It's getting down there, just over a day to go until the start of what I feel is the holiday season for all writers - the start of NaNoWriMo. If you've wandered in here by accident, you are probably asking yourself what NaNoWriMo is. My spell check certainly is, it's screaming out obnoxiously in squiggly red lines at me to click and fix my many errors. Ha! It's out of luck, I refuse to indulge it. But, as you're not my spell check, let me explain.
NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writers Month, the yearly challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. In other words - thirty days and nights of literary abandon. Or as others might call it - thirty days and nights of chugging coffee beverages by the gallon, bags of chocolate products by the pound and indulging in productive insanity in the interest in earning a lovely purple bar that says winner. It isn't about writing quality, it is about writing quantity. That isn't to say you can't do both, NaNo novels have gone on to be published, but many more have ended up in the junk heap.
So what's the point you may ask?
The point, dear friends, isn't as much winning, as it is accepting the ride. Challenging yourself to do something you might not do otherwise. Like a runner in a marathon, NaNoWriMo is a marathon of the mind, a sprint of the muse, a race for the imagination. A challenge that knows no age, participants from 13 to 30 to 60 and beyond take up the NaNo sword every year. In some cases it even brings family together - mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, brothers and sisters - all writing together. This year, my daughter and I will be taking the challenge together for the first time!
Will we be victorious? I don't know, but I know that we will be enjoying the ride.
The coffee and chocolate too.
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