I’m late on this: National Novel Writing Month started on Thursday. I actually started a novel! Skipped all the planning and character development and just dove into an opening scene. Now, I’ve been thinking about it for a day and a half and might just write a bit more. I’m not ready to share it publicly nor do I really have a serious plan to write 50,000 words during November.

I am something of a more cloistered fiction writer than Chris Baty and his friends when they held the first NaNoWriMo in 1999:

But fun? Fun was a revelation. Novel-writing, we had discovered, was just like watching TV. You get a bunch of friends together, load up on caffeine and junk food, and stare at a glowing screen for a couple hours. And a story spins itself out in front of you.

I think the scene—full of smack-talk and muffin crumbs on our keyboards—would have rightly horrified professional writers. We had taken the cloistered, agonized novel-writing process and transformed it into something that was half literary marathon and half block party.

We called it noveling. And after the noveling ended on August 1, my sense of what was possible for myself, and those around me, was forever changed. If my friends and I could write passable novels in a month, I knew, anyone could do it.

Noveling: it reminds me of one of my favorite Monty Python sketches: Novel Writing.  It’s Thomas Hardy writing Return of the Native in front of a live audience.

And the group approach was reminiscent of a Simpson’s episode called The Book Job where Homer and his friends write a piece of young adult literature with a little bit of culinary help from Neil Gaiman.

The event has grown into a month-long writing fest with events all over the world. There were numerous write ins in my area being held at Starbucks, Panera Bread, and public libraries.

Why not give it a try? It’s the perfect 30 Day Challenge.

A bit of contemporary literary fun for National Novel Writing Month.