NaNoWriMo
(with apologies to Flann O'Brien)
Myself: Given the relative infrequency of my posts on this oft' neglected blog, submitting myself to an experiment requiring me to complete a 50,000 word novel by the end of November, may seem the act of a man o'erburdened with baseless confidence.
Plain People of Ireland: What's that you say? What class of scrape have you got yourself into now?
Myself: Novel. 50,000 words. End of November.
Plain People of Ireland: We got that much, but we're still in the dark…Is it a big fancy publisher in England has asked you to write a buke?
Myself: Sadly no, rather it is a challenge set by the good people at National Novel Writing Month. Perhaps I'd better let them explain…
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.1
Myself: Any clearer?
Plain People of Ireland:(suspiciously) It sounds like a quare exercise altogether…Are you sure it's not a class of a scam?
Myself: Well, I hardly think…I mean it all seems so…
Plain People of Ireland: Is there any money in it?
Myself: No…
Plain People of Ireland: Any chance of a job above in the Civil Service, or RTÉ?
Myself: Not really…
Plain People of Ireland: Any remuneration at all, at all?!
Myself: (agitated) That's not the spirit of the thing! I mean to say…em…democracy of the net…creative liberation and all that…the tyranny of 'sanctioned' mass media…hierarchies…em…"information is power"…Rupert Murdoch…Fox Mulder…and so forth…
Plain People of Ireland: HoHo! You're a gas man entirely! Terrible gullible, but a gas man all the same. 'Tis a scam as sure as onions is onions.
Myself: I'm going to my room…*runs upstairs, slams the door, and sits moodily on the bed listening to Joy Division LPs*
November 7, 2005
4 responses to NaNoWriMo
Count me in, perhaps i’ll try a sequel to ‘One flew over the cuckoo’s nest’ where a vegetative, yet pesky, McMurphy still mangages to get into all kinds of rebellious scrapes, forever incurring the wrath of Nurse Ratchett.
You could easily ‘option’ the movie rights too. It’d be a bit like Weekend at Bernie’s, only with a vegetative Jack Nicholson (or Christian Slater) being dragged around America by a pair of frat boys. Might I suggest Dude, Where’s my McMurphy? as a possible title?
I would have thought foolhardy would have announced his intention to take the opportunity of nanowrimo to pen his erotic* memoirs.
*For “erotic” read “deeply disturbing”.
Copernicus,
if that is your real name!
Re the old erotic memoirs, already done my good man and took a damn sight longer than 1 month I can tell you. The video footage alone took the balls of 3 months to scour. And I mean scour. I do believe, however, that it has been a very worthwhile effort that will no doubt appeal to a rather broad demographic; housewives, teen nymphs, wranglers, the clergy etc. I’m particularly proud of the chapter on bus-horn and where to “put it”.