NANOWRIMO BEFORE ENSHITTIFICATION
a retrospective
Part III
by Corwin Tomu
The NanoWriMo community overall went beyond its component parts. Although in theory we were all meant to focus on writing and not on spending our time on the forums, the mutual voluntary challenge gave us a deep camaraderie and a joyous, carefree spirit.
Each post had a measuring rod of sorts, giving us our word count and showing us our percentage towards the 50,000 word count goal. Since the forums were refreshed each year, if you didn’t reach the goal, you would carry your word count each year – the only kind of public shaming on a very positive website.
The only true enemy of NaNoWriMo was writer’s block and we would help each other out in any way we could – the more nonsensical the approach, the better! We could get even more words out of the characters reacting to the newly bizarre situation.
I loved the story tropes which we all shared and passed on to one another after saying how we used it. My favorite was the Traveling Shovel of Death, which you would exchange after saying who or what your characters killed with it!
And of course there were the dares – the more nonsensical the better. I’m deeply grateful for our Webmistress of Misrule for her work archiving many years of dares, and I hope that they will offer inspiration for many new writers. As is stitched into the iconic accordion vest in Broadway’s Les Miserables, take them and use them well.
But we cannot allow these dares to remain the last ones. We cannot allow these dares to become a “canon” of sorts; doing so is contrary to their spirit. I encourage all of us to read them and come up with more, and share them amongst ourselves.
Stay surprised. Stay shocked. Stay out-of-the-box. Stay free.