NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is November, and now there's a Young Writer's Program for kids age 12 and under. The goal of NaNoWriMo for grown-ups is to write a novel -- or 50,000 words, which is actually a very short grown-up novel, considering the usual definition of adult novels is 60,000 + words, with 60,000 to 100,000 being the most common, but I'm not trying to intimidate you, really -- in a month. Fifty thousand words is about 200 double-spaced manuscript pages. The goal for young writers is the same -- write a novel in a month.
Yesterday I was fooling around on the NaNoWriMo website when Gareth walked in. I'm not going to sign up this year -- although I have participated in unrelated novel-in-a-month challenges before -- because I've sort of fallen into revising a novel I wrote a few years ago. It would be nice if I could revise this novel in a month, but NaNoWriMo isn't about revisions. It's about circumventing your internal editor, and just producing words.
"What are you doing?" Gareth asked.
"November is National Novel Writing Month," I said. "Now they've got a space for kids under 12. You can sign up and talk to other kids who are writing novels on their forums. Want to give it a try? You don't have to type it."
He smiled, a little nervously. (The thought of doing NaNoWriMo always makes people smile a little nervously, no matter how old or experienced they are, trust me.) "I don't write very fast," he said.
"That's okay. I think if you just had a goal to write every day, that would be fine."
He tilted his head, thinking about it. "Hmmm," he said, then ran outside to play on the swingset with his sister. To be honest, I couldn't really believe I was having this conversation with him, considering that he only started wanting to write anything in August. But every morning he comes into the family room with new creatures and stories he's made up. He's like me -- he carries a petting zoo around in his head.
Pretty soon after Gareth ran outside, Katydid came back in to talk to me. I had to make her whisper because I had just gotten the babies to sleep. I was sitting down at the computer again, taking a break from reading the manuscript I'm planning on editing. (Reading manuscript is something you can do while rocking a baby to sleep, but you have to remember to insert page numbers before you print it out. Otherwise, you end up with piles all over the house and no idea how they all fit together. I wouldn't know this from experience or anything.)
"Gareth says there's this thing where you write a novel -- and why do novels have to have chapters?" she whispered loudly.
"Because it's a long story," I said. "Chapters make it easier to divide it up. They give you a stopping place. Talk a little quieter, ok?"
"Ok!" Nobody in my house can be quiet, though. She went on, at a loud whisper getting louder, which was pretty much guaranteed to wake a baby, since they were both sleeping not far away, "I have this story, it's called The Young Explorers, and it's about these two kids who land in a spaceship on an alien planet, and they find all these alien animals and -- can I do this thing, too -- what's it called?"
"NaNoWriMo," I said.
She giggled. Because, let's face it, NaNoWriMo is a funny name.
But NaNoWriMo is also a good tool for generating excitement about writing, in both young and old. Speaking from experience, it's tough to write 50,000 words in a month when you have any number of children in the house, especially if they're small. For the curious, the most words I have ever written in one month -- from scratch -- was about 48,000. I was aiming for 60,000. At the time I had only two children, and they both napped in the afternoon. I could spend almost two hours a day writing. Two hours! At the rate I write, I could produce almost 8 pages in that amount of time. Theoretically, of course, considering the rate at which I unwrite words. Now that I have more children -- and especially twins -- it's more difficult. Last night, for instance, Pip didn't collapse into sleep until around 11:30, and then both babies woke up at 12:30, so I didn't really get to sleep until after 1 AM. Then Pip was up for the day at 7 AM. It's very hard to write when the babies are sleeping if they never sleep.
But what NaNoWriMo does is to encourage you to try to write a novel, and not to worry about whether it's good or bad. Many people who have always wanted to write a book really need this encouragement to get started. They need to have some excuse to throw away the fears that they can't spell, that their grammar isn't good enough, that their mother will hate the book if she reads it, that they'll lose all their friends if their friends knew what they were writing about, that the other members of their church just wouldn't understand what they're trying to do. NaNoWriMo is about writing as fun. You don't need a plot to start. (If you've got one, good! If you don't, you'll find one!) You don't really need much of anything. You can write with a pen in a notebook if you want. And the wonderful thing about homeschooling is that you can do this with your kids and call it school.
What could be better than that? I hope my kids do decide that they want to participate, each to their own ability. Because I want to show them that writing isn't all about spelling and punctuation and five sentence paragraphs (although all of those things are good to know!). Writing is also about transforming your dreams and imaginings into reality. It's about sharing them with other people. It's about stepping into someone else's shoes for a little while.
Writing a novel is like playing let's pretend. And NaNoWriMo is like a giant playgroup. So if you have ever thought about playing, November is the month to do it!
You are a brave woman with a streak of literary adventure, Angel! What an interesting idea. I don't know that I am that confident? humble? spontaneous? coherent enough to connect 50,000 words in one month in novel form. Or any form. Hmm. It does sound like a fun challenge though. Hmm.
Posted by: Marjorie | October 20, 2006 at 06:46 PM