{"id":9271,"date":"2015-03-31T18:39:13","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T18:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/?p=9271"},"modified":"2015-03-31T18:39:13","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T18:39:13","slug":"nanowrimo-30-days-to-write-that-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/?p=9271","title":{"rendered":"NaNoWriMo: 30 days to write that novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
From left<\/em>, Guillaume H\u00e9bert-Jodoin, Laurel Harris, Althea Nawalleh, Helena Verdier, Marie-Christine Houle, and Carol Brereton at a Luna Caf\u00e9 write-in. [Photo \u00a9 Jon Willemsen]<\/figcaption><\/figure>On a snowy November afternoon, a group of dedicated Ottawa writers is\u00a0beating the cold by staying inside Luna Caf\u00e9 in Kanata. They sit\u00a0quietly sitting at a table.\u00a0Apart from some periodic\u00a0friendly comments, the only sound from the table is\u00a0the\u00a0furious typing on their laptops.<\/p>\n

The reason for their gathering was to further\u00a0an individual, yet collective, goal: to each write a 50,000-word novel entirely in the month of November, as part of a\u00a0completion called National Novel Writing Month\u2014or NaNoWriMo, as it is affectionately known by its willing participants.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely insane, but it\u2019s a challenge and it\u2019s a lot of fun,\u201d says a smiling Helena Verdier, one person\u00a0at the table.<\/p>\n

Verdier, 21, is one of three NaNoWriMo liaisons in the Ottawa region. She\u00a0balances that volunteer role with a full-time job at a car dealership, along with writing her own novel. She\u2019s in charge of coordinating NaNoWriMo writers\u2019 meetings around the city for the month of November. These meetings are called \u201cwrite-ins,\u201d where writers meet new faces or catch up with old friends, then sit down together and start writing.<\/p>\n

\u2018At every write-in event, I\u2019m seeing new faces, which means more people are doing it.\u2019\u00a0\u2013 Guillaume H\u00e9bert-Jodoin, NaNoWriMo participant<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Verdier, who organizes and attends write-ins \u201calmost every day\u201d in November, says they are the most productive way to achieve the daunting 50,000-word goalpost. \u201cYou really need that community support,\u201d she admits. \u201cThere are days where you don\u2019t want to write, but seeing other people work hard pushes you to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n

A global movement<\/h2>\n

\"National<\/a>
Warriors of the pen. The NaNoWriMo logo\u00a0references the hell-bent Vikings.\u00a0[Photo courtesy of National Novel Writing Month]<\/figcaption><\/figure>From its humble roots in 1999 with only 21 participants\u00a0in the San Francisco Bay area, the movement has spread worldwide. According to the official NaNoWriMo website, more than 300,000 participants across six continents wrote novels in November 2013.<\/p>\n

Since 1999, NaNoWriMo has evolved into a southern California\u2013based non-profit organization, dedicated to helping encourage writing around the world. While the cost\u00a0is free for anyone to join in writing her or his\u00a0own novel, participants are encouraged to donate to the organization,\u00a0to help fund its youth literacy initiatives: Camp NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program, both designed to provide a\u00a0community and resources to hopeful\u00a0young writers.<\/p>\n

The major idea, for most participants, is to knock off a novel first draft. Even if that draft isn\u2019t yet publishable, it may provide the\u00a0author with a literary agent or a publisher willing to provide editing in order to publish it.<\/p>\n

NaNoWriMo has\u00a0led to a number of successes.\u00a0\u00a0Among the noteworthy\u00a0published novels to have come out of the\u00a0event in the last 15 years are Sara Gruen\u2019s Water for Elephants<\/em>, Erin Morgenstern\u2019s The Night Circus<\/em>, Hugh Howy\u2019s Wool<\/em>, and Marissa Meyer\u2019s Cinder<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The cover page of Averill\u2019s NaNoWriMo novel,\u00a0published in 2013. [Photo courtesy of Alan Averill]<\/figcaption><\/figure>Alan Averill, a\u00a0Seattle-based author, wrote the first draft of his novel\u00a0The Beautiful Land<\/em> during NaNoWriMo. Eventually the book was published in 2013 by ACE\/Roc Books, a division of Penguin Books.\u00a0But Averill\u00a0he says the road\u00a0to publication was far from easy:\u00a0He spent an entire year simply trying to find a literary\u00a0agent, and, even so, a book deal was reached\u00a0only after the\u00a0manuscript had\u00a0won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.<\/p>\n

Averill credits NaNoWriMo with helping him to focus on at least finishing the manuscript: \u201cI\u2019ve wanted to be a professional writer since I was a little kid, so I suppose in that way I was thinking about getting it published. But it didn\u2019t seem like any kind of realistic goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Ottawa, NaNoWriMo has been a\u00a0fixture for about the past decade, according to Guillaume H\u00e9bert-Jodoin. The 33-year-old University of Ottawa law student and writer, who served as Ottawa\u00a0community liaison for the prior\u00a0two years, believes that November 2014\u00a0has drawn some of the largest write-in crowds he can remember. \u201cAt every write-in event I go to, I\u2019m always seeing new people,\u201d he says. \u201cOf course, there\u2019s that core group of people you see every time, but most times this year I\u2019m seeing new faces every week, which means more people are doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly 4,000 participants in the Ottawa-Gatineau region were officially registered as members in\u00a0November, according to the NaNoWriMo website. H\u00e9bert-Jodoin estimates that each of the daily write-ins draws about 10 to 20 people (with far more showing up for the larger, community-wide events). He recalls significantly fewer people attending such events in 2013.<\/p>\n

Daunting task, distant\u00a0finish<\/h2>\n

\"Verdier<\/a>
Helena Verdier: \u2018You\u2019re encouraged to keep going, dreaming of writing your own novel.\u2019 [Photo \u00a9 Jon Willemsen]<\/figcaption><\/figure>However, the prize of a finished\u00a0novel in one month remains elusive for many\u00a0brave souls\u00a0who try it each year. With a daily target of 1,667 words, participants agree it\u2019s a massively ambitious goal.<\/p>\n

Meagan Black knows the difficulty first hand. The fourth-year English student at Carleton University has attempted NaNoWriMo twice, both times unsuccessfully. She says it simply was taking too much of her time. Another factor, she says, was frustration:\u00a0\u201cI just wasn\u2019t happy with what I was writing. It\u00a0makes it hard to motivate yourself to keep going when you aren\u2019t happy with where the story is going\u00a0and you\u2019re spending so much of your time writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still,\u00a0habitual NaNoWriMo participants\u00a0consider\u00a0the concept of\u00a0a-novel-in-a-month to be\u00a0very healthy, since\u00a0it\u00a0banishes\u00a0procrastination and perfectionism. It gives authors the incentive\u00a0to crank out chapters and reach the story\u2019s end, no matter how imperfectly,\u00a0as opposed to rewriting constantly and getting caught in a loop.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about the quality of what you\u2019re writing, but the quantity,\u201d explains Verdier. \u201cYou can go back and edit your story whenever you want. But you\u2019re always encouraged to keep going by seeing everyone else working hard and dreaming of writing your own novel. And that\u2019s what makes NaNoWriMo worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every November, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide take up the challenge of National Novel Writing Month. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":9668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9271"}],"version-history":[{"count":63,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10527,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9271\/revisions\/10527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}