Halloween, the sci-fi/fantasy junkie’s most beloved holiday, is only five days away. To me, Halloween is a time to take risks and let your unconventional side roam free. In today’s post, therefore, I am not only going to challenge you to explore your own writing through a prompt, but also to get involved in the most thrilling event in a prolific writer’s year: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). From the NaNoWriMo website (www.nanowrimo.org):
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. In 2007, we had over 100,000 participants. More than 15,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.
Now, I realize that not everyone has the time (or even the inclination) to write 50k words in 30 days, so my challenge to you is to write the first chapter of a novel by the end of November. The official NaNoWriMo values quantity over quality, but I think the most important thing it offers is an opportunity to begin to unleash your bottled-up creativity. To foster the communal spirit of National Novel Writing Month, you could start a club at your school or join up with a bunch of friends to meet once a week during November to write. You may find that you enjoy it so much that you want to keep working on your novel through December and beyond!
At the end of November, I will try to post a novel chapter of my own and find a place where readers of this blog can share their work (the Teen Ink bulletin boards may be one contender).
Ok, now on to the Halloween prompt!
It is a dark and stormy Halloween night. Too old (or cool) for trick-or-treating, you find yourself curled up on the couch in front of a classic horror movie. Suddenly, you hear a knock on the door. Nervously, you tiptoe across the room and open it. No one is there. When you turn back towards the living room, the TV is gone and something sinister is sitting at the bottom of the stairs…