Starting tomorrow, November first, I’ll become a writing fool. I’ve decided to participate, along with thousands of other writers, in “thirty days and nights of literary abandon.” I’m going to write a novel!
NaNoWriMo badge
NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, in which each contestant who writes a 175-page, 50,000-word novel by November 30th wins. What is the prize? Finishing a novel. Oh, and I get to put a badge on my website that says I did it. I also get to join the ranks of people who have written a book. I hope to grow as a writer, and there’s always the possibility that I’ll write something worth trying to publish.
The idea is to produce the novel from scratch without revising. Somewhere, on the website for NaNoWroMo, I read the words, “Shitty, dirty, first draft.” That sounded scary, but liberating. I know myself to be a neurotic reviser: I don’t necessarily revise every word I write; usually, I write a paragraph or so, and then I revise. And I revise again every time I start reading from the beginning. Not this time.
I’ll have to write 1667 words a day. I’ll let you know how that works out, if I have time.
