National Novella Writing Week

The following is the first of a new series of self-experiment attempts. The goal is to set forth an idea and give it a go and then to report back on its relative success or failure.

About six years ago (six years ago! geez...) I wrote a (rather terrible) novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It was great fun! Unfortunately for me, as a student, November is rarely a free enough month for me to attempt a repeat performance. You see, even at 1666 words a day, during a busy month, I can't seem to manage.

The point of NaNoWriMo, however, is to push through your roadblocks and just start writing. Sustaining this for a month can be challenging indeed, not least because it can make you an antisocial hermit during the onset of holiday season.

If you take the antisocial hermit element as a given--a necessity--and then you add a dash of Kerouac, you get my take on this project and my newest self experiment: National Novella Writing Week.

• The time set is dramatically limited: 5 days. 
• The goal is necessarily cut along with it: 25,000 words (half of NaNoWriMo) or somewhere between 75 and 100 pages depending on how you slice it.

The idea is simple: at some point you just have to force yourself to produce. And sometimes the manic panic of too much caffeine and not enough sleep is the only way to really get there. Some stories (or any ideas really) are just sitting there burning a whole in your pocket. And they must emerge! Or die trying. 

At the end of 5 days you could have something like a sizable draft. Or a thin little volume. Of course it will likely need a lifetime of editing (NaNo itself has a plan for this called National Novel Editing Month, in March I believe). But you will have something. A glorious little something.*

So I have some evidence that such an attempt might be possible. Firstly the previously alluded to Kerouac produced a full manuscript for On the Road (on the infamous scroll) in just a short set of days (with I'm sure a good deal of Benzedrine to help). Tho to be fair, he had previously worked on a number of drafts for the novel and would go on to massively revise the scroll. Nonetheless it was a serious production for a short period of time. 

The other evidence is more personal and is actually why I decide to do NaNo in the first place. I know I'm capable of writing 5k words in one day. Whether or not that is possible to do 5 days in a row in anything like a coherent manner is another matter entirely. But well worth the experiment. 

If this works out, imagine the possibilities! Opening up the space of a five day work week to so many types of creation. Maybe you could write/record an EP in 5 days? Maybe you paint a painting? Or a painting series? (Having no context for how long it might take to paint one painting, I really can't say.) What I mean is something small but definitive. A production or at least a strong rough start of one. (I also would be opposed to renaming this National Novella Manuscript Writing Week to make the tenuousness of the production more clear in the very title.)

Well. I'm off to go give it a whirl. And you can expect a post on how it is going or has gone. I can't say I have the highest of hopes, but I certainly am interested to see what becomes of it.

*I suppose I should address how, if at all, this differs from NaNoWriMo. I doesn't nor do I desire it to. This is precisely the same structure as NaNo with only modified constraints and goals. The issue is simply that NaNo can't work for everyone in exactly the size and shape it is now. I am sure Baty et al would encourage people to develop their own forms appropriate to their own tasks. Their goal, as I take it, is simply to help push people into creating the things they desire, to make time for these creations and to actually see them through. An admirable goal and one I see no reason to amend. If there are any substantive differences that I discover along the way, I'll report back upon them.