National Novel Writing Month

If you knew me in high school, you knew that when November rolled around, I became a different person. I vanished from public life, became irritable and perma-tired, and lost myself in my computer screen. I would stop reading, doing art, even spending time with most friends–except for the ones exhibiting similar symptoms.

All this to write a 50,000 word story in the span of 30 days. Before you have to go and do the math yourself, that works out to be 1,667 words per day, which is about seven pages, double-spaced.

There was no award for this nightmare experience, no money, and not even much recognition. You don’t get special prize pack for quality, speed, or length. The reward is simply in the experience and the very (I mean, very) rough draft that is left at the end, should you succeed.

The event comes courtesy of NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. It began all the way back in 1999, when it had only 21 participants, all of whom were located in the San Francisco area. As of 2015 (the most recent year I could find data for), NanoWriMo had 431,626 participants–more than 40,000 of whom won that year.

I’ve participated six times. While that might sound impressive, I only won the first two years that I participated: 2011 and 2012 (ah, what youthful excitement and energy can afford you).

Most people in my life have forgotten about the pain and energy that I had to put into these to actually make them happen. However, my dad recently remembered it (luckily, because I haven’t though about since my weak attempt last November, so thanks Pa) and was asking me about it and one thing he–along with many other people–want to know is why?

Why would someone put themselves through this for seemingly no reward? There are late nights, frustrating mornings, and a full month of nothing but furious, exhausting typing that wears out both your fingers and your keyboard, so WHY would someone choose to do it? Especially someone in school, who has enough unpaid labor to produce.

I, of course, can only speak for myself and my reasons for doing it, but I’ll speak on it nonetheless.

I’ve always had a passion for reading, and a pretty wild imagination that will pester me with ideas if I don’t get them out. Not that these ideas are particularly original or thought-provoking, but they do need to be somewhere other than floating around in my mind. And NaNoWriMo encourages you to just vomit it all out into a single Word document.

Not only that, but I wanted to do it for practical reasons. It increased my typing speed probably tenfold. It also demonstrated that I could start and finish a huge composition project, the likes of which not everyone has the mettle to complete. I think that NaNo has also genuinely improved the quality of my writing. Something I heard a lot in undergrad was that my writing had a very distinct and loud voice, and I don’t think that that would be the case had I not had so much practice before going to college.

So, should you try it out?

I think NaNoWriMo is fun, even if you don’t complete it. It teaches you a lot about yourself, reveals your daily habits, and shows you the kinds of things you may be wasting time doing. It also gives you the opportunity to spend a lot of time alone, which may not sound great, but can allow time for meditation, coffee drinking, and listening to music while avoiding actually writing. And if being alone isn’t your cup of tea, there are tons of meet ups of NaNo challengers that can expand your friend group (and break you out of the cycle of going to the same coffeeshop every single morning).

Either way, you have a couple of months to play around with the idea of participating (though we are halfway through one of its sister events: Camp NaNoWriMo).

If you’re interested in checking out my profile (though I’m not sure why, as it doesn’t have much about the actual things I’ve written), you can find it here.

And, in honor of my dad reminding me about this and giving me a topic to write about on here, I present to you The NaNoWriMo Song: