nanowrimo.org is the official home of the National Novel Writting Month. To tie in to the book: No Plot-No Problem.
Here is a blurb from the official site:
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.
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What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.
Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from your novel at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.
When: Sign-ups begin October 1, 2005. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.
I found this fascinating since I did 24 Hour Comic Book Day last year, and challenges like this are sometimes the first step to taking the risk of creating your project. So for all you writers out there who might be perticipating in the challenge in November, GO FOR IT. But for those who are concerned and nervious about doing it, thats OK too, sometimes in life it takes baby steps to get to the point of jumping into an ice cold lake.
