Or put a new ink cartridge in your fountain pens. Or boot up your computer/laptop. Or select your sharpest chisel and finest stone tablet. Because it’s getting on for NaNoWriMo 2010!
Yes, this is the annual Do You Read Me? call for all writers and wanna-be writers to stop thinking about that bestseller lurking at your fingertips, and actually start writing it. Join me in my 9th attempt at writing 50,000 words in 30 days, hoping that at the end they will somehow resemble a novel, or at least the first draft of a novel. I made it (i.e. “won”) the past 2 years, so that puts the pressure on me to go for three in a row, of course. And as usual at this stage of the year, I have no idea what I’ll write about. Or even if I’ll make a concerted attempt (what with children’s birthday parties and Thanksgiving Days and Sinterklaas surprises and – egad! – work messing with my writing time).
If you’re now thoroughly confused about what NaNoWriMo is, then click here for NaNo in a nutshell, click here for a bit of history of the event, or else click here (and yes, that links back to ABC blog post nr. 79. Excuse me while I go a bit teary-eyed at the memories).
But in the end I always give in to the fun-filled madness that is NaNo. And of course the ABC Treehouse in Amsterdam will have a kick-off workshop (timed to fit before the official kick-off in Utrecht) and ABC Den Haag will be hosting write-ins at the Treehut (from 14.00 – 18.00 hrs on Saturday Nov. 6th, Saturday Nov. 13th, Saturday Nov. 20th and 13.00 – 17.00 hrs on Sunday Nov. 28th), so please do come along and find inspiration among your fellow aspirants. Or just come along for some books to either help you write (I was thinking of snagging a copy of The Seven Basic Plots or How Not To Write a Novel) or procrastinate (the new Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson Wheel of Time book Towers of Midnight has chosen early November to go on sale, for example).
Anyhoo, I hope you will all give it a try. Please let me know in the comments or on our twitter feed if you’re joining in – you don’t need to suffer alone, I’ll be right there with you!
And just think, when you’ve polished that novel of yours, you can get a copy printed with our EBM. How’s that for incentive? :-)
Tags: 50000 words, EBM, NaNoWriMo, noveling frenzy, november
Yay Em! Although you’ll probably have reached 50k by day 10…
Still, all the more time to cheer on the rest of us stragglers.
And yay lvdpal! Thanks for posting the info about write-ins in Amsterdam.
If anyone else knows of write-ins in the rest of the country, feel free to add them here! And if you’re reading this and want to know more, check the Holland & Belgium forum at nanowrimo.org – plenty of info there!
I’ll be joining the madness for the 8th time. I’ll also be the inofficial ML of Amsterdam again. This year the meetings will be on Monday at La Place on the 7th floor of the OBA near Central Station. We’ll have a mini-kickoff on the 25th, and have weekly meetings, ending with a Thank-God-It’s-Over-Party on the 6th of December. The meetings start at six and end around nine.
I’ll be writing right along with you!
*puts new lead in automatic pencil*