REPORTING ‘MY’ WORDCON1—PART 3 The sprint of NaNoWriMo

The importance of building a network and the passion we need to put into what we do, even if it is just for an assignment or for a bigger project, links the head teacher’s speech on the third day of WordCon1.

Karen Simpson Nikakis has come to talk about the NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month—an initiative that has started in the Usa and that has become international. It’s a challenge that invites you to write 50,000 words in one month. The month chosen is November but there are other versions, called Camps on April and July. In those latter months it’s you who decide your words-challenge. There is a website to which you can subscribe for free and update your progress day by day. Your signs of progress are, therefore, visible on a personal chart and you can also see other people’s. If you reach that amount of words at the end of the month, you can upload your whole writing and win the competition.

Karen encourages us to participate; it gives motivation and creates a time for you to write. It’s actually what I’ve already done last November and I’m thinking of doing it again. Although I didn’t reach 50,000 words it’s helped me to keep going on a project I started last year and that I’m still working on.

Without it I would probably have stopped dedicating myself to it as soon as the semester finished. I didn’t write every day of that month, but as Karen says, it has definitely created a time and space to write; every Wednesday, in fact, I met with other people in one of the premises opened to this initiative. Being together with other motivated people encourage yourself, you are part of a team. Not to mention the fact that this is also a way to establish a network with people that share the same passion and may help you to take the first step in your future career. In Karen’s experience, NaNoWriMo has firstly helped her to get out the idea of her novel; then, in the following edition in which she participated—although she felt stressed for having more expectations—she performed better. And now that that her fantasy novel The Emerald Serpent has been published, she says, “that book wouldn’t exist except to NaNoWriMo.” To her words, “NaNoWriMo gives you a sprint; gets your project from zero to something; put you in a community who support you and say ‘Write!’”