LSC Event Descriptions

October 7, 2006
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A FREE Lecture by Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month:
No Plot? No Problem!
October 7, 2006 at 4:00 pm in 6-120

National Novel Writing Month founder Chris Baty discusses the joys and over-caffeinated terrors of high-velocity novel writing, and why everyone should spend November bashing out their own literary masterwork.

WHAT IS NANOWRIMO?

National Novel Writing Month is 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. Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

WHY DO IT?

Here's the truth: 99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It's just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists. The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away all those self-defeating worries and START. Once you have the first five chapters under your belt, the rest will come easily. Or painfully. But it will come. And you'll have friends to help you see it through to 50k. [www.nanowrimo.org]

Funded in part by a Director's Grant from the MIT Council for the Arts.

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