Slightly Off KIlter

Did you ever think you wanted to write a novel?
Has it always sounded like something that would take too much time?
How about 175 pages in one month?

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach
to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal
is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November
30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft,
NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought
fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the
time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters
in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The
kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take
risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a
good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are
giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless
tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing
down.

[ref: www.nanowrimo.org]

It's an interesting approach 😉

Some of my co-workers are planning to join the fun. Here's what one of them had to say:

Just think of the sense of accomplishment you'll have when you see all
50 thousand words clumsily thrown together in one big pile! It's an
average of just over 69 Words Per Hour, how hard can that be? Or just
use it as an excuse to refresh your memory of gnuplot, so you can
obsessively monitor your output.

Last year they had 25,500 enter, and 3500 people cross the finish
line.

Me? I think I'll watch. Maybe my co-workers will let me read the results if I promise not to
edit them 😉