NaNoWriMo or Write 30,000 words for Christ

November is National Novel Writing Month. It is celebrating its 10th year this year. The idea behind it is to write 50,000 words under an impossible deadline. The emphasis is on quantity not quality, although hopefully in the process some quality comes out, too. The idea is to work without listening to your inner critic - just get out all the thoughts in your head. At the library last week, I picked up No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty, the young man who came up with the idea of NaNoWriMo in the first place. It is great book and I know many of his points are valid. Of course, I had to laugh when he talked about ways to find the time to do this. There was a line about most people having 10 - 14 hours a week of leisure time in their week. This is definitely not me (or most of the other moms I know). I pretty much squeeze every ounce of life out of my day and I'm not someone who does well with less sleep, so I think I'm pretty much out of luck even though I'd love to try the creative experiment.

The Catholic Writers Guild is sponsoring a similar project - write 30,000 words for Christ. This doesn't need to be a novel, but rather serves as an incentive to get to work on whatever project you have been putting off.

For those of you who are pursuing either project, I wish you the best of luck. May your writing be fruitful!