20 bucks on the writer

On Sunday afternoon, the last day of holidays I went to McNally Robinson bookstore. I found my way over to the bargain section and started pulling things off the shelves. I grabbed two novels that purported to be about love, another that I read in high school and loved, and a collection of poems and letters by Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. If you want to be a writer you have to be a reader, so there I was, ready to be a reader and continue plunging myself into studying my craft.

Even though I had a gift card and a 10% discount card something made me hesitate about purchasing the books. With the price of words printed on recycled paper these days it's really smarter to check out the library instead. The last book I spent money on was awful and that kind of makes me mad.

I decided to wander over to the journal section since I needed a new one. I didn't see anything I liked though so I turned to head back to the cheap books and ended up in the Writers' Reference section. There were no less than 25 options in handbooks to instruct the budding writer how to write a novel, write for young adults, get published and tell the story of YOU. I held in either hand two books on writing novels. One was thin and $20 and the other was thinner and $10. What more could the $20 book say than the $10 one? Well, for the extra ten bucks I bought me a challenge and what looks like some good instructions on how to meet that challenge.

No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days

And this, my friends and readers, is what I intend to do.

I put back the novels (but kept the book of poetry) and made a $20 bet with myself that I could do this. The challenge is nothing to sniff at: 50,000 words in 30 days. I am starting on Friday and will wrap up by the Sunday evening of the February long weekend.

The challenge isn't to write the next great novel, it is simply to write a complete draft, to get it done. After the challenge has been completed I can go back and edit and rewrite and polish to my heart's content. What I like most about this reference book is that it takes the intimidation out of the task of writing. My writing class was all about taking things seriously, not going to the page lightly, which is a great way to get the inner critic salivating. The guy who wrote the book and invented the challenge (you may know it as NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month*) wasn't a writer or a student of literature when he got a group of friends together to try the experiment, he just set his mind to doing something, like running a marathon or learning to play an instrument. Anyone can do it and you don't have to be a prodigy to succeed. Oh, and perhaps you too are wondering just what kind of crap comes out of such a challenge. Well I looked and it seems that some people do go on to get their NaNoWriMo project published:

Jon F. Merz--- The Destructor (Pinnacle Books, 2003).


Lani Diane Rich--- Time Off for Good Behavior (Warner Books, 2004), Maybe Baby (Warner Books, 2005), and Wish You Were Here (Warner Books, 2008). 

Sara Gruen--- Flying Changes (HarperCollins, 2005) and Water for Elephants (Algonquin, 2007). 
 
Rebecca Agiewich--- BreakupBabe (Ballantine Books, 2006).
 
Francesca Segre--- Daughter of the Bride (Berkeley Books, 2006).

David Niall Wilson--- Vintage Soul (Five Star/Gale, 2007) and The Mote in Andrea's Eye
 
And many more!


I hate January in Winnipeg. It is freakin' cold and dark and it is such a downer after the party month that is December. The only thing to look forward to is the long weekend in February (and thank God we have that now in Manitoba to break up the stretch between New Year's and Easter). So I am going to write and go to the gym. I created a calendar for myself with two-hour writing blocks six times a week that work around my gym schedule and the eight hours I spend during the weekday working at the cardboard box factory. It seems do-able. Crazy, but do-able. And if I can write 50,000 words into some semblance of a story in 30 days, I am quite certain I can do anything.

*Thanks Kasia for also suggesting this project to me, but I'm glad I don't have to wait until November to do it!