Saturday, November 1, 2008

onetwothree...nanowrimo.

National Novel Writing Month (or, to those of us in its hackles, who don't have enough time in the day for the next 31 days, we just short hand it NaNoWriMo). National Novel Writing Month is a mad experiment heavily dosed with quantity over quality. In short: you agree to write your "novel" every day for a month, with the finish line being November 31st, and 50,000 words. Revision (and there will be a lot of it) comes later. Much, much later. I'm heading into this knowing that our biggest work event of the year, Wordstock Book Festival, is happening next week and I'll be working 15 hour days for a while.

I have two visuals to cling to when I feel crushed by the impossibility of this task: Zadie Smith wrote White Teeth during her final year at Cambridge, she wrote the last few chapters during finals. In the living room of her parents house. Because she had just broken up with her boyfriend and had to move somewhere. Yikes.

The other is this incredible timelapse video of the route of the New York City Marathon, condensed down to 3 1/2 minutes; because one type of marathon or another, it's all about moving one foot forward, again and again, till you hit that sweet finish line.

You can follow my NaNoWriMo progress here.

4 comments:

Eden From Sweden said...

Canela wishes you the best of luck on your 50,000 words. Buena Suerte!

Sarah O. said...

Goooo, Eden! Remember, no over-thinking and no looking back. Maybe we'd have better luck if we applied such principles to everything in our lives.

Unknown said...

You are my hero.

Unknown said...

So let us know in a future blog how it is going!