Friday, October 18, 2013

On Creative Challenges (Or, Agreeing to Write a Novel in 30 Days...)

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are reading this the day it goes up, we have exactly two weeks until the first day of November. If it's after October 18th for you, that makes it even MORE pressing. And if it's before, well...maybe message me so that we can talk about your glorious time machine.

November is kind of a big deal. First and foremost, it is the month of my birth - let's never forget that. It's usually when the weather starts to get fiercely autumnal and awesome. Thanksgiving pops up, if you're in the U.S. Good movies always come out (Thor: The Dark World and Catching Fire, guys, I die). This year will bring us the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special (I am revived, that I may die again). As if all of this excellence wasn't enough, November also happens to be National Novel Writing Month.


National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, for short), the brainchild of writer and teacher Chris Baty, began with 21 participants in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1999 and has grown astronomically since then - last year's event had 341,375 registered participants from all around the world. I signed up for my first NaNoWriMo in 2009, and I've never looked back.

So here's the deal: participants sign up on the NaNoWriMo site and pledge to write a 50,000 word piece during the month of November. That's it. There are no rules, outside of not writing your first word until November 1 and making sure you log your last by 11:59 PM on November 30. If you hit or exceed 50,000 by the end of the month, you are officially a NaNoWriMo winner.

What do you win? Bragging rights. The sense of accomplishment that comes with birthing a world in a month's time. A unique feeling of camaraderie that can only come from working on a kind of insane task and knowing that hundreds of thousands of people are in it alongside you, wherever they may be. Oh, and some nifty icons.

I know what some of you might be thinking - "50,000 words and 30 days are both arbitrary figures. That's not how books happen. That's a  lot of work to put into something that really only has a metaphysical payoff. This is dumb. You're dumb."

Okay. First, I need you to calm down.

Second, you're both right and wrong. Yes, in the grand scheme of the literary world, 30 days and 50,000 words don't really mean anything. A novel is however long it is (just ask J.K. Rowling), and it takes however long it takes (just ask George R.R. Martin). But NaNoWriMo isn't really about turning yourself into Hemingway in a month. It's about accepting a creative challenge, and using said challenge to celebrate and support art and imagination.

Here are just a few of the muscles I've found NaNoWriMo helps flex.

1) Writing.

Duh. But here's the thing: even when writing is all you want to do, it takes a surprising amount of discipline and self-motivation to actually sit down every day and write. Admit it. You've talked yourself out of it before, told yourself you were too busy to jot down the idea that popped in your head, that you would do it later when you could really concentrate it, that it wouldn't matter because you're an accountant or a baker or a high school student and nothing would come of it anyway. NaNoWriMo lights all of those excuses on fire and dances on their ashes.

2) Time Management.

To win NaNoWriMo, one has to write an average of 1,667 words a day. That may not seem like much, but when you hit your first big block or have to juggle projects at work (particularly when those projects also involve writing), or when you've got friends texting you and calling you and trying to remove the hinges from your door so that you'll come out and be social, it feels like it might as well be a million words.

I'm going to be honest with you: you've got one opportunity to let yourself fall behind in the count, maybe two (and that's a big maybe), before time and your novel will start to really get away from you. While it's not impossible to claw your way back, it can be really demoralizing. To avoid having your NaNoWriMo experience turn into a sucking pit of despair, you learn early on that you've got to manage your time. You use activities like going to the movies or celebrating your birthday or leaving your room to see your family at Thanksgiving (all of these are super generic examples that are not my life) as motivation to sit down and focus. You also learn to say, "Sorry, I can't. I have to write."

These skills carry over, guys. And it's magical.

Super secret bonus: There is zero time to go back and self-edit, which is brilliant, as this is a horrible habit of mine that really kills momentum.

3) Imagination.

I chose to pursue a profession where it's perfectly acceptable - expected, really - to spend the bulk of my time pulling people and places out of thin air and creating lives and histories for them. We are not all of us so fortunate (or insane, depending on how you feel about it). NaNoWriMo is a perfect excuse to take the leash off your good ol' imagination and let it run free - like a dog park for your brain.

There's more, but you get the idea, right?

Listen, if you ask me (and I know you didn't), NaNoWriMo is more than just an event. It's an experience. Some NaNo novels have gone on to become published works, and that's unspeakably rad, but it's just an extra layer of icing on top of an already spectacular cake.

At its heart, NaNoWriMo asks us all to sit down and make a thing, simply to see if we can.

See if you can. Sign up today.

Oh, and while you're at it, add me as a writing buddy! My name is (surprise) CaitDog.

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