It’s Day 1 of NaNoWriMo and what better way to start off than thinking about why we want to write. Sure, there’s the personal fulfillment bit, blah, blah, blah…but when it comes right down to it, we think that Chris Baty (founder of National Novel Writing Month) puts the question right into perspective in his new book No Plot? No Problem!
Novelists were clearly a different branch of Homo sapiens, an enlightened subspecies endowed with an over developed understanding of the human condition and their supernatural ability to spell words properly.
Novelists, we knew, had made it. They got fawned over in bookstores, and were forever being pestered for insights on their genius. They had a license to dress horribly, wear decades-out-of-date hairstyles, and had their shortcomings interpreted as charming quirks and idiosyncrasies rather than social dysfunctions.
Best of all, novel writing was, for them, a lifetime sport – one of the few branches of the entertainment industry where you are allowed to have a career long after you’ve stopped looking good in hot pants.
When you put it that way, who wouldn’t want to be a writer? But when it comes to putting pen to paper, of finger to keypad, it’s a different story. We can come up with a million excuses. But the fact of the matter is that if we want to write, there’s no better time than National Novel Writing Month.
We all have to start somewhere and now’s the perfect excuse. Join thousands of other budding novelists as they attempt to tackle their story from November 1st to 30th. NaNoWriMo starts with a promise, or accomplishing something in one month. It doesn’t have to be the masterpiece that you have always dreamed of. And, it won’t be. But it’s an opportunity to get started, and push aside all the other obstacles in your way. Think of it as a sense of possibility, one in which you start with nothing and end up with a book you’ve written. This November write down a path that’s unexplored and leave a trail that you will be proud of forever. That’s the ThinkBlink philosophy.
So, stop procrastinating and get started now. After all, it’s NaNoWriMo!
Good Luck!
See you tomorrow for more ThinkBlink writing-inspired ramblings!
ThinkBLink by Shilpa Raikar.
