DIY novel! is the National Writing Month

Procrastination, be gone! November is the National Writing Month, did you know that?

And by the way, it has started in the best of ways with Obama winning!

But back to the topic: NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) challenges you to write throughout November, piecing together a narrative until you’ve got a 175-page, 50,000-word novel on your hands. More than 15,000 people did it last year. The deadline is the last day of November. I’m a person who absolutely needs deadlines, I wonder if this can help…

You should then go to NaNoWriMo by midnight on Nov. 30 to have your novel verified. The website is available in 5 languages. Here more info:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

Some people post their daily efforts on the blog, I don’t think I will do anything like that, but I want to give this a try. My crappy novel would probably be a mistery story involving the Hilton of Paris, golden sneakers, a diamond in a fountain and a grave. By nov 30th I let you know how this went.

And good luck to any of you who may try this. We got 50,000 words to go!