November Novelties

Yesterday I wrote about how growing a moustache is something you can do to help you get through the atrocious month that is November.

But if moustache-growing is not your thing then another November hobby you could try is novel-writing.

For November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it is affectionately known.

It really should be known as InNoWriMo, because it’s very clearly an international affair these days, but it started in one country, presumably, and the name ‘NaNoWriMo’ had already caught on before anyone realised that the whole world was playing.

Basically, the goal is to write an entire novel in a month. That’s a minimum of 50,000 words apparently and the goal is very definitely quantity over quality. The idea is to throw off your writing shackles, ignore your overly picky internal editor and just get on with it.

Unlike Movember, which leaves me a little cold, the idea of NaNoWriMo is totally the kind of thing I would do.

But I won’t be doing it this year.

Because failure is not something I enjoy and the two times I’ve tried NaNoWriMo I’ve utterly failed to stick with it beyond a few days.

And this year I’m struggling to keep up with the general stuff that life is throwing at me, so trying to write a novel, even a bad novel, in 30 days seems a little bit beyond me.

But everyone else should totally do it.

Even if those people who’ve misguidedly decided to also grow a moustache.

Because growing a moustache and writing a novel are not mutually exclusive.

Imagine how good it would feel to have written an entire novel and grown a moustache by the end of this month.