Thanks to my neo-luddite lifestyle, I’m a day late (with this post), and 1667 words short (with my, ahem, novel). 😉 That’s how many words I need to average, per day, if I want to hit the magic number of 50,000 by November 30th. This lunacy I blog of can only mean one thing; either my father’s cousin was right about unmarried girls going mad by the age of 30 OR I’m doing NaNoWriMo for the third time. As much as some of you would opine that it’s the former, I assure you, it’s the other one.

Some history about this exhilarating, arduous, exasperating example of folly which requires copious amounts of hope, tenacity and your drug of choice for alertness, via the official site:

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 painstaking 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.

Everyone who has thought about being a novelist? Really? So that’s like…87% of the people reading this. Dear 87%, there’s no need to fret about your great South Asian American novel, NaNoWriMo is about raw content, not polished prose. The idea of writing without inhibitions is the cliche from which all writing workshop exercises emanate:

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.

Make no mistake: 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.

Here’s why I’m telling you about this HERE, on the Mutiny:

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and — when the thing is done — the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

I never spent time on the forums which many other participants frequent, but I’d be happy to commiserate with other suffering flash novelists here, if they are so inclined.

Maybe this will incline you: the last sentence of this paragraph always– in as much as we can look at three years as something as expansive and important as “always”– inclines me:

In 2004, we had over 42,000 participants. Nearly 6000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

Additional background info, for those who like more:

The novel can be on any theme, in any genre. It must be started no earlier than midnight November 1st, and completed before midnight on the 30th, local time. Advance planning and notes are permissible, but no earlier written material can go into the body of the novel. Debate exists as to whether the ideal is to write a complete novel of fifty thousand words, or more simply to write the first fifty thousand words of a novel which may require more text to complete. Although the former is arguably more satisfying, and many participants aim to complete their plots just past the fifty thousand word mark, a fifty thousand word novel is not particularly long by the standards of published works. [wiki]

STILL not convinced you want to do this? Perhaps you need an excuse to let your room go to hell? Stay at your computer when there’s nothing new on this blog? Dodge thanksgiving with meddling marriage-minded family members? Who could fault you for creating art, future Jhumpa or Salman?

We love the fringe benefits accrued to novelists. For one month out of the year, we can stew and storm, and make a huge mess of our apartments and drink lots of coffee at odd hours. And we can do all of these things loudly, in front of people. As satisfying as it is to reach deep within yourself and pull out an unexpectedly passable work of art, it is equally (if not more) satisfying to be able to dramatize the process at social gatherings…The other reason we do NaNoWriMo is because the glow from making big, messy art, and watching others make big, messy art, lasts for a long, long time. The act of sustained creation does bizarre, wonderful things to you. It changes the way you read. And changes, a little bit, your sense of self. We like that. [FAQ]

I’ve grown accustomed to the face of this blog on Fridays, when we write 55-word gems which guarantee swoon-worthy reading material all weekend long…I think some of you are ready for something a bit more hard-kaur. Think of it as creating your usual Friday nanofiction…times 1,000… 😉 You can do it, put your Mac in to it. Okay, okay…your PC, too. Who’s in?