Novel November

Personally I have never heard of Novel November before this year. It is a new concept for me. Writing a Novel in a month. Of course the definition of novel in this instance is 50,000 words. People have asked if I am participating.

Currently my life revolves around work and the crunch period we are in, but even so, should I participate in an arbitrary contest and line? Does 50,000 words make a novel?

An article discussing the spirit of the exercise said it was about quantity, not quality. Don’t edit, don’t research just write. In retrospect one of the things that hangs me up most often when writing is dealing with simple things that I have to research and determine the “correct” answer for. It bogs me down and slowly I lose focus until the story is lost. In that respect it seems to me that Novel November is perfect for me. Perhaps I should, just to force myself to write differently. I write this blog after all to flex my creative muscle and write things down. Is this not the same?

But does quantity, even in this instance trump quality? Is a sentence a collection of words? Is a novel a collection of 50,000 words that have some reason for being together? Or is a novel an experience better planned and organized? Perhaps it should be called Novel Rough Draft November, then Editing December.