Writing can be a lonely pursuit, but it doesn’t have to be. Community, solidarity and accountability can be helpful tools to help birth the stories. During the month November, a special space will be saved at the Nelson Library for writers working on their novels. These write-ins will be on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 5pm to 7pm.
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a fun, empowering approach to creative writing. The challenge: draft an entire novel in just one month. Why do it? For 30 wild, exciting, surprising days, the goal is to silence that inner critic, let the writer’s imagination take over, and just create. The NaNoWriMo movement began in 1999 and now each year, hundreds of thousands of people around the world being to write, determined to end the month with a first draft. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave as novelists.
Although NaNoWriMo emphasizes creativity over literary masterpiece, more than 250 projects begun during NaNoWriMo have gone on to become published works, including bestsellers such as Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. To read a complete list of published works, learn more about NaNoWriMo, and to register go to www.nanowrimo.org. It’s not necessary to be registered to attend the library write-ins.