NaNoWriMo

 

It’s November 30. Hundreds and thousands of exhausted writers are crossing the finish line.

Typing, “The End.” (For now, at least.)

Badasses.

Today is the last day of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, an annual event that encourages folks to write a 50,000 word rough draft of a novel in one month. “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon,” as they say. I wrote the first draft of my book during NaNoWriMo. One of my closest friends and fellow writers strong-armed me into doing it with her. I was newly pregnant with my first child. I was tired.

But at the end of the month, I had the beginnings of a book. Man, it sucked. The few times I’ve allowed myself to look back at it, I’ve had to sort of shield my eyes. But it was a start. And that’s really all you need.

I love to read the pep talks from the “all-star team” of authors that NaNoWriMo emails to participants. Chris Cleave’s is pretty brilliant. I particularly like this passage:

My point is that the job of a novelist is to explore human emotion and motivation. You learn more about your protagonists as you write them. If you are not very often forced by your characters to bin your masterplan, then you are a wooden and a formulaic writer indeed. So, better than having a planned structure is to begin with a character or two, and a theme you intend to explore, and an initial direction you plan to start exploring in. Don’t be alarmed when, on arriving at what you thought was your summit, you realise you’ve climbed up the wrong mountain. That’s why novelists go through drafts – because plans go brilliantly awry.

If you participated this year, a big, fat congratulations from yours truly. Put your feet up, drink something bubbly. You deserve it.

(photo source: cultofpretty.com)