Monday, October 20, 2008

Creativity Exercise: NaNoWriMo

OK. "NaNoWriMo" has to be one of the worst smushed-up words/acronyms ever.

It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Participants are challenged to complete a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. You can gear up for it now. In Kansas City, The Writers Place will host a kick-off event Sunday, Oct. 26, from 6 - 10 p.m.

For CI team members outside KC, check out the NaNoWriMo site. I do like the approach. Here's a quote from the site:

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

I won't be participating. And I'll explain why. Tomorrow.

3 comments:

Vicki said...

ha! I'm not participating either, this time, but I gave it a go last year.

Jan said...

Vicki, you're amazing! I'm so impressed that you gave it a go last year.

And, I know of at least one CI team member who signed up yesterday. You know who you are. And you know we're proud!

Let us know how it goes.

Anonymous said...

I am so excited to say that as of right now my brother intends to do this. He is really excited about it!!