NaNoWriMo is for wimps, apparently

To generate a 50K-word first draft in a month, your pace is 1667 words per day.

To do the same in three days instead of thirty? 16,667 words.

(Assuming you write 20 hours of each day for three days, which would be insane but also maximize your writing time, that’s 833 words per hour. Writing 17 hours a day leaves more time for sleep, but ups your hourly count to 980 words each hour. Good luck, y’all!)

Anybody else boggled by this idea?

Right, I see everyone has raised their hands. (image from pixabay)

Did you realize there is a three-day novel writing contest that actually exists?

From its modest beginnings as a barroom challenge, it grew to attract the interest and support of neophyte and seasoned writers alike, from Canada, the U.S. and beyond. Now, more than four decades later, it has become a unique contribution to world literary history and a put-your-keyboard-where-your-mouth-is rite of passage for hundreds of writers each year.

Wow, really? Hundreds of writers participate each year? I wonder how much coffee they go through.

If you thought, “Wow, what a great idea!”, sorry, it’s too late for this year, but you can mark it on your calendar for Labor Day weekend next year.

Spoiler: I didn’t think, “Wow, what I great idea!” I thought, “Wow, that’s insane.” Let me see. Let’s say you’re going to call 50,000 words a “novel,” as is the case for NaNoWriMo. I wrote MARAG in 18 days; it was 112,000 words in draft (it went to 125,000 in revision). At the exact same average rate of writing, that means I should in theory be able to write 50,000 words in eight days. That means doing this contest would mean writing nearly three times faster.

Wow, that’s insane.

However, should you feel like tackling this challenge, the linked post provides suggestions:

Set goals, but don’t obsess.

Generate without judgment, but don’t cheat.

Start early, but don’t start from scratch.

Those look like reasonable goals to me. “Don’t start from scratch” means you ought to know about the characters and the plot before you begin. I think that’s accurate. I couldn’t have written MARAG so fast except I knew both Sinowa and Marag, plus I had a lot of the plot in mind, including quite a few specific scenes.

Meanwhile!

My brother commented recently that this year, my goal should be to achieve “No No Wri Mo,” meaning I should take a complete break in November. He wasn’t wrong. A break would be nice. In some ways. Maybe I will at least manage a partial break in November. It would be great to whittle down the projects to the point that all I’m doing in November is proofreading SILVER CIRCLE, nothing else. I can hardly imagine what that would be like. Except it would be great to read other authors’ books for a while!

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