Special Message

I've had it on my heart for awhile to write a message to Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo, to tell him about the noveling exploits of the teens on CleanPlace. I sent him a note today. Here's what it said:

Greetings Chris,

I wanted to let you know of a strange phenomenon that's happened and is continuing to happen on my teen writing forum, CleanPlace.net.

Last July, I held a contest for the teens (ages 12-19) called SuNoWriMo (Summer Novel Writing Month), a shameless knock-off of NaNoWriMo, I admit. ;o) Their challenge was to write a 15,000-word story during the month of July. We had 19 finishers out of 27 participants. Pretty good for a bunch of teenagers, half of whom had camps, vacations, and whatnot going on in July.
The winners received black t-shirts that we had made, emblazoned with "Inkaholic" on them. They totally rock.

So when I announced this year that I was doing NaNoWriMo for the second time in a row, suddenly, the teens were inspired to reach this incredible goal of 50,000 words. (Last year, they just wished me luck and prayers that I wouldn't lose my mind.) I suppose that after seeing that they could acheive 15,000 words in July, they are ready to go even higher. I'm so proud of them.

We've had a dozen or so sign up so far, and everyone seems to be rallying together in this insanity. The more the merrier!

Anyway, I thought you might get a kick out of our little story of inspiration and the prospect of a dozen or more crazy teens going after NaNoWriMo with full-fledged creative fury.

Sincerely,
MangyCat

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I guess I've been thinking about doing this because I picked up a copy of "No Plot? No Problem!", a guide to writing a novel in 30 days, by Chris Baty. Been reading through it to build up some excitement for NaNo this year. So far, it seems to be doing it's job.

I'm both thrilled and anxious about the coming Novemeber 1 starting line. I don't know exactly how I feel about it because my plot is still rather a ghost floating around in my head. We'll see what happens though. The power of a deadline surely is an amazing thing.