Jackie Milestone
News Editor

Have you ever wondered how Tolkein, Rowling, or Brontë created the amazing works of literature that they did? Or how any of the great names in writing did it, for that matter? For some, writing is a chore – for others, a luxury. Those who find a great, warming pleasure in writing are familiar with the fleeting imaginative spark it takes to spin up a story deep in the mind and spin it around so fast that you become thoroughly convinced, once you get it down in novel form, it will instantly hit the shelves as a best seller. And therefore most of these idealists know the desolate pile up of a hundred different chapters for fifty different books, each one only bearing a number in the low, single digit range. As for those who cringe at the thought of pulling words from their own fingers, the prospect of writing out a full-length novel is entirely laughable or perhaps terrifying.
However, what if I asserted that well over a hundred thousand people do this in just a thirty-day period of time? Since November of 2000, participants from all over the country (and eventually, all over the world) have gotten involved in something called National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. Put simply, National Novel Writing Month allows people of all ages to unite under one Internet community to each somehow write their own 50,000 (or more) word novel in no more than the thirty passing days of November.
It sounds impossible, and for some it certainly is. As far as a high school student’s perspective goes: you will get a lot less sleep, have a lot less of a life than you are used to, get kicked in the stomach by the enormous stress of 1,667 words (at least) every single day, and probably be reduced to tears more often than not. It sounds masochistic, horrendous, ridiculous, and you ask, “Why would you ever do that to yourself?” The answer: writing a novel is an enormous goal, and proving to yourself that you are able to accomplish such an ambition is heartwarming to say the least. It is also wholly surprising as to how much easier it is to complete this with the knowledge that you are not alone in your stressed and sleepless nights, struggling to pound out a few extra sentences from your keyboard.
NaNoWriMo has a site set up to help you keep track of your word-count progression and communicate with others who are in the same situation. There is a plethora of forums open to the registered community where prospective authors can ask questions for help with their novel, moan about the two-faced demon of procrastination, and simply connect with others throughout the experience. But other than these friendly forums and the frequent e-mailed pep talks from well-known authors who are monitoring your progress, helping you along or making sure you are not simply typing the word “pie” fifty thousand times into a word document? The truth is: no one. NaNoWriMo is designed to be a self-motivated program based on the honor code. Even if you were to type the same word into a document fifty thousand times, all you get for “winning” is a certificate and a few Internet badges that show that you reached the goal. Cheating holds no merit for the bandit.
And though NaNoWriMo is entirely free, tax-deductible donations are strongly urged to help sustain this program and its sister, Young Writers Program, which is geared towards classrooms for school children (kindergarten-12th grade). In previous years, the program partnered with others to build libraries in less fortunate areas of Southeast Asia. A laptop-loaner program is also run through the NaNoWriMo community for those without access to a word processor or computer. Furthermore, in 2008 a company intended as a self-publishing opportunity for writers, CreateSpace, offered all the winners of the 2008 NaNoWriMo participants (all those who reached at least 50,000 words) a free paperback proof copy of their novel which they then sent to the author, all expenses paid. It also gave the option of putting this proof copy up for sale on Amazon.com.
It is not a journey for the fainthearted. It is an expedition for the passionate. The idea is not to create the most eloquent work, but simply to create a work that can be called a novel. Editing comes later; NaNoWriMo is about getting it done and proving that it can be done. So, 50,000 words later, it does not matter if you have disjointed sentences with no real flow and a plot that twists more than the Nile; the ability to hold 50,000 of those disjointed words in your hands is typically worth all the pain that the previous 30 days may have caused.
For more information about National Novel Writing Month or further interest, visit NaNoWriMo.org.