NANOWRIMO

That's one of those words (is it a word?) that rolls around in your mouth.  What is NANOWRIMO?  Well, once  a year a bunch of writers get together and decide to challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word novel during the month.  So NANOWRIMO is National Novel Writer's Month.  I've done this a few times in the past, actually completed it twice.  I haven't ever re-read the things I've written, but I have finished.

I decided that this year would be another good year to try.  If you break it down, it's 1667 words a day for the full month to hit 50,000 by November 30. Having Thanksgiving towards the end helps too, extra time to get the word counts in and up to where they need to be.  I've spent so much time lately in poetry and in condensing words and picking the exact right one that somehow an exercise in telling a 375 page story is a bit daunting (last time was 377 pages).  I've grown accustomed to cutting words down and trying to tell the story in short bursts.  This daunting task of all these words available to me seems terrifying, not a luxury.  With poetry you have to be very specific, every word is weighed and measured and selected or rejected carefully based on sounds and emotions and how it fits with line breaks, there is a science to this art.  But NANOWRIMO challenges us to just put fingers to keys and type, type it all out, just keep typing.

I find myself telling the story of B but just as an introduction. The idea I had was to tell the story of how I've been working through the break up. I am currently working on a poem called "Lessons in Being Left" and it offers handy and slightly snarky comments on how to survive a breakup.  Each stanza lends its self to a chapter, for example the title for chapter 1 becomes:

Stop listening to the radio

he is not every song, although

it feels like it was all written

for you,  maybe switch genres

to Old Time Rock and Roll or NPR?

And then I am planning to tell pithy funny stories about crying on the way to work because of Norah Jones or Adele or mabye how listening to Jim Gaffigan riff on bacon is the antidote to tears.

I'm curious to see what comes of this month of writing, I'm hopeful that my construct works, that I can find the words and the path in this to find something new, something worth sharing at some point.  Some of my friends, my cheering section, have challenged me to actually go reread whatever I write. That's terrifying to me, a lot of what will go on paper is free writing, there will be paragraphs about how I hate writing or lists of things I need to get done in the day.  Some of it will be embarrassing and childish but the important thing at the end of the day is that I will get to 50,000 words.

It's odd to talk about this out loud as it were.  I am setting myself up for questions and comments and I've just made myself publically accountable for actually doing this, I'm opening myself up yet again and it feels oddly right.  If you are a closet writer and want to check this out, I am always available for questions or you can check out www.nanowrimo.org.

Write on!