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The end: National Novel Writing Month finishes story
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photo / Vicky
This November, 350 Austinites attempted to write the Great American Novel. From scratch. What did you do?
November is an eventful month for Austin. With the ushering in of the holiday season and, this year, the complete annihilation of the Longhorns’ BCS dreams, taking up a broad, all-consuming personal endeavor might appear inappropriate. For a few Austinites, however, the mood seemed right for just such a task. In the month of November, 350 Austin residents wrote a novel from scratch.
That’s right: A complete novel, in one month, from scratch.
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has been around since 1999, when 21 participants attempted to realize the great literary aspiration. This year, over 75,000 people are participating in NaNoWriMo.
It works like this: At 12:00am November 1st, writers from around the globe fire up their laptops, peel the wrapping off their Moleskin, and pull their big yellow tablets from their backpacks. They have until 11:59pm November 30th to breach 50,000 words, which will be verified by the hard working robots at NaNoWriMo.org. All winners receive nifty certificates of completion in the mail and a crisp icon to display online — and a small handful of the novels will get published.
This eccentric event is no stranger to Austin. Last year, the capital city was an unstoppable writing machine, ranking third out of 271 regions around the world in total word count with over five million words.
Emily Bristow, Austin liaison for NaNoWriMo, says: “Having a goal, a deadline, and the company of about 75,000 other people around the world really works for me. We have a fabulous, intense, funny, courageous group of writers in the Austin area. Writing is normally a solitary activity, but in November, it can be social, too. We get together at coffee shops to write and chat, we have parties, and we have an active online community.”
Social, indeed. By the end of the month, there will have been 43 events for participants, including midnight sessions at Katz’s Deli, a 12-hour lockdown at St. Edward’s University, a brunch and pie party the day after Thanksgiving, and a stay-late-last-chance write-in on November 30th for the procrastinators. Even the writers who don’t complete the project keep coming back, hungry to pursue the most widely precipitated and popularly neglected achievement in human history: writing a book.
NaNoWriMo isn’t just a test of mental endurance, however. Frieda Schultz, a 66-year-old participant, broke her arm this past weekend and demanded to know, first and foremost, would she be able to write, Doc? She got the okay, but she has to prop her arm up a certain way and angle her laptop accordingly.
photo / Megan Myers
Another local participant, Jess Downs, has already crossed the finish line and is showing no signs of stopping.
“I have too many unfinished manuscripts sitting around my hard drive, including three previous NaNoWriMo efforts, so I’ve decided to get serious about this one,” says Downs. Her effort, a “science fiction novel set on a planet that’s in the middle of a brutal civil war,” reached the 50,000 mark on November 24th. Still, she says she is nowhere near finished with the story.
Bristow adds: “As the cat-herder for the Austin region, I get a major charge out of spending time online and in person with these folks. What we accomplish is truly amazing. To believe in yourself, to follow your heart, to finally commit to a dream. How often do you get to do that in life? How often do you have people all over the world sharing that dream and rooting for you? In November we make time for our imaginations, for our dreams. We step up and take a chance. What could be more important than that?”
About the author
Chris Trew is a mainstay in the Austin live comedy scene. Despite his renown as a Mojo Kickball™ champion, Chris is probably best known for his work with the ColdTowne improv troupe, which recently opened its own theater and conservatory. This is Chris’ first contribution to That Other Paper.
Comments
this thing sounds like formula fiction at its finest . Who killed the novel, the literary cannon or the mindless television junkie? Maybe both . Apparently even writers have no appreciation of the patience and delicacy of process anymore. You have to love this new generation of fakers and novices, all of them out playing writer the a month. God Bless America .
The point of NaNoWriMo is to finish a first draft, not dash off a masterpiece. Most people who set out to write a book (including me) never get that far because of excessive self-critique and premature major editing. Without a first draft there’s no book, and most people never finish that first leg of the journey. I participated in November of 2007 and was a winner. It was a terrific experience writing a terrible book. Rather than trying to salvage it, I’m going to take what I learned and use it to actually complete a nonfiction project I’ve been kicking around for about five years. As G.K. Chesterton said, “Some things are worth doing badly.”
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