A Second--and Third--Chance at NaNoWriMo

November isn't always the best month for writing novels, despite it  being National Novel Writing Month. It's the holidays, the end of the year, etc. I know I certainly don't have enough free hours that time of year to commit to writing that much. But now there is something for everyone, even people like me! (And no, I don't mean the lazy ones.)

NaNoWriMo--the popular novel writing "competition"--is adding a June and August version of the challenge with the new Camp NaNoWriMo, according to GalleyCat:

Want to write a novel this summer? You should take the Camp NaNoWriMo challenge in June or August.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes place every November, but the Office of Letters and Light (the nonprofit behind NaNoWriMo, Script Frenzy and the Young Writers Program) wanted to give writers an alternative time for the writing challenge.

Follow this link to sign up: “Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work. When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster. Writing begins 12:00:01 AM on June 1, and again on August 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by 11:59:59 PM on the last day of the month. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.”

See the original post HERE

While I'm not planning to officially sign up, I am considering trying to get myself to write at least a little bit every day this month in an attempt to get back into the habit and finally start finishing projects.

How about YOU? Are you going to partake in Camp NaNoWriMo?

Polling the Public for a National Book Award

For the first time, the prestigious National Book Award will be chosen by more than just a five-member judging panel. Anyone can vote.

According to the AP wire, The National Book Foundation has opened its polls to the public, letting readers all over the country vote. But only for one special category: The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction. As part of the NBA's 60th anniversary celebration, this special category has been created to honor one of six past NBA winners, chosen by a NBF panel:

The Stories of John Cheever

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

The Collected Short Stories of William Faulkner

The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

Personally, I haven't read any of these. Maybe that makes me a bad former Lit. major, but I haven't. So, I, for one, do not plan to participate. But even if I had a strong opinion on the matter, I'm not sure I'd want to take part.

Contests of this kind peeve me a little bit, with voters having no restriction in number of votes (Ok, you caught me, I just voted to see if it would let me vote twice--it does), and with voters being able to see the current standings, and therefore, push their favorite up in the polls by voting again and again. Something like this happened recently to a family member of mine, with his band being a finalist in a very important, nationwide competition that would ensure them a spot playing at a concert with some very, very big names. Winning such a contest would have launched their career, something they absolutely deserve to have happen. However, the contest was run so poorly, e-mail addresses not verified, etc. that some of the other bands in the running were having fans vote 100+ times each, swaying the scales unfairly. As a result, the competition no longer really represented the best band, but instead just the band who could cheat the most.

Contests like the NBA have panels of judges for a reason. They have a criteria they follow and are (hopefully) made up of a variety of different people with different tastes and outlooks, to get a well-rounded and fair judging scale. I think this is especially important when the stakes are as high as they were for the aforementioned band and for the NBA, which dotes prestige and $10,000 on its winners (though I can't say what the award is for this special category, since I frankly, don't know).

So, while I like the concept of the public having a say, I can't help but think these contests aren't really fair--or accurate--and maybe they really are better left to the professionals.