National Novel Writing Month
The beginning of November isn’t only the day after Halloween/Samhain or the Day of the Dead. It’s also… the beginning of National Novel Writing Month.
I have so many ideas for novels that since 2011, I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. It’s November — although now there are April and July events called “Camp NaNoWriMo,” which are more informal and involve picking your own word count goal. The point of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words, the first draft of a novel, in only one month.
The website is www.nanowrimo.org, where you can post the title and description of your novel and keep posting the word count. The website allows writers to look up their region and participate in in-person events or online events. The events are typically write-ins, in which you get together, chat about your writing projects or whatever you end up chatting about, and write — some on laptops or tablets, others with a notebook and pen. Write-ins often involve “word wars” in which for a certain length of time — typically between five and fifteen minutes — we all quietly write, trying to get as many words down as possible. The person with the most words often wins a prize, such as a tiny plastic dinosaur or other toy or candy.
Because of the pandemic, I didn’t attend any in-person write-ins last year. NaNoWriMo has online…