NaNoWriMo a Go Go

Eleven days ago it was brought to my attention that November is NaNoWriMo¹, National Novel Writing Month, which is self described as:

“A fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

I am going to write a novel².

I’ve never written a novel⁴. I have a collection of short stories, flash fiction, couplets, and one line poems scattered between Moleskine notebooks and collected away in meticulously and chronologically organized set of cardboard boxes.

The constraint of time will be helpful and force me to reject pouring over vernacular, diction, and the minutia of punctuation. I have no real approach other than to sketch out a protagonist. I believe that by a crafting a character with a manner that is natural and unaffected the rest should more or less fall into place.

I will need the following items:
1. Typewriter⁵
2. Bordeaux

Yes.

Here are some one line poems that were written in 214 seconds:

My camera was in a film.
The matter of facts drives railroad tracks.
Field notes joke.
Alabaster alkali, basic.
Blue, grey, I never say.


¹ http://www.nanowrimo.org/
² there may or may not be a t-shirt involved as a prize for completing a novel^3
3 there definitely is
⁴ as far as I know
⁵ I think it goes without saying that it needs to have that really great sound as you hit the keys and a crisp ping when you advance the line^6
6 The Paris Review interview series is unnaproachable, engaging, and an informative view into the craft of writing. Billy Wilder was interviewed a few years prior to his death. His energy jumps off the page. Mr. Wilder describes his process and pulls out a few "meet cute⁷" stories. He recounts them with a dry wit, pride for his work, and a degree of wistfullness.
⁷"Meet Cute" is the contrived encounter of two potential romantic partners. In Wilder's 1938 classic Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, Gary Cooper goes to the department store to pick up a pair of pajamas. He only wants the tops. The floor manager insists the top and bottom are exclusively sold as a set⁸. In comes the pretty girl buying pajamas for her father, whom only wants the bottoms. They look at each other, problem solved.
⁸Gary Cooper acting as the wealthy businessman insists the floor manager call the department store manager. The camera zooms to the store manager being awaken out of bed to answer the phone. The manager shouts about the sheer preposterousness of purchasing just the tops. The camera zooms out to reveal the store manager is in fact wearing only the top. In the Paris Review interview Wilder reveals that this iconic scence was written by frequent collaborator and director Ernst Lubitsch. Wilder talks about how he would always come up with 99% of the scene and Lubitsch would come in and twist it once more. The zoom out of the store manager was Lubitsch.