National Novel Writing Month 2011

[The Ancient Warrior]

http://www.nanowrimo.org

I'm not sure if anybody here has heard of this before, but from what I can gather, National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short) is basically a writing challenge that encourages participants to create first and proofread later. The real goal is to write at least 50,000 words of text over the month of November; the novel doesn't need to be complete by then, nor does it have to be anything more than a rough draft.

But the philosophy behind the project seems to be that everyone has a novel's worth of ideas inside of them, but there's plenty of people who may be intimidated by either the time it takes to write one, the effort it takes or their own expectations during the planning stages (which has constantly held me back). So instead of going about things by putting all the planning first, the challenge suggests to start from a more basic framework, writing intensely based on that and then going back to tweak things as much as needed once December arrives and the rough draft is complete.

It's going to be my first time taking up this challenge, although I have heard of it before.  I'm really used to putting tons of planning into a story and then never actually getting it off the ground because I get too caught up in the planning phases, so I'm going to give this a try and see if the opposite approach really is more productive.

Since this is my first novel, I don't expect this concept to sound the most creative, but I might as well share it. It's about a power/thrash metal band with a thought-provoking album on the way. Their first three were all concept albums with fantasy or cyberpunk-type themes, more typical power metal lyrics— but with the fourth, they want to address political and social issues relevant to their world. They're also banking on their fans paying attention to the lyrics and being able to empathize, especially if nobody else actually will take a stand against the behind-the-scenes government corruption.

So, has anyone else heard of NaNoWriMo or taken part before? Sound interesting to any of you who haven't?

[The Headless King]

That sounds pretty awesome.  I might do it with you.

[The Viper]

A girl at my school is doing this. Me, on the other hand, I'm horrible at wrting stories.