Bloggin' On: Odds and Ends ( On Writing and Other Things, or: I Joined NaNoWriMo!)

Image Courtesy of NaNoWriMo

Greetings! Welcome to another edition of A Certain Point of View, the blog that I started almost nine years ago. This is the 1,213th post overall and the 395th for 2019. Back in January, I resolved that I'd have at least 365 posts written and posted by December 31; now it looks like I'll end the year with a minimum of 400 posts, perhaps even 430, if I don't slack off for the rest of November and write at least one post a day in December.

Anyway, it's Friday, November 22, and it looks like it's going to be a cool autumn day here in my corner of Florida. According to my Weather app, it's 70℉ (21℃) outside under sunny skies; the forecast high is expected to reach 77℉ (25℃), with some cloud cover moving in later this afternoon.

Today is also the 56th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. I was only eight months old at the time so, naturally, I don't have any recollection of that, but Mom used to tell me that we were in Bogota, Colombia at the time (my first overseas trip) on that day; Mom had taken me there so that most of my relatives who lived in Colombia could see her new baby. She remembered that my father, a pilot who flew freight planes from Miami International Airport, made a long-distance call from Miami to my grandparents' house and told Mom to catch the next flight back because he didn't know what would happen after the President's murder.

So, even though I was too young to even be aware of JFK and his death at the time, I've had a fascination with the events of November 22, 1963 ever since I was five or six years old. I've read two fine non-fiction books about it; The Day Kennedy Was Shot by Jim Bishop and Death of a President by William Manchester, plus Stephen King's time travel novel 11/22/63, which is easily my favorite book by the Master of Horror, followed perhaps by his memoir On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and 'Salem's Lot. 

Anyway, I'm thinking about taking the #NaNoWriMo challenge next year. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, an annual event sponsored by NaNoWriMo.org, a group dedicated to promoting writing fluency and education.

Per its About Us page:

NaNoWriMo is a nonprofit organization that supports writing fluency and education. But it's also a social network for writers like LinkedIn is for job professionals, or DeviantArt is for artists, or Facebook is for moms whose kids accept their friend requests only to provide them with "limited profile" access. It tracks words for writers like Fitbit tracks steps for the ambulatory. It's a real-world event, during which 900+ volunteers in places like Mexico City, Seoul, and Milwaukee coordinate communal writing sessions in thousands of partnering libraries, coffee shops, and community centers like… well, like nothing else.

It's internet-famous. It's a community-powered fandom (before there was the Beyhive, or Nerdfighters, there were Wrimos). It's a start-up incubator for novels (books like Water for Elephants, Fangirl, and WOOL began as rough drafts in November!). It's a teaching tool, it's a curriculum, and its programs run year-round.

NaNoWriMo is an online contest/challenge in which participants attempt to write either a complete 50,000-word manuscript for a novel in 30 days or the first 50,000 words of a larger novel. It does not have to be an edited and ready-to-publish manuscript, nor does it have to be necessarily good. But if you take the NaNoWriMo challenge, there are a few rules that you must follow if you sign up (literally and figuratively) for it.

Now, if you sign up as a member with the organization (it's free, in case you're wondering), you can work on writing projects outside the NaNoWriMo November challenge at any time. However, for the big event itself, the rule is clear.

Per the NaNoWriMo The Basics page (which is their Frequently Asked Questions page, essentially):

You can sign up at any time, year-round. To participate during National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every November, just click on the “Sign Up” button on the homepage.

You can announce your National Novel Writing Month novel usually beginning sometime in September, and start writing at the stroke of midnight on November 1.

Obviously, with only eight days left in November, and having missed the November 1 start-date deadline, I can't just jump in and join the 2019 NaNoWriMo challenge.  And even if it were November 1 rather than November 22, I don't have anything concrete in mind to write about.

However, I signed up with the site (Did I mention it's free?), so if all goes according to plan, I'll do it next year.

Maybe this will help me regain my creative writing mojo. I certainly hope so, for what it's worth.


Sources: NaNoWriMo