On Friday, October 31, 2008, I woke up to the radio talking about something called National Novel Writing Month. Write fifty thousand words by the end of November? Impossible!
But I wanted to try it because I’m crazy.
So, after work that Friday, I checked out the NaNoWriMo website. I spent my time making a list of character names, jotting down plot ideas, and a list of scenes to getting started. I didn’t know where the story was going. I just wanted to write, write, write a story. Even if I didn’t make it to 50K words by the of the day on November 30th.
But November 1st, the next day, was Saturday. I had the whole weekend typing away. The story made no sense. The scenes were loosely connected, but I was having a blast. About halfway through November, I realized I had written more words on one writing project than ever before.
I might actually reach fifty thousand words by the end of month.
And I did. Awful story. Rough, rough draft. But I had written fifty thousand words. I printed off my manuscript, three-hole punched the pages, and inserted it in a binder. That dreadful binder sits on the bottom level of a bookshelf.
I don’t dare look at that story again. I might vomit. But it has a special place in my heart because I realized I could write a novel, really a rough draft, of a story. Needless to say, I never tried to fix it up and publish it; however, it gave me such self-confidence as a writer.
So, almost every year since 2008, I participated in NaNoWriMo. I did a few NaNoWriMo camps, too. I “won” only fifty percent of the time, but I had fun every time I did it. Even the stories that didn’t get to 50K by the end of November were still a victory.
So, the past couple of years of NaNoWriMo have been sad for me. The website united writers all over the world for years, but it’s shutting down. But in my mind, the spirit of NaNoWriMo lives on. Its essence isn’t digitized in a website.
The biggest motivator of the NaNoWriMo website was the deadline. That is gone. But now is a time to test ourselves as writers. We are free to do NaNoWriMo any month we want. We can even start on any day of the month if we want and write fifty-thousand words by the end of thirty days. It’s an opportunity to test your own self-discipline; you just need show up every day and write even if you don’t feel like it.
The spirit of NaNoWriMo is captured in Chris Baty’s book, No Plot? No Problem! I still reread it just to recapture the feeling of having fun while writing a story.
As a result, I’ve decided to make a decision.
I’m going to take a break from my current WIP and do my own NaNoWriMo. But I’m not going to call it that. In my mind, I refer to it as my 50KN (Fifty Thousand Novel).
I’m going to keep a diary of my daily word count. I’ll share some of that on this blog. I know. It’s not even November but remember originally NaNoWriMo was in July. I want to prove to myself I can do it without an official deadline. Maybe I’ll prove it to someone else. And I’ll end this blog entry similarly to the way I ended my previous entry:
The spirit of NaNoWriMo is not with the website, but within each writer.
Andrew M. Friday 
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