It sounds like several words mangled together but in actual fact Nanowrimo stands for ‘National Novel Writing Month’. Every November this incredibly nutty organisation runs a month long challenge. The challenge itself is to write 50,000 words of a book within 1 month.
Despite the slight inaccuracy of the title (there are writers participating from all across the globe), it is a great little (read: large) exercise that it is worth every writer trying at least once.
As I have never done it before and as I have been struggling to complete one of my first books, I decided (on the advice of another writer from the London Writers Cafe) to give it a go.
Here’s the interesting thing; I’m not writing the book I’ve been struggling with. I decided to actually write a whole new book instead.
So far I’m nearly halfway through the target word count. I already know I’m going to have to edit the hell out of it once I’m done but that doesn’t really matter right now because something happened a week ago that I’ve been waiting to happen ever since I started writing.
I started to actually care about my characters.
Caring for the non-existent
I’ve heard loads of authors, published and unpublished talk for ages about how much they cared for the characters in their stories and how much they invested in what happened to them. I was always jealous of that because I never really understood it until recently. How the hell can you care so much for someone who doesn’t even exist? And then I remembered all the books I’ve read over the years and how much I ended up caring about the people in them. People…not characters…people. To me they do often seem like people.
Early Stages of the relationship
At the moment I think I’m still getting to know about the characters in the current book I’m writing so I’d say we’re at the “Let’s meet up for a few drinks and a chat regularly” stage. But I’m getting more interested in knowing more about them the more I let them talk to me when I’m writing. It sounds weird and possibly a sign of some mental disorder but I know I’m not the only writer to describe their characters in this way.
And it is Nanowrimo that out of everything else I’ve tried, that has got me to this stage. So if you struggle with writing, if you’ve started a book but haven’t finished it, then I’d highly recommend checking this organisation out.
One of the best things about it are the writing buddies you can hook up with to keep one another motivated (which usually involves hurling abuse at one another over email when neither of you have written anything), along with the daily and weekly ‘pep talk’ emails that are chucked into your inbox.
That’s enough advertising for now, but like I said if you are trying to get going on a book or know someone who is trying to get going, then you could do a lot worse then try Nanowrimo out for size.
I’m only halfway through and I already know that it has helped me tremendously.
Oh and if one of your complaints is “I’m so busy I don’t have the time” all I can say is…..bollocks. I get up between 5 and 6 most mornings because I work full time on my freelance writing in addition to running a 9-5 business with a friend along with the 100 other things we all have to do – cook, clean, see family, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, travel, etc etc. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it is possible.
Cut the excuses because I’ve been there, said them, done them and am now proceeding to prove them wrong.
You can too.
