A Novel Idea

Kids, do not be like me. Get lots of exercise. Get enough rest. Pay attention in school. Obey the speed limit when you’re driving, stay out of the road when you’re not. Don’t eat too much, don’t drink too much and don’t eat or drink the wrong things to begin with. Most importantly, do not ever, ever commit to writing a 50,000 word novel in one month – unless you know in advance that the month will fall into some kind of time warp and actually last for 2.3 Earth years.

Watch out for the NaNoWriMo people.

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. The month is November, and the idea is simple. You commit to write a novel of 50,000 words, which is about 175 pages, from scratch and on your own before December 1^st. There’s no real reward for doing it, other than being able to say you did it, and no real penalty for failure, other than very public and obvious failure.

Lots of people sign up for and commit to this potential public flogging, believe it or not – about sixty thousand in 2005 alone. All of these people come together to form a cult community of brainwashed like–minded individuals with a common goal.  50,000 words. In one month.

I was one of those people

My first NaNoWriMo experience was November 2005 and began with the same five words that always seem to get me into trouble.

1.     How

2.     Hard

3.     Could

4.     That

5.     Be?

There are 30 days in November. 50,000 words in 30 days? Easy. I probably use that many words every day just telling off telemarketers. Steven King could use 50,000 words to describe a sidewalk. Surely I could condense my thoughts into a novel. So, thinking it would be no trouble at all for a writer like me, I signed up and was welcomed into the NaNoWriMo community with open arms. Everyone was so positive and excited and it all sounded like such great fun. It was October.

In preparation for my task, I formulated a few ground rules for myself, since I didn’t want this little writing project to take up all of my time. I would not write on weekends or Thanksgiving or Black Friday. That left me with 20 days of writing. That’s 2500 words per day or about 8.7 pages. No problem.

I can tell you that November 1^st went really well. I banged out about 1400 words and had a pretty good story started. So, at the end of the first day, I was only 1100 words behind. Not bad. That could be made up. Maybe, I thought, I would write on Black Friday after all. I would probably be all excited to be finishing my first novel by then and wouldn’t mind the extra day of writing.

I had introduced myself to some of the other participants and my new friends were very supportive. We could see each other’s running word count so we all knew how everyone else was progressing. We could offer encouragement to those who needed it and feel a little sorry for those who were obviously in over their heads. Poor saps, I thought. Maybe I’ll write 60,000 words and donate my extra 10,000 to some writer who just couldn’t cut it. I would just wait and see how I felt about it at the end of the month.

By the end of the first week, I was 7800 words behind and had already decided that I would have to write on the weekends, Thanksgiving Day and every hour during the week that wasn’t already allocated to sleep. It seemed that I was having a little trouble writing 2500 words per day and keeping up with my stay-home dad responsibilities such as making lunches and making sure my kids fully dressed in the morning before taking them to the bus stop. If you don’t watch them, sometimes kids might decide to wear a bathing suit to school when it’s fifty degrees outside or may completely forget to wear pants.

Apparently.

By the end of the second week, I was a full 20,000 words behind and began to consider modifying my goals. All I need to do, I figured, is just not finish with the lowest word count. If only one person does worse than me, I’ll hold my head high. I would NOT come in last! That’s stamina for you, halfway through a 30-day project and I was already searching the Internet to find something more suited to my natural abilities.

National Short Story Writing Month

National Anecdote Writing Month

Anything but a novel. What kind of nut thinks he can write 50,000 words in only one month? NaNoWriMo people don’t know what they’re doing. Those people are crazy.

My complete lack of progress continued brilliantly throughout the month and by Thanksgiving I had completely given up. I was somewhere around 3.4 billion (or so) words behind. There was no making that up. Being in “other than last” place, however, turned out to be a goal I could achieve. There were, it turned out, lots of people who signed up but never even got started writing. Not one word. I thank God for those poor saps.

On December first, my NaNoWriMo dream was officially over, although it had been practically over from the beginning, and it would be almost a year until the next one.

A year seems like a long time until you wake up one day and 11 months have passed. November 2006 is just around the corner now. I’m feeling pretty good about this NaNoWriMo year, despite what happened last year. This year, my kids are much better at dressing themselves and buying lunch at school if I forget to make one. I’ll sign up again, and I’m not writing on weekends, Thanksgiving Day, or Black Friday.

And I’m not coming in last place.