Releasing Their Inner Novelist

Novel writing is a one-day event, Chris Baty believes. “As in, ‘One day I’d like to write a novel,”’ jokes Baty, the 28-year-old freelance writer from Oakland who founded National Novel Writing Month three years ago.

NaNoWriMo, as he calls it, “solves the one-day problem by turning it into a 30-day problem.” During the month of November, aspiring novelist participants must crank out a minimum of 50,000 words.

Sound impossible? Well, 35 NaNoWriMo novels have been written so far. In 1999, when the event began, six out of the 21 writers who signed up succeeded. In 2000, 29 out of 140. This year, more than 1,200 writers will attempt to tap their inner Hemingways and tell their stories, logging hundreds of hours on their laptops and home computers.

Most, if not all, of their novels will be bad--really bad--but that’s beside the point, Baty says. Amid the writing rubbish, “there will be beauty,” he writes on his Web site, https://www.nanowrimo.com.

Baty’s novel approach to novel writing is based on the idea that aiming low is the best way to succeed--that it is quantity, not quality, that spurs the creative process.

“Sitting down with a completely blank computer screen and the fear of not having enough word count at the end of the day, the story just comes flying out of you,” says Baty, who has written two novels during previous NaNoWriMos and plans to write a third this year.

It’s “inspiration out of desperation,” agrees Tim Lohnes, 28, a full-time cartographer from the Bay Area who also plans to write his third novel this year. Before NaNoWriMo, he had never written, or even known he wanted to write. Now, he says, he can compose 2,000 words in two hours.

“It’s critical to do it with other people,” says Lohnes, who spent two or three nights each week holed up in a bar or coffee shop with fellow NaNoWriMo writers to compose his first two books. “We looked kind of goofy, but it [got] the job done.”

Lohnes’ first book was a road trip novel. His second was a coming-of-age story about two Minneapolis 20-somethings. Lohnes hasn’t reread either since he finished writing them. Each manuscript remains where he wrote it: in his laptop.

Melissa Sawyer, 28, of Los Feliz, heard about NaNoWriMo a month ago and immediately signed up “without really thinking of the implications.”

She has never written a novel before and has only a vague idea of what she will write about. Working full time, she also isn’t sure when she’ll find the time to write what averages out to more than 1,600 words a day. Fearing for her social life, she recruited three other friends to write novels with her.

“In my fantasy, I imagine having my laptop everywhere and my life still going on, but I might be naive. You can’t socialize and type at the same time,” says Sawyer, a college English major who now works as a publicist for Warner Bros. Records. “The first day, I’ll probably throw my laptop out the window and scream, ‘Forget it!”’

Attracted by “the challenge of it,” she says she hopes to make it through the grueling 30-day writing process if only to attend the after-party in San Francisco on Dec. 1, to “meet people who are similarly crazy.”

That means other writers who have agreed to the organization’s simple set of rules: Writers cannot repeat the same word 50,000 times, they cannot begin writing before Nov. 1, and they have to be working on a novel--no memoirs, works of nonfiction or screenplays are allowed.

If you want to write a bad screenplay, hold that thought until December, Baty asks.

Baty arrived at his 50,000-word minimum after doing rough word counts on Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”--books of modest length he had on his shelf at home.

To make sure writers are keeping up, Baty asks them to send in the number of words they have written on Nov. 10, 20 and 30. The counts are then posted next to their names as an incentive.

Baty’s strategies for success? Do not look at anything you’ve written, and never use the delete key.

“Even if you decide that’s not the way the character really is, just start a new page and keep all of that stuff because you don’t want to reduce the word count,” he says.

The cutoff date for signing up for this year’s NaNoWriMo is Monday--enough time to allow the Web site designer to set up the code to tally word counts and, importantly, to give Baty time to think about his next book, for which he has already figured out a main character, an occupation and a journey.

“That sounds like a real novel,” says Baty, surprising even himself.

Baty does not read the novels that are written during NaNoWriMo. He merely verifies the word count, then promptly deletes the manuscripts from his computer.

“I don’t want the writers to feel they’re going to be embarrassed if someone’s looking over it before it’s been edited,” says Baty, acknowledging that a quickly written novel could take years of additional work to get into publishable form.

Publishing is not the main goal here. Founded on the idea that most people who want to write novels never will, it is merely an excuse to get started.

“So many people feel they have a book inside of them but don’t have the structure to rip it out of themselves,” Baty explains. “They think they’ll wait until they’re wiser, when they really have something to say.”

But even Baty is surprised at exactly how many people have responded to what he describes as the “exhilarating and stupid” idea of writing a novel in a single month. What started out with a handful of friends in the Bay Area now has participants from 35 states, even other countries.

NaNoWriMo has prompted Baty to found a second event--for filmmakers--the 3/4 Film and Audio Fest in which participants had the month of April to complete a three-minute film.

Inspired by his experience with novel writing, Lohnes, the cartographer, tried his hand at film. His mini-movie, “Swedish Poker,” was shot at Ikea, where he and his friends used the sample living and dining rooms to stage and film a poker night.

Why does he go in for the fast-and-furious projects?

“Why not?” Lohnes counters. “Life’s exciting. Sometimes it just takes someone saying something” to get you going.

So far, neither Baty nor any of the other NaNoWriMo writers have had a book published. One novelist did get an agent for his work, but a book deal was never made.

“NaNoWriMo is really National First Draft of a Novel Writing Month,” says Baty. “That’s the beauty of it. You’re able to just kind of get that first big bite taken out of it. It is not National Write Classy and Elegant Novels Month.”