N can only mean NaNoWriMo

It was 2008. The lure of writing fiction was becoming hard to resist. I joined a writers’ group. And when I asked them, “How does one write a novel?” they gave me a weird look and said, “You just write.” It did not make much sense to me. There surely must be more to novel-writing than just writing it. I was a voracious reader of novels and did not think it was that easy to write one.

But in 2009 I discovered that it was. I also discovered NaNoWriMo while surfing writing resources online.  To the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo which expands into National Novel Writing Month, is an online novelling event which begins on the 1^st of November and ends on the 30^th of the same month, every year. And in those thirty days, millions of writers all over the world write novels. They just write. Fifty thousand words of a novel if they want to be winners and get yummy goodies for their efforts.

You do the math and realise that if you have to write almost 1700 words a day, it doesn’t make much sense to dilly-dally and wait for the muse to turn up. You just write. You pour out the story that’s within you and this is especially easy when it is your first NaNo. 

Did I just say it’s easy? Maybe it is. Or then, maybe it is not. It was very easy for me. I loved the exhilaration of writing words that literally fought to break out of the prison of my mind and onto the vast open expanses of the word doc.  What pleasure it was, gulping down cups of semi-warm tea, hot enough to lubricate the flow of words onto the page but not hot enough to scald the tongue and distract the words as they tumbled out. Their energy and their vivaciousness enchanted me and pulled me in deeper and deeper to write.

Yes, I won NaNo in 2009, and then in the following three years too. For two years my focus was only on myself and my writing. It was terrific fun. But it was in 2011, when I became Municipal liaison(ML), India region, for the first time that  I realized how much I loved to motivate other writers to achieve their authorial ambitions. 2012 was the same fun and learning but in much larger quantities.  There have been on-line write-ins, and even on-line TGIO parties. There have been pep-talks by Indian authors. Friendships have developed and flourished. A community of NaNoWriters has been built, a group on Facebook where wrimos meet and display their writings and review others’ writings.

NaNoWriMo has many avatars. One of them is Camp NaNoWriMo which  is in full swing, now, in April.

Are you a Wrimo, too? What has been your experience as a wrimo?

Come, meet us on the Wrimo India page on Facebook.

 

(This post is part of the A to Z blog challenge as well as Ultimate Blog Challenge. Look out for further posts on NaNoWriMo and writing).

M is about ‘ME’

Inspired by the Leibster Blog Award Challenge and others of its ilk.

 

1)      I always want to know ‘why’.

2)      I hate going for parties and events but once I am dragged there, screaming and shouting, I tend to relax and enjoy myself.

 

3)      I was in depression for three days when Homeland Season 2 ended.

 

4)      When I was young, my parents harboured ambitions of me becoming a doctor, but I secretly wanted to be an airhostess.  Now, I’m neither, because I was short of marks to get admission into MBBS and I was too short to be an airhostess. Two inches short, precisely.

 

5)      Robert Pattinson, as Edward Cullen, is my fave-most character and Twilight is the only film I liked better than the book.

 

6)      Someone asked me what I would be if I was not a writer. I have been a fashion designer and a jewellery designer. I have even been a multi-level marketer. So, now it really is time for me to be a writer. (I’ve been writing non-fiction since a while; it is only in 2008 that I got down to serious fiction-writing).

7)      I am a trained Silva Mind Controller (isn’t that what the graduates are called?)

 

8)      Have you ever slept next to the window when it rained and the raindrops fell on your face like cold pin-pricks and it was an awesome feeling? When I was a kid, my bed was next to the window. When I grew up, rooms changed, homes changed and never had a bed next to a window.

 

9)      An important aspect of my role as the NaNoWriMo ML (Municipal Liaison) for India is motivating people and I love doing it.

 

10)  I‘ve been a vegetarian since many years but when I tell that to people they give me unbelieving looks.  I’ve to still figure out why.