National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) : Write or Die!

Dear readers, as you can see from my word war widget in the sidebar, my friend Mario Kluser and I are waging a wordcount war. We spent the first week in November working together on our blogs and internet endeavors and trying to work on our NaNo novels together, but, alas, fell far behind on the noveling front of our efforts.

For those of you who are not familiar with it, National Novel Writing Month was started ten years ago in a garage in San Francisco by Chris Baty and a couple of friends. The goal is to write a novel in 30 days, and to win an author must reach 50,000 words in that time. One does not really “win” anything except a challenge with oneself, the temporary silencing of one’s inner editor, and lots of new friends with whom to share zany videos on Viddler, where there is a great NaNo group. The amazing thing is that at the end of it you do have the first draft of a novel. Some NaNo novels have gone on to become real live novels, with publishers and editors and the whole shebang. A well known bestseller, Water for Elephants was born as a NaNo novel.

Though Mario and I were both quite far behind many of our fellow Wrimo’s (Gamwyn and Joitheartist are freaks of nature!) I had quite a lead on him, and could at least feel moderately good about that. Now he has got a hold of a terrifyingly effective weapon!!! It’s called Write or Die and he was kind enough to share it with me. If I want to stay in this race I have to use this weapon at every possible opportunity. He has just overtaken me, which could plunge me deep into despair.

Write or Die is an online application that gives you a text window in which to write. You set a time for yourself and a wordcount goal. If you stop writing for more than a few seconds the background of the screen turns first fuchsia and then blood red. If your time expires and you have not reached your wordcount goal, some horrid sounds are played loudly. If you do reach your count, however, there is some sort of trumpet fanfare to celebrate that fact. I tried this last night at nearly two in the morning and wrote over 270 words in ten minutes. I think this tool will come in very handy.

This year NaNoWriMo is celebrating its 10th anniversary. To celebrate and do my little part I made a small donation to the organization (it is now a non-profit!) and I bought two mugs, one for me and one for Mario. Alas they did not arrive in time for us to make a video together in New York with our mugs, but his is now winging its way across the “pond” as the Brits call it, to his house in the Netherlands.

Are any of you NaNo participants? Do you have stories to share? Feel free to comment, we would all love to hear your stories. And if you are having trouble, here is something that might help with your writing:

Related articles by Zemanta

• 30+ Tools For The Amateur Writer

If you enjoyed this post, this is the perfect time to sign up for free updates via RSS or via email and while you're at it, sign up for our free Newsletter.

Tagged as: NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, Writing