For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a yearly challenge to write a minimum 50,000 word novel during the month of November. Participants can do all the planning they like in the preceeding months, but all prose must be writen only during November. The Org behind NaNoWriMo emphasizes quantity over quality, since you are writing at the break-neck speed of about 1,700 words a day, so one wouldn’t expect to see The Great Gatsby rise from the pile at month’s end. Rather the point is to force yourself to write, whenever the chance arises, and to do so until your goal is met.
I took part a few years ago, after discovering the project on November 1st (meaning I had done no planning and was already 12 hours behind) and got to about 12,500 words before stopping. I still had plenty of time left, but the meat of the story had become so bad while at the same time producing such an interesting plot line that I wanted to ditch the story and save the plot for a better time. (I won’t go into detail but I will say that fans of The Thomas Crown Affair would appreciate it)
I’m going to try again this year, with a few months to plan. I don’t expect to produce something noteworthy, but a recent series of events in my life requires some catharsis, and this seems like the best means.
That is all.
NaNoWriMo
Petrichor: The pleasant loomy smell of rain on the ground, especially after a long dry spell.
Ambisinistrous: Having two left hands; clumsy. (The opposite of ambidextrous)
Residentarian: A person who is given to remaining at table.
Wine-knight: One who drinks valiantly.
Unbepissed: Not wet with piss, from some long forgotten world where so many things were covered in urine, a word was needed to distinguish the dry remainders.
Quomodocunquize: To make money in any way possible.
Psithurism: The whispering of leaves moved by the wind.
Preantepenult: Not the last, not the one before the last, and not the one before that. The next one.
Onomatomania: Vexation at having difficulty in finding the right word (classic!).
Kakistocracy: Government by the worst citizens.
Indesinence: Want of proper ending.
Gymnologize: To dispute naked, like an Indian philosopher.
Mawdlin-drunke: “When a fellow will weep for kinding in the midst of his Ale, and kisses you, saying; By God Captain I love thee, go thy ways thou does not think of me so often as I do of thee, I would (if it pleased God) I could not love thee so well as I do, and then he puts his finger in his eye, and cries.”
Felicificability: Capacity for happiness.
Chrestomathic: Devoted to the learning of useful matters. (As opposed to:)
Mataeotechny: An unprofitable or useless science or skill.
Taken from Reading the OED by Ammon Shea
Ideas