About a year ago I mentioned a future story I wanted to write.

It was on National Novel Writing Month — or NanoWriMo for short. In November thousands of people all across the world give novel writing a shot — by furiously typing 75,000 words (175 pages) in 30 days.

I can’t believe I’ve had this blog for over a year.

I also can’t believe that I actually remembered to write this story one year later.

I had fun working on this story. When I was reporting on it (back in early October) I planned on taking part. Alas, I have a new job which has forced me to push aside my novel writing aspirations for another November.

The story, written for school, is syndicated to over 400 papers across the US and Canada. I don’t know who else has picked it up, but I see the Roanoke Times picked it up and ran it last week. If you see the story run anywhere else — let me know. (Update: Also published in Arizona Central.

(the story can be found on the link, or after the break)

NaNoWriMo it’s about writing a novel (this was NOT Digidave’s headline)

Think you could knock out a 175-page novel in a month?  About 75,000 people are spending November trying to do just that.

By David J. Cohn | Columbia News Service

For years Lani Rich, a
stay-at-home mother of two, tried to write a novel, but despite her
best efforts, she would invariably run out of steam around Chapter 5
and give up. Finally, in 2002 she entered National Novel Writing Month,
a contest where participants write a 175-page novel — about 50,000
words — in the month of November, to see if the added pressure of a
deadline would help her reach her goal.

In 30 days she not only completed the novel, “Time Off For Good
Behavior,” about thirtysomething Wanda Lane getting her life back on
track after having lost her job, but she sold it to Warner Books and
received the Romance Writers of America award for best debut novel of
2004.

“Some people think you can’t write a decent book in 30 days and that
it mocks the creative process,” Rich said. To the contrary, she found
that the tight deadline matched her writing style perfectly. “My
process is to fly by the seat of my pants; I discover the book as I go
along.”

National Novel Writing Month, also known as “NaNoWriMo,” or NaNo for
short, was created in 1999 by Chris Baty, who at the time was working
at a dot-com company in San Francisco, as a goad for literary
procrastinators.

He said he felt the tight deadline of writing a 175-page novel in 30
days would force people to accept mediocrity while writing their novel,
which Baty says makes the whole experience fun and sociable.

“When you decide to write a novel in 30 days you chuck out any
notion of brilliance and really shoot for quantity over quality, which
ends up releasing you from that painful burden of getting it right,”
Baty said. “Instead, you spend 30 days running naked through the
valleys of your imagination.”

Begun with 20 of Baty’s friends in San Francisco, the idea soon
spread like a literary virus. NaNo’s population of writers jumped from
140 in the second year to 13,000 in 2002 to the 75,000 expected to
register this year.

Each November, NaNo writers descend on their local cafes in large
groups for caffeine-induced writing frenzies. Bringing along their own
surge protectors so everyone can plug in, they cheer one another’s
crazed plot lines and create games, like working rare diseases
seamlessly into their story line, to lighten the daunting task ahead.

To help NaNo writers create the novel in less than a month, Baty set
up Web forums where writers can connect to ask questions. If a novel
takes place in a Pacific Northwest forest, the writer can query the
forum about what kinds of shrubbery the characters might encounter.
With more than 250 local chapters spread throughout the world, NaNo has
experts in just about everything. Currently, the closest NaNo group to
Roanoke is in Richmond.

Needless to say, not all NaNo writers have been as successful as
Rich. Only 20 percent actually finish the project. But even at that
rate Baty estimates that NaNo produces more novels in one month than
all of America’s creative writing programs do in a year.

Ryan Dunsmuir, for instance, wrote her first NaNo novel in San
Francisco, drawing inspiration from her job as a graphic print and Web
designer. In her novel a character discovered an ancient typeface that
was so amazing it would cause people to become insanely idealistic and
take to the streets to rebel against government institutions.

To keep on pace, which requires writing 1,666 words a day, Dunsmuir
would make bets with a friend to see who could commit the most words to
a page in five minutes. The loser would cook dinner or have to go to
work wearing black nail polish the next day.

In Brooklyn, Erin O’Brien, an editor of scientific textbooks and a
five-time NaNo writer, often goes back to edit work she rushed through
in past Novembers.

In 2003 she wrote about a Jesus-like character in Tennessee who
helped nomads feel more comfortable within the confines of a small
town’s established rules by creating a new and more accommodating
community. While she barely made the mandatory 50,000-word mark, today
she has edited the piece up to 80,000 words.

But O’Brien, 26, doesn’t have literary aspirations. She is involved
with NaNo for the chance to belong to a literary community, albeit one
with a low threshold of entry. “I’ve met a lot of people through NaNo,
and a lot of them are my good friends now,” O’Brien said.

For first-time participants, O’Brien suggests using “plot bunnies”
to boost word count. These are random things, like a pirate that can
hop into the story from the side. Once injected, a plot bunny should be
so strange that it can’t be ignored by the story and multiplies to
become a bigger part of the plot.

Acting as a cheerleader for those who want to join the list of
22,000 NaNo winners (people who reached the 50,000-word mark), Baty
offers advice through “No Plot, No Problem,” a guide on how to put down
pretenses and just start writing. The book is filled with tips, like
giving characters a stutter to increase the word count with extra
characters, as in pl..pl..please.

Needless to say, he’s not after perfection. “I find getting a first
draft in 30 days is easier than giving yourself a couple years, because
you stop fussing and fidgeting and trying to get that first chapter
perfect,” Baty said.

As for Rich’s career, since her first book was published she has
completed two more NaNo novels, both romances, and both have been
published, “after much editing,” she said.

Not surprisingly, literary agents don’t expect the majority of
novels drafted in a month to amount to much. “I might be a little more
skeptical,” said Scott Hoffman, a literary agent for Folio Literary
Management in Manhattan. “It would probably be the wrong approach to
tell an agent it took a month to write your book.”

For his part, Baty is not concerned with creating published authors,
just inspiring people to pick up a pen and write. Baty plans to launch
a new but similar literary endeavor this June, Script Frenzy, where
ad-hoc writers can try to complete a movie script in less than a month.