Babble: NaNoWriMo

Where have you been?!

A valid question given the time that has passed since my last update and I will try and supply some valid excuses: Coursera, Theme Hospital, work, subsequent exhaustion, laziness and Nanowrimo.

It is this last excuse I want to talk about today. That would be Nanowrimo.

It is hard to deny that every person on this earth is, in his or her own way, a word smith and a storyteller. We all find ourselves in need to tell other people things – be it interesting facts, an event that has taken place, a prediction of the future, an opinion. And in that need to share with others we shape some form of discourse to suit that need. We choose a right approach, use a line of thought that may bring us systematically to our point, or prepare the punch line; or maybe we go out to get the most shock value. We are all crafty – whether we think it or not.

And it is this spirit which Nanowrimo allows to come out without restrictions or judgement. It is the platform to craft a world, a thought, an idea, a story just because you can, just because you want to, just because it is time to get off your butt and do something creative again.

So what is Nanowrimo? National Novel Writing Month is a writing initiative that aims to encourage unhindered, unedited, and ungracious creative writing.  The goal is simple: Start a story on the first day of November and write fifty-thousand words by the end of it. Fifty-wha? Are you crazy? That is insane! Actually… yes and no. It is possible to write that many words in a month. It amounts to 1667 words a day, which is what? Two pages? That is all you need in a day. That is not impossible to do, now is it? And it is not like you have to do it all in one sitting. A couple of minutes here and there throughout the day actually lightens the ‘load’ and allows you to really just sit and write without even having to worry about how many words you are writing.  People also have their own preferences to when it is the best time for them to write. I write the most in the mornings when I am too tired to think (oddly enough). But I like writing mornings and evenings. A fellow participant I know actually writes his novel by hand. He keeps a notebook with him wherever he goes and will write whenever he finds the time for it – like when he is standing in a queue.

As for the accusation that it is insane, why yes, it IS insane and that is the beauty of it. The splendour. The majesty. It is something to do that is against the norm either in the privacy of your own home or along with a bunch of other over-eager and possibly highly-caffeinated people who have also chosen to make November a crazy, crazy month.

And by a bunch of people, I do not mean fifty or a hundred or a thousand. No, not even ten thousand, not even a hundred-thousand. Let me put it this way: last year there were over 250000 participants from all over the world. That is a big bunch…

That is a whole lot of crazy! Yes, yes it is.

Why? Why would anyone be crazy enough to do it? Well, why not? Why not allow yourself the opportunity to write something that is not for work or school? Why not allow yourself to be creative and silly? Why not allow yourself to do something challenging and different? Nanowrimo gives you that opportunity.

But I do not have a story. Most Nanowrimo participants start off not knowing what they are going to write about. Some only figure it out about three days into the month. So what do they do in the meantime? Well, just write whatever nonsense comes into mind, really. Nanowrimo is not about an awesome story – although some participants do use the month to rewrite some of their work or use the pressure of having a deadline as a way to construct a very rough first draft of a project they might want to continue working on later. Nanowrimo is simply about writing. You can do anything you want in your story. Want to have your characters sit in a pub and talk the whole time? Go for it. Want three pirates to walk in? Type that up. Want ninjas follow them? Do not let us stop you. Want someone to have an Alien/Spaceballs moment where an alien bursts out of their chests and dance on the counter top? Make it happen.

But that is ridiculous! Exactly. Nanowrimo is about what you want to write about. There are no rules because, as much as it plays the role of a competition and even calls those who made the 50k mark ‘winners’, it is simply giving you the opportunity and permission to write. How much sense your story makes is up to you. My last story was not worth being printed and used as toilet paper, but it was still fun and I felt I achieved something by the end of the month.

 I do not want to have anyone read what I wrote. Which is a valid concern, but not really relevant here. The purpose of Nanowrimo is not to critique your writing in any way. It is to get you to write. It is not to make anyone look at what you are writing – no one is going to. You do not submit your story somewhere and then wait for them to determine whether it meets some kind of criteria that classify it as a novel. The only time you are ever asked to upload words somewhere is when it is the end of November and your words go through a word count programme to confirm the fact that you have reached your target. Feel unsure about that? Feel like someone might steal your masterpiece? Well, go to a website like http://www.ipsum-generator.com/ which generates gibberish words, select how many words you want generated and paste the gibberish words into the Nanowrimo counter. But you can cheat that way! Yes, you can, but what would you gain if you do? Zip.

So what do you get out of it?

•          The satisfaction of meeting a supposedly impossible challenge head on and overcoming it – or getting close enough to beating it that you know you can.
•          The opportunity to be creative – not many of us allow ourselves to be even when we have a couple of minutes in our day to spare.
•          The permission to be silly; to take that harsh critic always lurking in your mind and stuffing them in a box somewhere. It has no place in Nanowrimo.
•          A chance to interact with people from different walks of life and perhaps make a couple of friends in the process. (Nanowrimo has also resulted in a couple of marriages mwahaha).

Does that not sound like something to consider at least?

Nanowrimo is my favourite time of the year. Move over Christmas and do not even glance at birthdays, there is a certain excitement I feel about Nanowrimo that I cannot fully put into words. Maybe it is simply because it allows me a moment to be geeky without feeling like I am being so all by myself. Maybe it is being passionate and challenged along with other people. Or maybe it is just simply because it allows me to write and not feel like 1) I have to justify it or 2) that it has to be brilliant. Instead I can simply write and dare call it a novel.

I also love the interaction among the participants – be they those in the local community or in the forums. There is an energy among everyone. Maybe it is simply because everyone is being sort of silly in taking on such a supposedly pointless challenge. Maybe it is just that people are eager to be creative or curious to see what they can do.

And, just to let you know. This post is going to be about 1667 words in length. That is my aim: 1667 words. Now why would I do such a silly thing? Well, it certainly is one way to show you that it is not all that difficult.  If you look through this post, you will note some of the ‘cheats’ used during Nanowrimo to help give you a bigger word count. Well no. Cheat is such a nasty word. Something to be frowned upon. We shall not call it cheating. Instead we will call it a shortcut. Yes. Shortcut it is.

The first shortcut being that there are no contractions in this post. Don’t counts for one word while do not counts for two. Nifty, eh? Also note how many random ideas I threw in here – ninjas, pirates, aliens. Random works. Random gives you more words. Repetitions also do the same thing. Adding more descriptive words also helps.  I also love adding thoughts in short sentences. This makes for more words. Yes. We like more words, do we not?

So how to find out more about Nanowrimo? Why, go to the website of course!  www.nanowrimo.org The website offers a wealth of information about the initiative – as it should! It also has a Frequently Asked Questions page (as opposed to a FAQ hahaha) that will hopefully be able to answer the questions I did not manage to cover in here. And then of course you are more than welcome to ask questions here so that you can be further saturated by all the Nanowrimo goodness.

Think about it. Ponder on it. Chew on it. Consider it a bit more. Then go to the website, register and let me know. I am always thrilled by the prospect of having another fellow crazy person writing along with me.

And that is about 1667. :)