Member Article

50,000 in a month?

50,000 words, that is.

“Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap.”

That’s the warning from the organisers of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, which begins on Saturday. Writers across the world will be attempting to produce a 50,000-word novel by midnight on Sunday 30 November. The emphasis in this task is clearly on quantity over quality, and minor considerations such as plot, characterisation, and narrative are deemed unimportant to the final goal.

NaNoWriMo had had over 100,000 participants in 2007, and than 15,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline. Many participants even get people to sponsor them for charity. Several famous authors take part, and some of them even provide pep talks for those flagging throughout the month.

The organisers have a few reasons why people should get involved: “To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.”

For more about NaNoWriMo, got to www.nanowrimo.org.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .