Wednesday, November 4, 2015

No NaNoWriMo For Me This Year

In 2009 I was reading the blog of a writer in India, She mentioned that she was going to take part in “NaNoWriMo” that year. I had never heard of it. I looked it up in “search” and went to its website. NaNoWriMo is an acronym for National Novel Writing Month. During the month of November at least 300,000 writers from all over the world try to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in one month’s time. They sign up after October 15 and are assigned a web page for their novel. Periodically they log how many words they have written and a graph shows them if they are on schedule to finish on time. Participation is free but those who sign up are asked to make a donation to the Office of Letters and Light which administers NaNoWriMo. Those who succeed in writing a novel of at least 50,000 words (there are six enormous computers which verify the word count in less than two seconds) are declared “Winners.” They can buy a T-shirt which proclaims their status.
Every year 2009 through 2014 I participated and successfully wrote novels of more than 50,000 words. Two of these novels I self-published in print and three others I posted on this blog at a rate of one chapter per week. The process of writing that many words in a month is consuming. I still had to write a sermon each week, preach it on Sunday, then send it out by postal and email. The days that I did write for NaNoWriMo, I had to write 2,500 words or more.

This year I decided not to participate. The wood on my house needs to be painted. I don’t know if the weather will cooperate, but I have put off the job too long. There are other jobs I have put off too long. If I find time for writing in the evening, I should start again on my memoirs. I’ve lived a long time and I don’t know how much time remains.

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