Sunday, October 28, 2007

NaNoWriMo - the insanity begins soon!

I've been convinced against my better judgment to participate in NaNoWriMo - a frenzied attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Why? Why not? What else is there to do in November?

The goal here is quantity, not quality. The math breaks down like this: 50,000 words / 30 days = 1,667 words a day. If you type 60 words per minute, that's about 28 minutes of typing per day. Of course that assumes that you spend the whole time typing and not trying to figure out what to type.

There are also several tricks to help increase your word counts. Some of my personal favorites are:
  • A character with temporary hearing loss - characters have to keep repeating themselves.
  • A character that sings out loud all the time
  • Quoting literature
  • A character that talks in his sleep, even if it is gibberish
So join in the fun! This will be your best first novel ever!

2 comments:

Jason said...

This is very tempting. I guess I better make up my mind quickly :)

Erik said...

Mark, my coworker who convinced me to participate this year has done this a few times now. His first time, he found out about it at a Halloween party in the evening. So you had at least 12 hours lead time on him! :-)