Some students are lucky to finish an essay on time, but seniors Tom Vohasek and Bridget Antos feel lucky to get the opportunity to write a novel in a month.
English teacher, Bridget Wilmot, said,” I am writing one, only at 15,000 words, so I need to do some writing over break. It is an awful love story that I am writing. The whole purpose of this program is to have a fun time writing it and not worrying about the quality of writing.”
Write a Novel in a Month month is where anyone who is interested is encouraged to write a novel from November 1st to midnight of November 30th. The point of completion is when you reach 175 pages, or 50,000 words. It’s not about quality; it’s all about the quantity in this case. The point is to write as much as you can and there are no mistakes because proponents encourage aspiring novelists to write a bunch of random stuff. According to www.nanowrimo.org in 2009, there were over 165,000 people who entered and about 30,000 actually passed the point of 50,000 words.
The very first year of this activity was 1999. There were only 21 people who planned to start this for fun, The creator said “No, we wanted to write novels for the same dumb reasons twentysomethings start bands.” After the first year, a friend of the founder of Write a Novel in a Month month created a website for them, becoming international.
The second year had 140 people who were dedicated to write a novel in a month, half of them being new and unknown writers. After more and more years, the numbers have increased and in 2009 there were over 165,000 dedicated novelists.
Vohasek, a senior at RB, said, “I had around 50,600 words and I did meet the deadline. I wrote a full novel and it’s a murder mystery set in 1924. Shannon Vida, the main character, was almost murdered and she contacts a detective to help her solve the mystery. Shannon Vida thinks this may relate to her parents’ murders.”
Antos, a senior at RB, said, “I did not meet the deadline, but I had 63 pages and near 30,000 words. I wrote about a teenage life and I tried to include my experiences, friends, inspirations of movies and T.V. I wanted to write something raw and dramatic, darker and a little confusing. I tried to touch on a lot of topics, from drugs to sex to sexting to suicide. I wanted to do something I normally wouldn’t write. This helped me write because I was able to have fun with it and I wanted something really dark and a little disturbing. I had a lot of fun with it because I could make any character do what I wanted and I didn’t feel limited. It was something easy to write.”
These are only a couple of the students at RB that were involved in write a novel in a month month. The whole month these students took an incredible amount of time to write their novel and you can tell they love books and enjoy reading.
