Wiston Papers

Time out for NaNoWriMo

November 01 thousands of Americans will dust off long-forgotten, dust-covered, age-yellowed papers buried deep on the bottom shelf of some seldom-touched book case or hidden in a dresser drawer.  

It’s now or never if I’m I’m ever going to do it, will be the unspoken rationale.

I’ll join this legion of creative yet procrastinating minds.  All of us following the Pied Piper siren song of fame and fortune.  The acclaim that will accrue to us for having spent the next 30 days writing the great American novel will be the rightful spoils for recognizing genius.  A masterpiece of literature will spew forth from the cacophonous tapping of a million keys responding to the urgency of fingertips to record the words that will transfix a multitude of readers.

OK.  It won’t happen.  But it will be fun anyway.  I’m talking about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  November is when many of us decide to spend 30 days writing a book.  Some will use the period as stage one of a serious project.  Much more will have to be done before the draft becomes a published book.  It takes more than a month to write a novel worthy of publication.

Most of us will just tackle our idea for the satisfaction of having churned out 50,000 words on a single topic over the course of a month.  We have no pretense that our product will ever appear between two covers in a bookstore.  We just want to see what we can write.

Some of us will get the courage to let a few close relatives or friends look at our effort--with the caveat that they be kind.  Our egos are fragile.

Our son was kind in his assessment of my first NaNoWriMo creation.  “Well, it’s a first draft,” he said.  That was it.  Only later did he have more detailed comments.

I think he was trying to spare my feelings.  My fault really.  I did ask him to look at my manuscript as if I were serious about publishing it.  He was right of course.  It needed much more work.  

Do you have any better ideas, is what I inferred from his diplomatic reticence to expand on his original critique.  

This Thursday I begin again.  I have  four ideas rumbling around in my brain.  And I’ll settle on one of them before then.  

Meanwhile, I may write one more blog before I take my annual hiatus and join the NaNoWriMo community.

Who knows.  You may read some descriptions of my frustrations here about my experiences during the coming month.  Those anecdotes may actually be better reading than my novel.

Steve Coon

October 29, 2012