The month of November is coming to a close. Shoppers are frantically hounding sales for holiday gifts, seniors are in the midst of college applications, and the weather is turning cold again, reminding Michiganders that a nasty Midwest winter is not too far away.
Lydia Brown and Lauren Childs, juniors at Community High, are not spending their Novembers shopping for presents or applying to college. To Brown and Childs, November is a month that is much more than a time to buy gifts for friends. To them, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, a project that began in 1999 to encourage people to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.
“It’s fun…. if you like writing it’s a lot of fun, and it’s a lot of fun to be doing it with a bunch of different people,” said Childs. Last year, 167,150 people participated in NaNoWriMo. There were only 21 participants in 1999.
The project was started by Chris Baty, a freelance writer. As more and more people got involved, it snowballed into a nonprofit organization called The Office of Letters and Light which runs web-based events that foster creativity. In addition to National Novel Writing Month, The Office of Letters and Light also sponsors an event called Script Frenzy, where people spend the month of April writing TV scripts, screenplays, and stage plays.
The idea behind NaNoWriMo is simply to get people to write. “The thing about NaNoWriMo is it’s based on quantity, not quality, so [your novel] can get pretty bad,” said Childs. Despite its quantity-over-quality approach, both Brown and Childs agree that participating in NaNoWriMo has made them better writers. “Yeah, I’ve definitely improved from my first year as a writer… you go back and you edit it and you’re like, ‘This was horrible,’ but now I’ve gotten better so I can change it,” said Brown. “It definitely makes you more motivated to [write],” agreed Childs.
To some, 50,000 words seems like a frighteningly large number. But to Brown and Childs, it’s simply a matter of getting started. “It isn’t as much as everyone thinks it is, ‘cause it’s 1,676 words a day. I have a lot of homework, but I also have a lot of free time. If you can get going on it, it’s not that hard to stay motivated,” said Childs.
Although Childs and Brown are able to stay on top of their novels on most days, “There are some days where I get really, really sick of it,” said Childs. However, there is one reward NaNoWriMo brings that you won’t find anywhere else: a novel that is 100% yours. “There are some incentives [to do NaNoWriMo], but the main one is you finished [your novel], and it just feels really awesome at the end,” said Childs. “If you finish NaNoWriMo, it’s called ‘winning’… You win a novel,” added Brown.
For more information about National Novel Writing Month, visit their website here.
