National Novel Writing Month
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
This is very cool. I'd have to drop everything else I've got going in order to do it, but it would be fun. For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, you know that I went to college for Journalism and am a closet wannabe writer. This is great motivation. Actually, it's very similar to the advice that Stephen King gives in his novel "On Writing". Write. Just get it out. 2,000 words a day. Go. After 3 months stop. Go back after a month and re-read it, cutting out at least 10%. Clean it up, rewrite. Done.
I probably won't do this - I've got some major programming to do, but it would be cool.
-Russ