NaNoWriMo

Like many gamers, I'm a fan of sci-fi and fantasy novels, and was into them before I discovered gaming. And like many gamers, I secretly harbor a desire to write a novel, or even write a best-selling series and say goodbye to the day job to embrace the bitter-sweet agonies of writing for a living.

Of course, like many gamers, I've never actually written a novel, or even a passable short story. I do have a bookshelf full of writing how-to books, many of them purchased under the guise of GM aids for creating characters and plot. (And I highly recommend some of them for that purpose. I should list some of my favorites here soon.)

But the point I'm working up to is this. Next month is National Novel Writer's Month, or NaNoWriMo. It's not a month set aside to honor existing novelists… it's a month to create novelists. Specifically, would-be novelists are challenged to write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 short days. That's nearly 1,700 words a day. Last November, I was up to my eyeballs in school work, but I put it on my calendar for 2004, and now in a short two weeks, NaNoWriMo begins again. I still have some school issues, but I'm trying to decide if I can arrange my schedule to cram in a few thousand words a week.

Why? Well, Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, wrote a book on the subject… a guide to NaNoWriMo entitled No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days. And he points out a basic fact that I've come to realize on my own… deadlines are very powerful. What GM hasn't realized the power of a deadline on Friday night, when a Saturday afternoon game hanging over his head? Deadlines make things happen. NaNoWriMo sets a deadline for writing a novel, and then Baty gives some helpful tips on getting others to enforce the deadline for you.

It does one other important thing. It gives you permission to write utter dreck. I can't seem to break through the "getting started" barrier because I know my initial work will be horrible. I fiddle and waffle through the first thousand words because I can't get the beginning "just right." But hey… if you write it in just thirty days, you can always say, "Hey, I wrote it in thirty days, just what did you expect? I had to write the opening in just one evening!" The important thing is to break through the barrier of perfectionism and fear that you can't write anything worth reading. Get the words down and sort it out in the rewrite later. (Which you get to do after November, of course.)

If I do take it on, I'm not sure what I'm going to write about. Probably some crappy coming-of-age story set in one of my game worlds. But hey, it'll be my crappy story, and I'll have the satisfaction of actually finishing a novel, instead of fiddling with the beginnings of a novel over and over again.