“Thirty days and nights of literary abandon,” that’s how the National Novel Writing Month describes its project. The idea is simple, write a 175-page (50,000 word) novel in thirty days. From NaNoWriMo:

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.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap.

Call me foolish, stupid, naïve, green, pugnacious, and puerile, but I’m going all-in with this year’s event, and I want you to join me. So here’s the idea:

Sign up after the jump and join FrontRow’s support group for National Novel Writing Month hopefuls. The project begins on November 1^st and continues through November 30^th. We will write, we will sweat, we will cry, we will mortify ourselves, and in early December, we will convene in the D Magazine offices for a reading of our work – with drinks (of course) to soften the humiliating blow to our collective egos. 

During the month, I will blog about my efforts to write a novel in a month, and I invite everyone who participates to send their experiences throughout the month which I will post in this space. This project hasn’t started yet, so I have this silly notion that this might be fun. Even if it isn’t, perhaps a literary miracle will occur, and someone will produce the Great Dallas Novel. Jump for the sign up sheet, and in the meantime, suggest topics and characters in the comments. Turn on the coffee pot! Buy that pack of cigarettes! Pour a glass of vermouth! Barricade the door! Kiss your loved ones goodbye! Here goes nothing.

Photo: (from left) Jane Austen, Vladimir Nabokov, Zadie Smith, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Toni Morrison, and Virginia Woolf.