I’m all for traditions – customs, rituals, holidays, celebrations, whatever. I love them and like to see them maintained. Events which happens every year and does so because ‘it’s always been that way’ touch me in a special place in my heart. So, I thought I would dedicate this blog post to one of the solemnest and most important traditions of my people.
The coming month will see my people fasting and praying, working hard to appease their gods. They will go without sleep, without food and spend long hours in angst filled contemplation on the human spirit. When this time of trial is over, they will emerge from it as better people – stronger and more capable of dealing with the every day stresses and strains. It is a sacred time, a testing time, a time of enlightenment.
What am I talking about? Why, NaNoWriMo of course… 🙂 Possibly the most important celebration of geekdom and social mediadom ever, eclipsing even ‘International Talk Like a Pirate Day‘ in it’s importance. I may be exaggerating here, of course. As you know, nothing could possibly eclipse Talk like a pirate day… Well, except maybe Talk Like a Dalek day….
National Novel Writing Month has been around for quite a few years. In fact, it was first run in 1999 when it had only 21 participants. This makes it, in internet terms, an ancient tradition which harkens back to the days BF (Before Facebook). It has since grown in size to 200,000 recorded writers taking part in 2010. The goal is simple: write 50,000 words and report them on the NaNoWriMo website between the 1st and the 30th of November. It is possibly the largest (well, certainly the most well known) writer productivity challenge in the world. It is a great way to learn discipline – to try to dedicate yourself to writing every day not just when you feel like it. This is a good thing and should be encouraged, which is why I consider NaNoWriMo to be an important tradition in Geekdom.
However, I have a confession to make. I am a heretic. I do not follow the ancient tradition of NaNoWriMo as a true follower of the Path of Geek should. I spurn my geekish ancestors and bring shame upon those who follow the true path with my progressive and non-orthodox ways. I have never signed up for NaNo nor even made any effort to increase my writing output in November. It is shameful, I know, but I do have a very good reason and it is all to do with timing.
I’m a teacher. As such I tend to get some wonderful summer holidays to luxuriate in and get lots of writing done. Six whole weeks of it, in fact. Sheer bliss. However, once September comes, the school term starts and things get a lot busier. OK, at the moment I am what we call a ‘gentleman of leisure’ (which is another name for scrounging layabout) and so am not expected to be working in a school at the moment. However, past experience has taught me that November (which lands just after the first half term holiday of the school year) is often a busy time for supply jobs to start rolling in and that means I have no guarantee of free time between now and December. So, rather than commit to NaNo and risk failing because a big job comes in that sucks up all my free time, I prefer to keep writing as normal and be there in spirit for those who are suffering the months of privation ahead.
Of course, I am also supporting in other ways – including doing at least one guest post in the coming month so that someone doing NaNo can free up more time for writing…
So, to those who are about to write, I salute you. I’ll be here on the touchline with the half time oranges and the mixed metaphors…
Lurking Musings 
Thanks for the interesting post, David! Only 24 participants in 1999 to 200,000 in 2010?!? What happened? They must have done some serious promoting during that span.
No idea. I got the figure from the Wikipedia entry on NaNo so I cannot fully acknowledge the accuracy of the information. I mainly looked on there to see when it first ran and was surprised it was so long ago which was why I made the comments about it being an ancient tradition.
I think there has been a steady rise in participants over time as word spreads rather than necessarily any serious publicity. I actually doubt the 200,000 figure as I am sure it should be higher given that this is now a worldwide thing. I do wonder, however, if there are those who do it but don’t sign up to the site and therefore not counted.
Come over to the dark side and do NaNo anyway! At 1667 words per day, it’s only a couple of hours a day if you’re one of those weirdos who can do a steady output. More realistically, write a half hour each day that you’re working, and do word wars with us over at the Cooler on the days you’re not to get ahead.
I’ve managed over 5k in one single day (which helped me go from being behind to being ahead of the scheduled word count). I’ve also found that I’m most productive when I’m busiest–the years I haven’t won NaNo, I’ve had lots of time to write. I just didn’t do it. To quote Chris Baty, “If you have a million things to do, adding item number 1,000,001 is not such a big deal. When on the other hand, you have *nothing* to do, getting out of bed and washing yourself before 2:00 P.M. feels like too much work to even contemplate.”
And you can “win” NaNo, but unless you sign up and write absolutely nothing, you can’t lose. If you write more words during November than you would have written otherwise, you’re a winner!
So join us. We have the dark side of the force, it is true. We also have cookies and chocolate and other good snacks… And lots of fun!
LOL, you make a persuasive argument… 🙂 However, I am opting to stay with my 200 a day minimum trial to see how that works out (quite well, it seems…). For some reason, my brain seems to respond better to a small target to beat than a large target to achieve. While I have on occasion done 1-2K a day I can’t do that everyday in this month. July and August no problem, November it gets harder.
Not to say I won’t pile in for next year, depending on how things look workwise. For now, things are too changeable to allow me to commit to anything else.
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