Without a hard and fast deadline, many of life’s great projects get pushed off into the realm of “some day.” Everyone procrastinates, perpetually putting off that trip to Europe, learning French or writing the Great American Novel. It’s too easy, after working all day, to come home, eat dinner and pass out in front of reality television.
That’s where National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short, comes in.
Started by Chris Baty, a freelance writer from Oakland, Calif., NaNoWrimo challenges participants of all skill levels to produce a 50,000-word draft of a novel in a single, caffeine-fueled month. That works out to 12,500 words a week, 1,667 words a day.
Those who take the plunge are forced by the deadline to get to work. Along the way, they tend to learn something about themselves and about what it takes to be a writer.
National Novel Writing Month, which starts Nov. 1, began with 21 people in 1999. By 2004, it had grown to 42,000 participants, with a total word count of 428,164,975. Baty expects 60,000 would-be novelists to register at nanowrimo.org this year.
Lindsay Davignon, a senior at Wheaton College in Norton, participated the last two years and has signed up again for this year.
Each of her previous NaNoWriMo novels surpassed the 50,000-word mark; only 17 percent of the people who signed up last year finished their novel.
“I signed up for NaNoWriMo because I love writing, and this challenge was perfect,” she said. “Not only did it have a firm deadline, it had a support group to go along with it. It was a great way to push myself and see what I could really do.”
To participate in National Novel Writing Month, writers log on to nanowrimo.org and upload their novels either as they go along or once they have surpassed the 50,000-word mark. The Web site not only counts words but provides a built-in community of fellow novelists who share ideas and offer support and feedback.
Once you hit 50,000 words, you are declared a “winner” and you go on a long list of “winners” on the Web site. There are no prizes, just the satisfaction of having done it and the opportunity to share your work.
Davignon said she enjoys the interaction with other writers onnanowrimo.org, otherwise known as “wrimos.”
“The NaNoWriMo forums are great because you can answer all sorts of questions that other writers need answered,” she said.
Davignon’s 2004 novel was about “a woman facing the death of her third husband with the help of a funeral director.” She’s not sure what she’ll write about this year.
“I like to leave it to the last moment to add some excitement,” she said.
National Novel Writing Month puts the emphasis on getting the work done, not trying to craft The Great Gatsby, which happens to clock in around 50,000 words. Editing is frowned upon. The overriding goal always remains hitting the word count.
In his companion book “No Plot? No Problem,” Baty offers an instructive quote from Emerson: “In skating over thin ice, our safety is our speed.”
Davignon says that writing a first draft of a novel so fast is not easy.
“Once the initial excitement is over, you don’t want to write anymore,” she says. However, “everyone faces the same discouragement at some point in the month.”
When asked why she tortures herself like this, Davignon (echoing something Hemingway once said) replied, “The best way to learn how to do something is to just do it, especially in a fun and informal setting like this one.”
Terri Kennedy of Norton, a professional writer for 29 years, is a past participant in National Novel Writing Month. She leads the Write Day writer’ s group at the Attleboro library and the Life Writers memoir group at the Norton library.
“I had a great experience last year,” she says. “National Novel Writing Month showed me how to get a first draft written in a reasonable amount of time.”
More importantly, she says, it taught her how to keep her “butt in the chair” and write. It takes discipline to return to your novel day after day and crank out 1,500 to 2,000 words.
Kennedy is taking this November off, although she might give it a try again in 2006. “Since my ’04 project, I’ve completed two other manuscripts, one in six weeks and one in 10 weeks.”
Su Thompson of Attleboro plans to make her first attempt at NaNoWriMo this year, in between “wrangling” with three children under the age of 7.
Thompson says she hopes to “take advantage of any quiet time” to get behind her laptop. “I’m really looking forward to it,” she said, adding that writing gives her a chance to be creative. “I needed to do something that allowed me to express myself,” she said.
Thompson has started to make notes and sketch out her novel, but adds, “I won’t really know where it’s going to go until I start writing.”
Like Davignon, Thompson is eager to get going. “I’m actually champing at the bit. I have a story floating around in my head,” she said. “It’s hard to keep a story in that wants to be written.”
This feature originally appeared in The Sun Chronicle