tablesaw | She Reported on the Selling of Babies in Romania.

storme, I feel the need to respond to Adam Cadre's recent thoughts on National Novel Writing Month.

Personally, I think that all of his concerns are valid, so I thought I'd clarify my own intentions. I don't intend to write a novel in a month; I do intend to write a "novel." (Use overly dramatic Dr. Evil scarequote inflection for this.) This "novel" will not be complete, but it will be 50,000 words long. I do it this month mostly because my writing has slowed down, especially since my move, and I think that this absurdly compressed timeline will help me get back on track.

I mentioned that I had an idea that I don't know what to do with. I doubt that the "novel" I write in November is what I ought to do with it, but I hope that, after quite a lot of writing on an idea that I haven't explored yet, I'll have a much better idea. I already know, based on the little plotting I've done in my head, that I won't be anywhere near a complete novel when I've written 50,000 words; but I'm writing a "novel" next month, not a novel.

Moreover, there's an aspect that Adam leaves out of his analysis, which is the fun and camaraderie associated with a bunch of people doing the same thing at the same time. There are many people whose casual writing I enjoy who will be participating, and I hope to see what they come up with. There's the odd competition that goes along with comparing wordcounts and nothing else as a measure of success. And there's also the absurdity of calling everyone a novelist, which itself is very fun.

I'll also mention here, since I don't think I have that Mr. Cadre has published a novel, and is a very fine writer also on his website and on

ifmud, where I often see him.

As for the horrible acronym, I always pronounce it "Na-No-Writ-Mo" making it sound more like a very, very small salsa band.