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It's October, which means it's time once again for my annual plug for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. Yes, indeed, folks, by the time the next issue of Collector Times posts, NaNoWriMo 2010 will be in full swing, and many thousands of writers around the world will be pressing for the goal of a 50,000 word novel, written completely in the month of November.
Why would so many people want to undertake such a crazy project? What could possess us to spend so much time in one month working on a story? How did this become such a collective insanity as to attract writers from all over the globe?
I'll give the simple answer right from the NaNoWriMo website:
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 our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.
The less simple answer is that this is something we do because we want to write, and NaNoWriMo offers both incentive and community in that expression. It's more than just a self-imposed deadline. We're committing to something in front of thousands of other people, so all those others know what we've undertaken. This deadline compels us to forget the typical trappings that keep so many people from ever finishing a novel, and to simply let go of our creative inhibitions and write.
It's a beautiful thing. As Pablo Picasso once said, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." Being a writer is very much the same. Most kids have a wonderful imagination, and can tell such creative stories. When we grow up, though, we begin to worry too much about form, and about whether our story is "ridiculous," and whether it's good enough. The result is, we quit telling stories, even though our characters are deep inside us, yearning to come out and play.
I tell people that one secret to NaNoWriMo success is to send our internal editors off on a month-long vacation. Our internal editor is that little "grown up" voice, telling us our story is stupid, or that our first chapter needs to be perfect before we move on, or that we just can't do this novel writing thing. Without that voice - that editor - that critic - we can let the child come out and play. The adult in us might keep our characters locked away in the back of our minds, but the child goes looking for these characters, and invites them into the open.
It's magic, in its purest sense. Like a tiny touch of the Divine, we create life with nothing more than a word. Where the Bible tells us that God spoke the world into existence, we write worlds into existence. Maybe these worlds only exist within the frames of our stories, but we still get to experience being a creator, even if it's on a tiny scale.
We win NaNoWriMo not by writing more than the other participants, nor by writing better than they, nor by getting more people to vote for our story. No, we win NaNoWriMo by overcoming our own doubts and hesitations. We win NaNoWriMo by defeating the deadline, not by beating each other, and therefore we have no reason to not cheer each other on to victory. It takes nothing from my achievement, if you finish before I do, or write twice as many words. We don't have to worry about whether my story will get an 'A' from a college professor, and whether your story will be graded as highly (or vice versa).
Why NaNoWriMo? Because so many people in this world have stories that long to be told, but instead, they will take their stories to the grave with them. Even a story that seems so silly and foolish to you now, may someday end up as a precious treasure to a grandchild or great-grandchild that never had the chance to know you. Don't you think it would be awesome if they at least got to know your characters?
Think about it, and if you've ever thought that art shouldn't be restricted to the select few that get paid for it, and if you've got characters knocking on the inside of your brain, just waiting to escape through your fingertips into existence, then check out NaNoWriMo.
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
(Look me up; I'm on there as Hoomi.)
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