Are You Ready?

Inspiration Strikes, by zenobia_joy, from our Flickr pool

Say "Hi" to October. The air has turned cool, windows are closed. Electric blankets come out of storage, along with flannel sheets, and down comforters. Every market sports fat pumpkins waiting to be butchered by aspiring sculptors. It's time to hunker down and start thinking about writing that novel.

November is National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaMoWriMo, the very unofficial month-long marathon in which hundreds of thousands of people attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days. That's 1,666.67 words per day, or more than you might think. Many will fail, but some--the strong, the fearless, the utterly insane--will make it through, carpal tunnel be damned. And a few--a very, very few--will get their novel published. Past WriMos include Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants and the recently released Ape House, and historical romance novelist Teryl Cartwright, among dozens of others.

Chris Baty started NaNoWriMo back in July 1999 with a group of friends, all of them pledged to complete a novel in 30 days. From the initial 21 participants, six of whom completed their novels, NaNoWriMo grew to 167,150 participants and 32,178 "winners" in 2009. There is now a website, a youth writing program, and chapters all over the world, including one here in Seattle. 

Last year over 3,500 participants (known as "WriMos") from the Seattle area signed up, but many never log into the official website. Every November more journal sites explode with spin-offs, and hopefuls make the sorts of resolutions most often heard around New Year's Day, with a decidedly authorial spin: This month I will write 500 words per day. This year I will finish that screenplay. This November I...

Getting published isn't really the point of participating in NaNoWriMo. Baty and company claim the reasoning behind the first NaNoWriMo was "we thought that, as novelists, we would have an easier time getting dates than we did as non-novelists." Which remains a laudable endeavor. But for others, the informal structure, combined with a ready-made support system and a measurable goal, provides just the impetus needed to finally write down that story they have always wanted to tell. 

What story are you waiting to tell? Will you NaNoWriMo in 2010? Tell us about it, we'd love to know.