This post, by Chuck Wendig, originally appeared on his Terribleminds site.
This past weekend, I spoke at the Crossroads Writers Conference in Macon, Georgia. I’ll presumably get to a full recap eventually (wherein I explain a weekend where I encountered people like: my first nervous fan, a former dominatrix, Delilah Dawson with her 1989 cell phone, Nathan “Baby Goose” Edmondson, Robert “Not-An-Accessory-To-Murder” Venditti, and various other awesome humans).
I also met Chris Baty, who is of course the big brain behind NaNoWriMo.
Now, I have my reservations about NaNoWriMo (which I pronounce “wree-mo,” as in, “NaNoWriMo Williams, The Adventure Begins”, even though it is, I’m told, technically “wry-mo”). I think like with all “get-thee-to-the-writery” initiatives, it’s a perfect fit for some and for others an anchor around their ankles, so you just gotta know what’s right for you and what works and not blame yourself when what’s really going on is you’re just adhering to a process that isn’t really your process.
Square peg, circle hole, and all that.
So, that being said, I also know that National Novel Writing Month gets a helluva lot of you up off your leafy, moldering bed of sadness and shame — and anything that forces you to shake off the barnacles and get your ass out to sea is good by me. (Actually, Baty had a good Grace Hopper quote comparing writers to seafaring vessels: “A ship in port is safe… but that’s not what ships are built for.”)
Anyway.
So, first up, I figure I’ll ask: who’s doing NaNoWriMo?
Have you done it before? What was your experience?
What are your hopes and reservations for doing it again?
Also — here’s a list of ten posts here at terribleminds that maybe, just maybe, will help you start to prep for the coming tide of furious frenzied cram-a-holic novel-writing come the month of November.
Read the rest of the post, which includes many helpful links to Chuck Wendig’s helpful writing how-to posts, on Terribleminds.