Writers try for an entire novel in 30 days

Noah Medling, a 22-year-old Add Sheet employee, doesn’t care if his 50,000-word untitled fantasy novel written in November 2004 will ever be read by him or anyone else.

“I don’t want to look at that thing again,” Medling said. “It’s that bad.”

However, it will be the same challenge — 50,000 words in 30 days — that attracts budding Columbia novelists such as Medling to National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

During November, an estimated 60,000 national writers of different backgrounds will join in NaNoWriMo, a “fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing,” according to the event’s Web site. After registering on nanowrimo.org, writers have from Nov. 1 to 30 to scribe an original novel, at least 50,000 words or the equivalent of 175 pages. By midnight on Nov. 30, writers must upload their novels to the Web site for word count verification.

Caitlin Ellis, an 18-year-old MU freshman, was a high school junior when she first started the challenge in 2003.

“I heard about it and thought, ‘What an awesome idea,’” Ellis said. “I could dedicate one month to this. My parents were rooting for me, but they didn’t understand why I was doing it.”

Ellis wrote halfway through that November, reaching 17,000 words. She skipped last year but will participate this year in hopes of finishing with a friend from her hometown of Edwardsville, Ill.

“We’re really determined to finish this year,” Ellis said. “We talk online, and we’ll see each other twice during November. We’ll have our computers, and we’ll be typing.”

Andrew Bunk, a 23-year-old Columbia resident, heard about the challenge last year from his older sister. Bunk recalls how she told him about the challenge and inquired whether he wanted to participate in the challenge with her.

“I like writing, and it seemed like a cool challenge to undertake,” Bunk said. “But, to keep up with it day after day, it can be a bit more than you expect.”

In addition to writing, half of the month’s fun is gathering with others at “write-ins,” Bunk said. Although the regional group meetings are intended for writers to write, the “write-ins” usually evolve into witty discussions about the actions taken by a novelist’s characters or other social issues. Meetings of the 10- to 15-member group took place in November 2004 either in Brady Commons at MU or into the morning hours at the 24-hour diner, Steak n’ Shake.

“Showing up to write can dangerously become a social hour,” Bunk said.

Chris Baty, a freelance writer in Oakland, Calif., and 20 of his friends began NaNoWriMo in July 1999 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Gathering in coffee shops throughout Berkeley, Baty and his friends wrote in cycles of 40 minutes sprinkled by 20 minutes of laughter and talking. Contests developed in which the “loser” who typed the least amount of words would have to buy croissants for others. Bathroom breaks were only allowed after typing 1,000 words.

“It seemed like the height of cool to have a novel, even if it stayed in a drawer somewhere,” Baty said. “(NaNoWriMo) is transforming what has been thought of as a solitary process into a literary marathon and a block party — something you do as a group.”

In later years, formal rules were established setting writing guidelines for participants. Blogs and word-of-mouth chatter about the month significantly increased its popularity. In a single year, participation jumped from 140 in 2000 to 5,000 in 2001. Between 2002 and 2004, numbers grew to 13,500, 25,500 and 42,000, respectively, each year.

“It’s sort of a roller coaster ride with lots of high highs and low lows with many visits to local caffeine emporiums,” Baty said.

The writers, dubbed “wrimos,” are encouraged to take risks, worry less about making mistakes and just write.

One method Medling used last year to keep himself from self-editing while writing was adjusting the text color of his Microsoft Word document to white. Writing in white against a white background worked for only so long, Medling said. Distractions would force him elsewhere, and a blank document with a blinking cursor would await his return causing him to get lost in a sea of not-so-apparent words.

“It’s quantity over quality,” said Medling, NaNoWriMo’s Columbia municipal liaison. “Otherwise, you don’t finish. Editing is what December’s for.”