by Janet Ayles
It's NaNoWriMo!
Wait, what? Some of you may be asking, what does this impossible word mean? NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo describes itself as "a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing." The annual event runs for the month of November, so it provides a nice distraction between Halloween and chaos of Christmas.
The whole idea is for participants to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. Divided by 30 days, this means that participants will write an average of 1667 words per day. 50,000 words doesn't seem quite as overwhelming when you break it down like that. The whole idea is to encourage people to start writing. According to the NaNoWriMo website, there were 310,095 writers who participated in 2013.
NaNoWriMo makes writing accessible for everyone. You don't have to be a published writer (although Kelley Armstrong, author of the Otherworld Series, wrote her first draft for The Summoning as part of NaNoWriMo 2005), you just have to have an interest in writing.
So how can you work this into your library programming? Lots of ways.
NaNoWriMo provides a Library Outreach Guide, which includes lots of ideas for programming. When it comes to writing, it's party, party, party! Maybe a launch party, mid-way get together, or a wrap up bash. Not so much into big celebrations? What about a writing get-together or workshop? Provide a space for budding writers to gather and share ideas or writings? There is even an area of the forums devoted to libraries; make sure to check out Come Write In for posts by other libraries.
NaNoWriMo is all about creativity, so be creative when it comes to how you work this into your programming.
It's NaNoWriMo!
Wait, what? Some of you may be asking, what does this impossible word mean? NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo describes itself as "a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing." The annual event runs for the month of November, so it provides a nice distraction between Halloween and chaos of Christmas.
The whole idea is for participants to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. Divided by 30 days, this means that participants will write an average of 1667 words per day. 50,000 words doesn't seem quite as overwhelming when you break it down like that. The whole idea is to encourage people to start writing. According to the NaNoWriMo website, there were 310,095 writers who participated in 2013.
NaNoWriMo makes writing accessible for everyone. You don't have to be a published writer (although Kelley Armstrong, author of the Otherworld Series, wrote her first draft for The Summoning as part of NaNoWriMo 2005), you just have to have an interest in writing.
So how can you work this into your library programming? Lots of ways.
NaNoWriMo provides a Library Outreach Guide, which includes lots of ideas for programming. When it comes to writing, it's party, party, party! Maybe a launch party, mid-way get together, or a wrap up bash. Not so much into big celebrations? What about a writing get-together or workshop? Provide a space for budding writers to gather and share ideas or writings? There is even an area of the forums devoted to libraries; make sure to check out Come Write In for posts by other libraries.
NaNoWriMo is all about creativity, so be creative when it comes to how you work this into your programming.
RSS Feed