NaNoWriMo let's go
What tips a keen reader over the edge into "becoming a writer"? Perhaps it's the Rowlingesque approach of taking to a cafe with a laptop. Or maybe it's the daily discipline of morning pages penned in a room of one's own.
Maybe the key to success is a big huge binge. A 30-day purge of any and every literary idea that comes to mind during an epic adventure with other wannabe writers.
Maybe the key to success is NaNoWriMo, the annual writing challenge where competitors aim to complete a 50,000-word novel in just one month.
NaNoWriMo began 15 years ago as National Novel Writing Month. These days challenges take place throughout the year but the main event is still in November, as writing communities take to keyboards and get cracking.
In the suburbs of Perth, delegates are getting busy at write-ins held at public libraries.
Local authors with a profile have already begun sharing their expertise, with Rebecca Laffar-Smith expected to facilitate a 5-7pm session at Armadale Library tomorrow and noir specialist David Whish-Wilson to front Manning Library on Wednesday next week at 6.30pm, while Brooke Davis will help authors across the line at Victoria Park Library on November 28, at 6.30pm.
But it's the nuts and bolts of sitting at a computer that will help people reach ambitious targets of 1500-1700 words a day.
Given the average, single-spaced 12-point Times New Roman page is some 400 words, most writers are targeting about four or five pages a day. That doesn't sound like much but an off day or two can throw people off-course and immediately out of the game.
Are writers setting themselves up for failure? Maybe. But we all need to dream a little dream.
Write-ins can be a great way to put a fair chunk of words under your belt but writing software can equally be a way to make it happen.
Scribe is a tool used by many creative writers to plot and write their novel, while keeping all the elements together in an easy-to-see structure. It's pretty similar to Microsoft Word but with the Document Map firmly turned on and focused on helping writers churn out chapter by chapter.
But there's a new player in the works. It's called Tablo and it's a cloud-based publishing tool and social network backed by Momentum, Random House Australia's digital publishing arm.
Tablo has launched its own NaNoWriMo effort this month, and will feed its five most popular promising works to the publisher for evaluation at the end of the competition.
The start-up is offering a really big carrot at the end and, who knows, someone might get a bite -- a publishing deal with Momentum.
Interested? You've only got 6000-odd words to catch up on.
