A quiet industry

It's November, and that means National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. All around the world people register on the website and then try to write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November.  If you achieve that, and upload your work to the website, you get a certificate as a NaNo winner.

I've never taken part in that challenge, mainly because  it doesn't suit my work schedule and I write every day.  I don't have a day job taking up large chunks of my time like most writers do.  To win NaNo you have to write over 1600 words every day for the whole month.  Sometimes I don't write that fast.  I'm likely to take four to six months to produce an 80,00 to 90,000 word first draft.

But for people who do have to work, registering for NaNo and committing to that daily word count gives them permission to write.  Many writers suffer from the family member or partner thinking of their writing as their "little hobby".  

Doing NaNo brings an air of seriousness and professionalism to their  writing.  People can download the organisation's logo and put it up on their wall. They can point to it and say to their partner that they are doing something important.  They aren't just playing at writing.

As I said, I've never registered for NaNo, but I did join my local area NaNo Facebook group.  And last Sunday afternoon they held a write-in in a coffee shop local to me.  So I went along and joined the group, spending three hours seriously writing with other writers.  Most of them did far more than their daily world count.  Our beavering away attracted attention from passing customers because we were all so quiet, and focused on creating our stories.

Some of the group had done NaNo successfully four or five times already.  These were younger people who had to work for a living.  Nevertheless, they had managed to write 50,000 words in one month,

The group on Sunday was a hive of quiet industry, with writers determined to write that novel.  It was lovely to be in the company of fellow minds, to be with people serious about writing.  I'll be back for the second write-in this Sunday, and aim to get a fair chunk of a new novella written then.