Join NaNoWriMo!
Written By: Nicole Bovey Al-Hakawati
Has a cat got your tongue? No, I don’t suppose so around these parts. Folks are pretty leery of cats. Have you lost your muse? Never found it? The month of November would be the perfect time for you to try and find it.
November is National Novel Writing Month. Not national to Jordan, but none the less, writers from all over world are signing up now to challenge themselves to writing a work of fiction from November 1 st through the 30th. The writing marathon is sponsored by a non-profit organization out of Oakland, California, just across the water from the City by the Bay. In 1999, a haphazard group of wanna-be writers started the practice in the month of July. By year two, they had a website and a Yahoo group to connect them and moved the activity to November to take advantage of the poor winter weather. Last year, 79,000 international writers took the plunge and 13,000 completed the writing goal.
What are the rules, you ask? Well, the goal is to write 50,000 fresh words, not recycled prose, during the month. It breaks down to approximately 1,666 words a day. According to the website, “You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.”
Each author has a page dedicated to their personal profile and novel details. Writers will be expected to update their word count on their page and at the end of the month, upload their novel for an official count. All work is the property of the author and will remain yours to edit and hopefully one day publish.
There are many interesting aspects to the website, which you can find at www.nanowrimo.org. Writers can join a region to chat with their fellow ‘Nanos.’ Unfortunately, there is no region for Jordan. The closest choice so far is ‘Elsewhere: Egypt or Israel.’ More Jordanian writers are needed to warrant the addition of a region dedicated to the Kingdom.
So, if you have a great idea for a work of fiction but have not had the encouragement to start, this is your chance! At the very least, this inspiration will get you writing and you will be that much closer to a completed novel.
