Starting on November 1st, be sure to check out the NaNoWriMo boards, and look for folks wearing the following badge:
The NaNoWriMo loons get together once a year to write a novel (or at least 50,000 words of one) in a month, and Forward Motion members have been a strong force for this particular brand of nuttiness for the last few years. To find out more about FM and the NaNo-nauts (or nuts?), read Crazy People Alert! NaNo is about to start and NaNoWriMo and those who just don’t get it.
And then join in the cheering. The NaNo threads are always some of my favorites.
I love the concept of NaNoWriMo, and I delight in the way that it encourages people to leap in and let go of their inhibitions and write the book. It’s a terrific annual event, and I am always on a friggin’ deadline and so never get to play. But I wrote Sympathy for the Devil (60,000 words) in a month, so I at least know that if I ever get the chance to join up, I’ll have a chance of producing something I really like. (SFTD retaining its number one spot in my favorites of the things I’ve written, even after all these years.)
So I’ll start the cheering now. Go get ’em, guys!
This sounds like fun. Unfortunately, I note the dictum "paying work comes first," and in this case, paying work means the overlapping deadlines on two major short term work projects that I have to do a lot of writing on. Any time left over for writing I need to try to put into my other projects. Maybe next year.
BTW, Symapthy for the Devil remains MY favorite of your novels too 🙂
Thanks, Holly. This is a first for me. Hope to do a few more–no matter what the end result of this one.
Thanks for the cheering! I think it’s going to be another great NaNo year. This is my third leap into the fray, and if I enjoy it half as much as the last two, it will be worth it. It really is fun, just to tell yourself that for this month you are just going to have fun and write, and you have a crazy goal along with (it seems) half the rest of the writers in the world.
We have been having little NaNo chats on Wednesday nights at Forward Motion, and we have a NaNoWriMo chat room for November. I think half the fun in NaNo is knowing that there are thousands of others writing novels at the same time.
Writing no longer has to be a lonely profession. Others can’t do our writing for us, but we can finally find whole herds of fellow nuts who can talk about work.
Thanks, hadn’t heard of this. Sounds like fun.
Thanks, Holly. I hope you can give it a try some year, too. But deadlines are crucial and, as Sheila always reminds us, paying work comes first. 🙂
Last year my computer crashed and I couldn’t finish. But we did that upgrade this year, so I don’t expect it to crash again.
Thanks for all of the work you’ve done writing articles, starting and running FM, and teaching. You, Sheila, and the other folks at FM are the main reason I know I can write that many words, as long as I don’t procrastinate. I’m not going to bed unless I have my words written, except for Thanksgiving. I’m using the marathon to get enough words to take that day off because we’re going out of town. 🙂
Thanks for the support, Holly! I hope one of these years you can participate with us!