Welcome to November! November seems flavored with gratitude all month long – day by day I think of little blessings and by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, there’s this amazing crescendo… so today I am grateful to have an outlet for my creative thoughts.
A year ago I decided on the spur of the moment to sign up for NANOWRIMO - an insane competition (basically with yourself) to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. You are a winner if you complete 50,000 words in that time frame and you get bragging rights (I also got a cool NANOWRIMO mug but that came from my husband for Christmas). NANOWRIMO stands for NAtional NOvel WRIters MOnth. Check out their website at http://www.nanowrimo.org/ . They also have a script writing contest in the spring.
The emphasis is get the words out of your head and onto paper (or electronic blips) and churn out 50K words in 30 days. The time for editing comes later, so you just write and write and write... I love the motto: "Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!" - there is something freeing about just letting the words flow.
One of the best things NANOWRIMO taught me was that I have a whole lot more going for me than I gave myself credit for. Not only did I come up with characters and a plot on the fly but I managed to write almost half of my wordcount with just a little over a week left (and we were going out of town for Thanksgiving weekend). I'm still a little shocked I made it, but with support from family and understanding friends, I nailed it.
An interesting paradigm shift happened in the next month or so - if I could win NANOWRIMO, there were a lot of other things that I could probably accomplish. I began to dream again and start new projects. My NANOWRIMO novel was split up into 2 short stories (and an unwieldy narrative I may or may not return to).
Interestingly, my job at work has started giving me more writing assignments, and I know I am much more confident as a result of doing NANOWRIMO. I have been getting affirmations on several fronts, and it appears that writing is a renewed outlet for me.
What's your NANOWRIMO? What challenge would you like to accomplish? It's never too late, and this could be the start of a new season in your life.
As for me, I'm skipping NANOWRIMO this year, but I have a new goal: to write a new blogpost every day in November. Maybe I should call it SABLADMO (SAndy's BLog A Day MOnth) - or not. Regardless, here is Day 1.
You go girlfriend!
ReplyDeleteSee, clearly I didn't do my Nanowrimo homework. I'm not sure if I'm going to finish a whole book, but I'll definitely pass 50,000. I just think this one will turn out to be more like 100,000.
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