National Novel Writing Month

Everybody wants to be a novelist. Don’t believe me? Look at the more than 20,000 novels in iUniverse’s vanity catalog. But here’s your chance to toss aside all the insecurities about not being the next Hemingway, Pynchon or DeLillo and give it a try without the worry of having someone actually read your novel. National Novel Writing Month, held annually in November, is the time for wannabes to take action. Just pop out 50,000 words in some coherent form (the experienced suggest having an outline ready to go) between November 1 and November 30. Last year, nearly 6,000 people finished their books before the deadline. Don’t worry about revising. The theory is that intensive writing for one month will develop discipline, which we all know is the difference between wannabes and writers. Go for it.