So tomorrow, the 1st of November, begins something called NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. It’s a program that challenges would-be authors to write a book in 30 days. Last year over 100,000 people attempted the challenge and 12,000 actually accomplished their goal. That may seem like a small number of successes at first glance, but when you consider what it takes to accomplish that goal it really is a staggering number. In order to reach the end of the month and be able to proclaim yourself a “winner” you must have written 50,000 words total, which is around 1,700 words per day for thirty days. For those who rarely write, and when they do write they never glance at the word count at the bottom of the screen, those numbers probably don’t seem like very much. But maybe looking at it this way will help:
Most chapters in an average-sized book contain around 5,000 words. Now, if each chapter were to be 10 pages long, which really isn’t much by today’s standards, you would have about 500 words per page. The other day I wrote about 500 words of a short story I’m working on, and that took me about half an hour, and that was a really good day. Sometimes I can only manage 50 or 100 words, but most days I manage nothing at all, something I’m currently working to change. So, if I were to continue moving at a pace of 500 words per day it would take me about 5 days to write one chapter (which only includes getting words on the page, not necessarily the right words. That’s when editing and revising comes in, which is an entirely different time-taking process). So, if you do the math, it would take me about 50 days to complete the Rough Draft of my novel (and remember, most books go through between 3 – 4 drafts before publication, if they’re even good enough for publication).
Now, this challenge is asking me to write 1,700 words per day, quite a bit more than my previous celebration-inducing 500 words from two days ago. But if I follow their schedule then that drops the days from 50 down to 30, making it a solid month.
And all of this only happens if the ideas come. It is very possible that I could fill pages with nonsense that never sees the light of day, much like the 88,000 participants who failed to reach their goal last year. But what is amazing is that there are now 12,000 more stories in the world written by people dedicated to their passion.
I signed up for the contest because even if I do fail, it will only be considered a failure on a graph charting the correlation of words to days. At least I’m writing. Even if it’s utter, nonsensical gibbering drivel, it’s still writing, and that’s what I want to be doing with my life.
Right?
Here’s what it’s supposed to look like at the end. I’ll most likely post my progress in a few days.
Next time you’re reading and you finish a chapter, think about how long it took you to read it and consider the possibility that it took the author 5 days to write it.
Sidenote: This blog post is only 556 words long but it took me almost an hour to write it. Why? Probably because I think too much and am a perfectionist when it comes to every word sounding “just right.”
