BY MAIA GERLINGER

In print | Published December 3, 2009

In 1999, Chris Baty, a San Francisco Bay Area journalist, thought it might be fun to write a novel in a month. He called his project NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and 21 people participated, each writing his or her own novel. The next year, the number of participants grew, and the year after that it grew again, and soon, due in part to bloggers and internet communities, NaNoWriMo became a phenomenon.

This year, NaNoWriMo had over 170,000 participants, some of whom are students at Swarthmore. One such writer was Jean Dahlquist ’11, who wrote 25,000 words in November 2008, “at great sacrifice to my academics.” This year, Dahlquist wrote a sequel, which she said was about “post-apocalyptic police people with cyborgs and motorcycles.”
Dahlquist is a member of Swarthmore’s Writing Club, which meets for four hours every Saturday i nthe Kohlberg Coffee Bar. All but two of the Writing Club members at least attempted NaNoWriMo.

“I’ve never actually done it,” Lucas Hinojosa ’12, another Writing Club member, said. “I came the closest this year. I actually started a story.” Hinojosa said that there wasn’t a point at which he gave up on NaNoWriMo. Rather, he decided he would just write for fun, “which is what it is anyway,” he said. The project served mainly as a challenge and a motivator, and Hinojosa will continue to write his novel even though NaNoWriMo is over. “[I like to think that] I just accidentally hit the deadline without completing it,” he said, laughing.

Self-described as “thirty days and thirty nights of literary abandon,” the goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words (think “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” or “The Great Gatsby:” slender, but substantial) during the month of November — “to more fully take advantage of the miserable weather,” according to its creator, Baty.

Of course, with time being so short, no one expects much of these novels in terms of quality, but that isn’t the point. Writing a novel is so daunting that it is often difficult to act on one’s vague desire, and so the point of NaNoWriMo is to
force participants to actually take the plunge.

According to the NaNoWriMo website, “The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations [and] take risks.” By silencing one’s inner critic, one is able to pour all one’s energy into creation.

When one is allowed to make mistakes, the process of writing a novel becomes entirely driven by the joy of writing. And, of course, the 50,000-word mark. No prizes are given out and no one besides the writer needs to see the novel. Anyone who writes 50,000 words by midnight on November 30th is declared a winner.

NaNoWriMo allows its participants to register on its website, create a profile, and post in the forums. These forums are extremely active, ensuring a sense of community. After all, the point of doing this during November, specifically, is that lots of other people will do it with you.

However, this month might not be ideal for Swarthmore students who are already in the thick of preparing for finals. Dahlquist called the choice of month “God-awful. Who came up with that?” November, she asserted, was impossible. “I don’t have that kind of time.”

« RETURN TO LIVING & ARTS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »