If you have a moment, I would like to tell you my favorite fairy tale.
It’s short and sweet, so I hope you’ll lend me your ear.
Once upon a time, in the mighty land of the Internet, knights gathered to face their greatest challenge yet: conquering their own novels.
Over the course of 30 days the lionhearted knights battled taxing word counts, carnivorous characters, daunting plot-holes, riotous plot bunnies, and frustrating time constraints. There were many days that the knights lost hope of ever completing their task. But, the battles were hard fought and the challenges hard won and, in the end, the knights were exalted for word counts beyond measure and puns extraordinaire. Even with the numerous challenges of editing and publishing still ahead of them, the knights dispersed with hearts lightened by the thrill of achievement and minds enthused by the discovery of story.
The end.
Did you like that? Did it make you want to be a knight too? Are you wishing the challenge was real?
If so, you’re in luck! In truth, the fairy tale is not a fairy tale at all. Starting tomorrow, November 1, 2014, more than 300,000 writer-knights will take up the challenge of writing 50,000 words during the 30 days of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It feels absolutely impossible at first, but it’s possible if you truly throw yourself into the challenge like a knight vying to uphold the chivalric code. In other words, get hella invested in your novel.
However, to add to the nerve-wracking, but totally worth it, nature of the challenge, writers are challenged to only write. Let me repeat: writers are only allowed to write. No editing is allowed! That means no touch-ups or gear-shifting, no re-reading or losing faith in the plot, and no scrapping “bad” scenes. The key is to just focus on the word count and to deal with what comes out during the novel cooling off period, otherwise known as winter and December.
This is my seventh year attempting NaNoWriMo and (hopefully) my first year to reach (then exceed) 50K. We’re in the final hours before NaNoWriMo starts in the United States and I cannot possibly explain how excited I am. I feel like it’s Christmas night and I can’t sleep for the delight of tomorrow, yet I also have those lovely-and-terrible first-day-of-school type nerves. This month will surely be an adventure in wonderland.
If my nonfiction fairy tale interested you at all, please consider heading over to the NaNoWriMo website to make the commitment and give the challenge a try. Your fellow knights will welcome you with open arms and we’ll all take one month to slay 50K together. It might seem daunting at first but, there are millions, billions, trillions of words instead each person, and NaNoWriMo is only asking you to spill 50K of them.
I am personally challenging all of my writer friends to take on the task of NaNoWriMo. I can assure each and every one of you that you won’t regret making the attempt. Even if you get lost in writing wonderland and don’t make it to 50K, you will have created something from nothing and you can be immensely proud.
Come on, dearies and darlings, knights from all around: I dare you to write.
P.S. My username on the NaNoWriMo site is mylifeinverse and I would love some new writing buddies. :)
Mylifeinverse 