November is National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo), and for the last several years, thousands of people have been committing to write a fifty thousand word novel in a month. That’s about 1,613 words a day, every day, all month, including Thanksgiving. I’ve never attempted it (which, oddly enough, is one of the reasons I wanted to build ficlets so badly), but it seems a worth challenge.
Speaking of challenges, I’ve been watching the challenges you all have been posting, and I think they’re great. I even got pulled into one. I’ve been thinking about them, and some of the other ways you’re using the site that I didn’t intend, and how to react to them. I don’t mind – I take it as a sign of success that people are finding new and interesting things to do here, and the more creative, the better. The challenges certainly fit the bill, and have created some great collections of ficlets.
So, here’s my challenge to you. Can we write a novel in a month? Can we make one string of sequels and prequels that come out to 50,000 words? If you’d like to start us off, just tag your story with nanowrimo2007 starting tomorrow. Be sure to watch the nanowrimo2007 tag page (a snow white field at the moment) and start adding. I’ll take all the stories tagged nanowrimo2007 and start doing character and word counts throughout the month so we know how well we’re doing (I’m traveling most of the first half of the month, so the updates might not be daily, but I’ll do my best).
What do you think? Are you in?
Update: Oops! I got distracted while writing this and forgot to give credit where it’s due for reminding me that NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. That honor goes to the prolific and helpful Howie Amourscow (who wrote one of my all-time favorite ficlets). Thanks, Howie!
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