NaNoWriMo is Coming

Nanowrimo, or Nano, stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s an event that has been going on for over ten years where people around the world (definitely no longer just “national”) commit to writing a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.

It’s great fun.

Communities spring up to support the effort with write-ins and word-wars and other games to get word count up. It’s a very challenging goal, at least for me, but there’s something very freeing about letting go of the need to edit and fix as you go and just sail through words. The founder of NaNoWriMo believes in having a terrible first draft and editing later. What stops a lot of people from writing is the need for perfection and so they never actually write. Nano is a time to let that go and just get the words out.

Why am I telling you about this?

As a novelist in my other life, I have participated in Nano often. This year I decided to tweak the challenge a bit for myself. I thought that I could use it to help push my Hindi study. That’s right. I’m going to attempt to do my Nano novel in Hindi! I don’t expect to get to the 50,000 words (knowing how hard that is for me even when I’m writing in my native language), but I’ll see how far I can get and hopefully get more comfortable thinking in Hindi and more familiar with grammar.

October is the month for planning, thinking, and outlining. But no actual writing until November 1st!

Wish me luck! 😀