log of books read or check the Booker Prizes

How to NaNo WriMo (write a novel in the month of November):

• 10 steps to prepare for writing a NaNoWriMo novel.
• 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley.
• Background on the write-a-novel-in-a-month international race.
• NaNoWriMo 2005 lessons learned.
• Plan A.
• Status day-by-day.
• Weekly tips and exercises from Baty's book.
• Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
• Edward Abbey's Black Sun: his novel-in-a-month.
• Other writing work rates.
• The Weekend Novelist: Write a novel in a year.

	No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days (2004) by Chris Baty.
	Buy 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel' by Jane Smiley.

Everyone's a winner - well, a lot of people are - all those that write a 50,000-word novel in November - National Novel Writing Month:

• Started by Chris Baty in 1999 (in Oakland, California, USA) and described with cheery bathos in his: No Plot? No Problem.

• Register for this writing marathon - for no charge - at his NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) site.

• Start writing at 12:00:01 a.m. (or later) local time on November 1.

• Write 50,000 words of a first-draft novel by 11:59:59 p.m. (or earlier) local time on November 30. Many great novels are this short, including:
  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the shortest novel on Chris Baty's bookshelves when he first proposed this length.
  • Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
  • Penelope Fitzgerald (one of my favorite modern authors)'s The Blue Flower.
  • Douglas Adams' The hitchhiker's guide to ...
  • Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
  • John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

• Yes you have a day job. And family and friends. Hence the deadline. Carve out 3 hours per day and get writing.

• "The way to win NaNoWriMo is by writing 50,000 words by midnight on November 30. Every year, there are many, many winners. There are no 'Best Novel' or 'Quickest-Written Novel' awards given out. All winners will get an official 'Winner' web icon and certificate."

• See the Washington Post article, "Speed Writing: With One Month to Pen a Novel, a Faster Piece Is Better Than a Masterpiece" by Libby Copeland (Saturday, November 13, 2004; Page C01): "Genius is overrated. Art ultimately comes down to discipline, to the doers and the do-nots -- the fevered few who prime their canvases and practice their chords."

• "If I'm just writing 50,000 words of crap, why bother?"
  1. "The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away all those self-defeating worries and START."
  2. "Aiming low is the best way to succeed. ... Once you start evaluating your story in terms of word count, you take that pressure off yourself. And you'll start surprising yourself with a great bit of dialogue here and a ingenious plot twist there. Characters will start doing things you never expected, taking the story places you'd never imagined."
  3. "Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. ... Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives."

• Anyway, several NaNoWriMo winners have had their NaNoWriMo book published - or at least a heavily re-organized and re-written version.

History:

Year	Number of participants	Number of winners	Percent of participants that won
1999	21	6	29%
2000	140	29	21%
2001	About 5000	Over 700	about 14%
2002	About 13,500	About 2,100	16%
2003	About 25,500	About 3,500	14%
2004	About 42,000	Almost 6,000	14%
2005	About 59,000	About 9,700 [Dec 1,2005 email from Chris Baty.]	16%.
2006	75,000 adults. Plus maybe 8,000 kids in 'Young Writers Program'.

Preparation:

My 10 steps to prepare for writing a NaMoWriMo novel are at ten.steps.prep.for.write.a.novel.htm.

What do other NaNos do to "to get ready for Nov. 1?" Different things from me, apparently.

Here is a snapshot I took on Monday October 24th (2005) from their site. As there were "Total Votes: 121" but "Total Voters: 57", clearly there are some over-achieving NaNos, who can do more than one thing at once:

Plotting/Outlining	32 % (39)
Character maps/backgrounds	24 % (30)
Clearing my calendar	15 % (19)
Stocking up on caffeine	12 % (15)
Other [presumably this includes heavy pre-investments in (a) partying and (b) sleeping]	9 % (11)
Starting writing the novel (le gasp!)	0 % (1) [Sigh. This is a Bad Idea.]

The numbers and the quotes not otherwise attributed are from the FAQs and other pages at the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) site.

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