“Writing is easy,” wrote legendary sportswriter Red Smith. “Just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.”

Though most of us no longer sit at typewriters nor face blank pieces of physical paper, there’s nothing more daunting than a blank screen and the notion of putting something meaningful on it. Compound that with the idea of doing that for approximately 200 pages and you begin to realize why a lot of novelists end up neurotic, tick-ridden, booze-and-drug addled wretches with plenty of failed relationships and marriages behind them. And now’s your chance to join them!

Held for the past couple years every November, participants in
National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, as it’s become known, set themselves the task of completing 50,000 words or the first draft of a novel (whichever comes first) in only one month. Recognizing that the hardest part of writing a novel is maintaining the motivation and momentum to finish the first draft, NaNoWriMo’s organizers came up with the idea a few years ago as a way of solving that problem. The first NaNoWriMo took place in 1999 with only 21 people participating. Last year, 79,000 participated, with 13,000 of them crossing the 50,000-word finish line by the midnight deadline. “They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers,” NaNoWriMo’s website tells us. “They walked away novelists.”

To participate, just visit NaNoWriMo’s website and register. Once you do, you’ll be provided access to forums that supply advice, motivation and answers to technical problems to help potential novelists stay on target and keep racking up words towards that elusive 50,000-word mark. In addition to the advice NaNoWriMo provides, DCist consulted a number of established local novelists for advice on maintaining momentum amidst the deadline pressure of only 30 days.