National Novel Writing Month Challenge

It's November 1st and it's not too late to join the thousands of teens (and adults) around the world who will be participating in the 2009 NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month.)  For the next 30 days, participants will be writing in the hopes of producing a novel.  Adults are supposed to reach a 50,000 word count, but teens are allowed to set their own goals; a number that would be reasonable, yet challenging.

The main objective set forth by the creators of this writing challenge is to encourage quantity over quality.  That may sound odd and somehow backwards, but the reality of it is- most writers are their own worst critics and often high standards and pressure from within to write a masterpiece on the first try inhibit even the best of writers.  NaNoWriMo offers participants the chance to write on their own, with the knowledge that there's a community of writers out in the world doing the same thing too.  

That's the basic idea of this month-long celebration... just write.  By reaching your writing goal, whether the story is good or bad, you've accomplished something.  Writer's block doesn't have time to take hold, and you, the writer, have a piece of fiction that you can now revise into something better, if you so choose.  

If you're a writer, or just want to give this challenge a whirl, go to the official NaNoWriMo webpage for more details on how it works.

And don't forget about the writing program we're having here at the library:

LITTLE-ATURE: SMALL STORIES
Tuesday, November 24 at 6:00pm
For those of us who acknowledge the efforts of the people taking part in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month celebration, but don't have time to write a novel, we have Little-ature. Play around with words on a smaller scale by creating six-word memoirs, 100-word stories and other feats of brevity.