NaNoWriMo; WhyNot?

I've just done a dumb thing.

Some dumb things are inspired. Some are courageous even. And then some are just plain out-of-my-league ridiculous. My gut feeling is that signing up at the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) website is going to fall somewhere in the last category. In my romantic, idealistic vision of writing-glory, I am savoring the notion that courageous inspiration is what seized me. But as I reckon with what I've done, I think reckless abandon is more the case.

You see, NaNoWriMo is a zany website encouraging writers to sign up for the ultimate motivational boost - a deadline. And this deadline is the mother of all deadlines: to write a complete 50,000 word novel in 30 days. (And believe me, this can be done. The current best seller, Water for Elephants, is a NaNoWriMo accomplishment.) What makes this challenge even more grappling is that November is the designated month. Which, of course, includes a major holiday revolving around family, travel, food-prepping, visiting, and all kinds of out of the usual scheduling and routine. In other words, it's a deadline goal that will require the most diligent discipline. It will take a commitment of producing, at the least, 1666 words a day. That's six to seven pages!

I honestly don't know what in the world I was thinking.

Even though the website reassures me that a 50,000 word draft within 30 days will be a rough, rough draft looking a lot like, well, as they said, crap (and this was supremely encouraging), the point is two-fold. One, it's the discipline thing; getting a handle on the just-do-it struggle. In fact, while perusing the website forums designed for communal support and guidance, I felt a smug camaraderie. Why, for heaven's sake - procrastination seems to be everybody's issue. And point two, because the daily word count demand is so high, self-editing cannot happen; you just have to keep pounding out the words. What that leaves is pure creative abandon. In other words, because editing and creativity occur in opposite sides of the brain, it's a vehicle that forces an unleashing of creative energy, a method to uncork the stopper. I like the way one of my new writing friends puts it -"just unleash the puppy and see where it goes."

The idea of a self-competitive deadline set within a community of like idiots is rather compelling. It sounds like a fun way to launch myself over a long standing, self-imposed barrier. And the metaphors of unleashing puppies and uncorking plugged up creativity speak to me. I am a hog-tied writer. I want so badly to shake the bottle and blow the cork. So, for about a month I have toyed with NaNoWriMo. I would peek at their site; then I would linger; then I would start mapping out characters and plot lines in my mind; until one day in an abstractly, mindless impulse, I signed in.

And then I did the math.

Now I can talk six to seven pages of words any old day. Why, I can think six to seven pages of words a minute, easy. But to write six pages a day.....well, let me put it this way....to write one, 250 word page of text takes me about an hour. Yes, an hour. So, we're talking six pages? That's right; we're talking six hours. No way on God's green earth. Once I had the math, I went back to the website and found lots of discussion about some kind of 750 word count test. It seems that the average time it takes for these NaNoWriMo participants to write 750 words, which is three pages, is oh, say......around........forty to sixty minutes.

I'm done. Every ounce of smug camaraderie just slid right on down like oil. Now, my plot-line felt stupid; my characters, while I like them, became too complicated and were too many; my confusion about point of view (first person? third person?) loomed like Kilimanjaro. Every potential area for self-doubt loudly and grandly announced itself.

And then I found the NaNoWriMo Rebel forum. Yes, ....writing rebels. Hmmmm.....

It seems there are these NaNoWriMos that, for one work-life reason or another, set a different goal for themselves. Many have been previous participants; some are new. While this group cannot claim the "official" victory title of "Winner" at the end of the month, they are still part of the community, and they still consider themselves winners if they complete their own set goal. They still benefit from the experience; they're just a bit out of the box.

Ahh.....I found my group.

So, I've reset my goal to 22,500 words, which works out to three pages a day. For me, this is both, a disciplined stretch, and a reachable goal. Three pages, every day, is a challenge. This will be work; but it is something that is not beyond my skill (as long as I know I have the luscious liberty to produce, crap). I have one week to re-group. In my panicked, self-defeat mode I jumped around between story-lines and characters so much that I am confused and have no idea which way I'm going. But that's ok. The main thing is, I'm just going to let this puppy off the leash, and see where it goes!


NaNoWriMo website: http://www.nanowrimo.org/