LitQuake and NaNoWriMo

Why is San Francisco such a great place to live? Do we need any more reasons? Well, there's LitQuake, San Francisco's Literary Festival.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Lit Quake's Lit Crawl & enjoyed a lively gathering at The Lone Palm led by NaNoWriMo's Chris Baty. Chris wrote the book, No Plot? No Problem.

Great title and here's one of my favorite parts of his book about a few of the benefits of being a novelist:

“Novelists, we knew, had it made...They had license to dress horribly, wear decades-out-of-date hairstyles, and have their shortcomings interpreted as charming quirks and idiosyncrasies rather than social dysfunctions.”

That's from page 9 in the introduction of No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days.


That's right, NaNoWriMo is all about writing a novel in just 30 days...

Well, November is upon us--National Novel Writing Month--the 10th year of NaNoWriMo in fact. Have I ever written a novel in a month? Nope. It takes me much longer than that. But I like the silly creativeness of the idea, where aspiring novelists attempt to hack out a novel in a mere 30 days. It doesn't have to be a good novel. In fact they encourage quantity (50,000 words) over quality.
But look at this. If you poke around their website you'll not only find the Procrastination Station but you'll also see some quality resources in NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program--wonderful free downloads of Young Novelist Workbooks for students in Elementary, Middle School or High School. You'll find extensive useful writing tips here for writers of any age all created by the Office of Letters and Light Young Writers Program. Are these folks enlightened or what? I think so! By the way, young writers get to choose their own word count goal.

So Happy 10th Anniversary to NaNoWriMo. It'll be my 10th anniversary of NOT writing a novel in a month, but also my tenth year enjoying watching everyone else do it.

And me? Maybe I'll try to complete my unfinished novel this month!

How about you, imaginary readers?

Got a plot or not?

Either way, take a look at NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program or NaNoWriMo.org. A whole lot of good creative fun happening there.

Forecast: Letters, light & "shortcomings interpreted as charming quirks and idiosyncrasies..." What could be better than that?