So after years of claiming to be a ‘writer’ I figured I would finally at least try and put my money where my mouth is. And in all find traditions of biting off more than one can chew I decided to sign myself up for the National Novel Writing Month. Of course this is somewhat of a misnomer as it is actually and international event these days that was started in the US 5+ years ago.
In a nutshell the challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel(la) in the space of 30 days (1666.6 words per day). Of course quality does tend to take a back seat to quantity when writing this sort of volume in what many consider such a short timeframe. I think the general idea I subscribing to is that it ‘forces’ you to write.. and to write a lot. Given my plethora of excuses and fairly terminal writer’s block whenever I sit in front of a blank page/screen, making this somewhat of a challenge or competition may be enough to force the competitive aspect of my nature to kick every other part of me that seems to be stuck in a fairly deep rut.
There are no prizes for ‘winning’ and no penalties for not making the prescribed word limit. So anyone else there that has that deep vein of masochism and/or the illusion of time to spare feel free to sign up too.
Starting date is November 1st
More details here