I am issuing a challenge to all my colleagues! For those who do not know, November is National Novel Writing Month (pronounced: NaNoWriMo). This is a great event that challenges participants to write at least 50,000 words in a month. (Over 400,000 people participated last year, including 90,000 K-12 students doing the youth challenge.) I do kind of want to write a novel... but I do feel the need to get my academic productivity kicked up a notch, and this is a good excuse. Trying this worked well for me last year, and I want to challenge others to join me this year. Keep reading for details.
The challenge:
1) Following standard NaNoWriMo principles: 50,000 words. Not pretty, edited, well-polished words... just words. If you can do pretty that's great, but that is not the focus. The challenge is about producing materials quickly; 1,666 words a day, on average, on top of whatever work you would have otherwise done.
2) Breaking from standard NaNoWriMo principles: No novel required. I challenge you to produce 50,000 words of academic product. It can be a single fiction or non-fiction work, a series of articles, or the completion of the finishing-up of several already-in-progress items, whatever you need for your academic work now.
3) How to accept the challenge: Just do it! You can feel free to state your acceptance in the comment section down below, or communicate it to me in some other way, but you don't need to. If you sign up on the NaNoWriMo website, I would love it if you connected with me there. To do so, Search (top right corner of the screen) for echarles as an author, go to the profile, then click to "Add as Buddy."
My personal goal for this year will be to finish the book on evolution and psychology that I have been working on for a while. I had a publisher suggested who is looking for books under 50,000 words. Thus, much of my time will be spent slashing old material and writing new materials much more concisely. I also have a few near-finished papers that I hope to pump out.
I am also going to use this as an excuse to get back to blogging more often. I will be putting chunks of material that I write up as blog posts, which should get me back to the two-three posts a week that I kept up for the first year.
So.... Anyone willing to accept my challenge?
Too bad NaNoWriMo month isn't January instead....that's when my sabbatical starts ;)
ReplyDelete...although I suppose that sort of defeats the purpose of a "challenge," doesn't it.
DeleteWould well-crafted emails count toward my 50000 words? I could perhaps try responding with greater thoughtfulness over and above that of the kind of response I would have otherwise given....
Just so you know, there are actually three NaNos during the year, and only November focuses on novels. Camp NaNo in July is for everything, and the April camp is especially for scripts, but everything else goes, too.
ReplyDeletehey Eric, thanks for the connection! And yeah. Gonna try to write 50K, not gonna worry too much about for the novel (which for me may be more like a collection of short stories) for the blog, or for the fanfic.
ReplyDelete