of many writers (at least we hope so), we wanted to give props to an acitivity with the same goal in mind. After all, sometimes writing is about quantity.
Our favorite participant in this year's challenge is Christine Gavour Atwood. Ms. Atwood decided to write her novel in the window of the Waldenbook bookstore in the Cortana Mall in Baton Rouge dressed in a chicken suit. Christine explains her reasoning as thus (and some of them sound so familiar to us):
- Because a cow suit would have just been gauche.
- I wanted to be sure I didn’t start taking NaNo too seriously. So, my plan is to sit in the window of the store with a table big enough for anyone who wants to come join me as we write those incredible 50,000 words which are sure to include many, many, many adverbs and colorful, exciting, descriptive adjectives, as well as cheap plot twists like "and then she woke up."
- There’s no wireless internet so I can’t get distr …. Look, a shiny object!
- I’m not at home, so I can ignore useless distractions such as work, pets, friends and family, and those roving packs of dust bunnies reminding me that I haven’t cleaned since the Clinton administration.
- If I get stuck, I can pick a passer-by to throw into my novel. "Suddenly, from nowhere, there appeared one of that vicious species known as the ‘mall walker’, her blinding white Dr. Scholl’s flashing as she elbowed her way past the Clinique demo girl."
The NaNoWriMo site features guests like Christine daily, as well as weekly pep talks and for those that could google names all day, a database of participating authors.
Oh, and if anyone knows how to get that armpit smell out of a chicken suit, Christine would love to hear from you.