No Time for Leftovers

Some people are still enjoying the leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner, munching on drumsticks, stuffing, and pumpkin pie.

And some people are looking at their calendars, wondering how it is suddenly the last  week in November — National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo for short — and they are not even close to their goal of writing 50,000 words by November 30. If you start on November 1 (and you are not allowed to start this “contest” any earlier), and you write every day, you need to write about 1667 words a day, or about 7 pages (assuming 250 words per page), to finish on time.  

And yes, your writing can be absolute junk  because you are probably writing a first draft. But if you try to game the system by  simple typing in the same sentence until you reach 50,000 words. you are only cheating yourself. It is (or was last year, when I did it) on the honor system. 

So what exactly is NaNoWriMo? It is a national online contest for those who want to write a novel in 30 days, or part of a novel in 30 days — or even a nonfiction book in 30 days. It is a writing motivator. Whom do you compete against? Only yourself.  What do you win? A certificate you can print out. You can also buy yourself a t-shirt, mug, or other swag, whether you finish or not. And who counts your words?

You register for this contest online. Then, you copy your words into their system and they count them. The website keeps track of your total words and how many words you write each day. It is pretty fancy. In fact, I am not even sure (I don’t remember) if you have to enter your words to be counted any longer. Last year, I might have entered my word count myself. Your Word program will give you that information.

And any time during November, once you have hit the 50,000-word goal, you win!

I have done NaNoWriMo a few times. The first time I did it was in 2011 when I wrote my first novel in about 26 days. I pantsed it. There are two types of writers: plotters and pantsers. I guess everyone is some sort of combination of the two. I was much more a pantser for that one. I started with only a vision of a character, and after reading a book or two on plots, I decided that the book would write itself. Aside from having major computer problems at the time, the book did write itself, including a twist I never could have predicted. And then I completed NaNoWriMo last November, when I wrote my first romance novel. I am just now getting back to reviving it. This one did NOT write itself and needs a major overhaul. The overhaul is much harder than the original draft, which can be  — and often is — word vomit.  I think I did NaNoWriMo a couple of other times to get my grammar books written. I might have given up once; the other time I think I finished. 

When I taught 7th grade, I gave my students the option of doing the Young Writers NaNoWriMo contest in which the teacher gets to set the word count. Depending on the class, I gave them counts of 5000 or 10000 words. Many students who started it finished it.  Extra credit!

NoNoWriMo is not a solitary event unless you want it to be. You can connect with other writers although I found it difficult to navigate that part of the site.. And there are write-ins, where people join together to write — kind of like parallel play! They used to be set up in coffee shops and bookstores. Then when Covid hit, they occurred on Zoom. 

So if you have always wanted to write a book, give yourself a push by entering NaNoWriMo next year. If you work hard at it every day, you still might have time for those leftovers!