2008 Woodie Awards
National Novel Writing Month is Upon Us Again
Bailey Triggs
Issue date: 10/27/03 Section: Arts
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I don't even need to finish telling you about my novel for you to surmise, given the time restrictions and the god-awful title, that my first attempt at novel writing would result in 50,000 words of crap. It had no plot, no character development, random pirate musical numbers, and hokey sex scenes that went on for far too long.
It also included every paper and short story I had written for a class that year. Okay, so perhaps that was cheating, but when I realized I was only 1/5 of the way through my novel during Thanksgiving break, drastic measures had to be taken. I just gave my characters remarkable memory and abused the copy/paste function on my laptop.
If you know it's only going to be 50,000 words of crap why bother? you might ask. The organizers of NaNoWriMo attack this question with a three-point response:
"1) If you don't do it now, you probably never will. Here's the truth: 99 percent of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It's just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists ...
2) Aiming low is the best way to succeed. With entry-level novel writing, shooting for the moon is the surest way to get nowhere. With high expectations, everything you write will sound cheesy and awkward ... There will be much execrable prose, yes. But amidst the crap, there will be beauty. A lot of it.
3) Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives."
Just reading NaNoWriMo's philosophy had me sold on the undertaking of writing a novel in a month. After writing Engorged Hearts my freshman year, I knew I could write a novel. Last year, I wrote another romance-novel-in-a-month: The Software Pirate and The Woman Who Loved Him. And this time, through some divine intervention and little planning on my part, my novel actually managed to have a plot.
November's only a week away. Go to www.nanowrimo.org and sign up. You don't have to be a writer; your novel is supposed to be crap. Revel in it.
From the lips of the NaNoWriMo gods: aside from the output of a novel, "the other reason we do NaNoWriMo is because the glow from making big, messy art, and watching others make big, messy art, lasts for a long, long time. The act of sustained creation does bizarre, wonderful things to you. It changes the way you read. And changes, a little bit, your sense of self. We like that."
It also included every paper and short story I had written for a class that year. Okay, so perhaps that was cheating, but when I realized I was only 1/5 of the way through my novel during Thanksgiving break, drastic measures had to be taken. I just gave my characters remarkable memory and abused the copy/paste function on my laptop.
If you know it's only going to be 50,000 words of crap why bother? you might ask. The organizers of NaNoWriMo attack this question with a three-point response:
"1) If you don't do it now, you probably never will. Here's the truth: 99 percent of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It's just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists ...
2) Aiming low is the best way to succeed. With entry-level novel writing, shooting for the moon is the surest way to get nowhere. With high expectations, everything you write will sound cheesy and awkward ... There will be much execrable prose, yes. But amidst the crap, there will be beauty. A lot of it.
3) Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives."
Just reading NaNoWriMo's philosophy had me sold on the undertaking of writing a novel in a month. After writing Engorged Hearts my freshman year, I knew I could write a novel. Last year, I wrote another romance-novel-in-a-month: The Software Pirate and The Woman Who Loved Him. And this time, through some divine intervention and little planning on my part, my novel actually managed to have a plot.
November's only a week away. Go to www.nanowrimo.org and sign up. You don't have to be a writer; your novel is supposed to be crap. Revel in it.
From the lips of the NaNoWriMo gods: aside from the output of a novel, "the other reason we do NaNoWriMo is because the glow from making big, messy art, and watching others make big, messy art, lasts for a long, long time. The act of sustained creation does bizarre, wonderful things to you. It changes the way you read. And changes, a little bit, your sense of self. We like that."
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