Does Genre Matter for NaNoWriMo?
November is right around the corner which means National Novel Writing Month is coming. If you’ve never heard of or attempted this month-long writing project, it supports thousands of people as they attempt to churn out 50,000 words in only 30 days. It’s ambitious and crazy but it encourages the freedom of letting go and just sitting down to write. Write a lot. Every day. .
I read Chris Baty’s No Plot, No Problem: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days a few years ago when I
first attempted novel writing month and I broke a couple of key NaNoWriMo rules. I continued working on a manuscript that was already in the works and I didn’t write fiction. I wrote memoir. I was in an mfa program at the time. I was a serious writer. And since I was working on a book length memoir it seemed silly to start something new. I wrote a ton of words that first year, but I fell short of the 50,000 word mark. In the end, I produced a whole lot of pages, some of which were actually usable.
The last two years when I’ve participated, I’ve done so with my middle school students. Writing YA with my classes helped me take the whole process a lot less seriously. Also, the young writers program at NaNoWriMo is flexible with word count goals and from these past two Novembers, I’ve won! I’ve written a ton and have a couple of young adult novel drafts just waiting to be revised.
I don’t know why it was so hard that first year. Maybe it was because I wrote non-fiction. Perhaps it’s that I lean toward brevity, or maybe it’s just that 50,000 words is hard no matter what you write (last year’s historical fiction was a challenge.) But no matter what you want to write, I don’t really think it matters. If you have a novel idea brewing, or a memoir in mind, give NaNoWriMo a shot. It’s not really about “winning,” it’s about writing and you’ll have a whole community writing along with you.
Think about it. Check out their site http://www.nanowrimo.org/. Who knows, maybe at the end of November you’ll finally have that novel down on paper. At the very least, you’ll have something you can send away to Specter.
So glad to hear you do this with your classroom. This year I will be leading a NaNo group at my daughter’s school–with fourth graders! In 2009. I used NaNo to write a nonfiction book on how to write books fast. It is called Write-A-Thon and was published by Writer’s Digest Books this fall. I think the beauty of NaNo is that as writers we finally have a group of people who are doing the same thing along with us. That makes such a difference.
@WriteNowCoach , I love that you wrote non-fiction with success! Have a great NaNoWriMo with those fourth graders. The writing community of the project is a huge benefit. Will you be writing too?
I’m hoping to write. I am planning on continuing writing the series of children’s chapter books I started last year. But I am also blogging daily for my new book Write-A-Thon and NaNo–so it will be a fast-paced month!
Good luck and write on! @WriteNowCoach