NaNoWriMo…

November is National Novel Writing month. This month, people all over the world will attempt to write 50,000 words in four weeks. The initiative was started in San Francisco by Chris Baty, and since 2000, over 120,000 people have signed up to it.

The idea of setting a goal like this is both daunting and exhilarating. All the writers I have ever spoken to admit that it is the first moment that the author sets pen to paper, that is the most difficult part of the entire writing process. Once these first words have been written, it becomes easier to let the sentences spill out and the imagination take over.

Everyone has a story. Everyone has the capability to write it. I’m not talking about people like Katie Price, who allegedly gets writers to put down her ideas for her, although this is valid in its own way. I’m talking about the beautiful, intimate process of taking up a pen and telling the world the words you have bubbling away inside you.

So. Here’s the deal. Give it a go. Visit the National Novel Writing webpage (which should more rightly be dubbed ‘international’, given its scope and success. You don’t have to churn out War and Peace over the course of the next four weeks, but how about letting those first sentences spill out, and seeing where it may follow? Write for yourself; don’t worry about your audience – you may not ever have one – but simply enjoy the healing, confessional, imaginative process of crafting something through words. I promise you’ll be hooked!

Visit http://www.nanowrimo.org/ for more information. Pour a glass of wine, get the laptop at the ready, and see what can be done. As the founder of NANOWRIMO says – no plot? No problem!