NaNoWriMo is a nonprofit formed to support the National Novel Writing Month which began in 1999 as a challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days . NaPoWriMo is a different organization with the goal of helping motivate writers of all ages to write 30 poems in 30 days during National Poetry Month .
It ’ s fun , daunting , challenging and many give up in the middle . But not Gabrielle “ Rie ” Lee who has done NaNoWriMo twelve times ! She ’ s a 31-year-old writer . She found NaNoWriMo through an online Harry Potter roleplay group when she was a teen and has taken this interest in writing to a professional career . She ’ s also taken some more traditional paths to writing including acquiring an MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University in Spokane in 2014 .
NOVEMBER IS NANOWRIMO . APRIL IS NAPOWRIMO .
When I interviewed Rie I was curious about what she ’ s writing and how the NaNoWriMo program fits in with her current life as a contract manager , mom , YA ( young adult ) novelist , and spouse . She is currently working on several projects including an adult novel and a YA novel which will come out next year . She has an agent whom she met through submitting a novel she wrote as part of NaNoWriMo .
It seems that the process of writing through NaNoWriMo helps quantify the labor the writer is doing . It ’ s motivational to “ watch the graph ” and see how many words you ’ re getting on the page in each writing session or a given day . Most people use the interface on the website where you can see how you are doing and use the competition with others as a motivator . There are tools and activities like “ word sprints ” to help the writers stay on task .
Mark Anderson , Spokane poet , said , “ I used to undertake some pretty intense writing challenges as part of NaPoWriMo , National Poetry Writing Month , the poetry counterpart to NaNoWriMo that happens in April . During NaPoWriMo there ’ s a challenge where essentially , you ’ re attempting to write a poem a day for thirty days . That ’ s the main challenge that people engage with . I doubt I ever got more than fifteen days into it though , partly because April is already the busiest month
RIE LEE
for poets . My own personal challenge that I undertook twice was to spend the beginning of the month freewriting fifty pages — doing that every day until I wore myself out and couldn ’ t keep it up . I would then go back in a month and read through the weird stuff I ’ d generated , pick out the best , and spend a month polishing it obsessively and releasing a poetry document to my friends . It was surprising some of the interesting stuff that came out , and I ’ m surprised that nine years later about five of those poems are finding their way into my current manuscript , though most of them have been touched up quite a bit by notes from editors , and my own more mature eyes .”
Anderson said , “ As for my current writing life , I ’ m mostly working on short stories , and have been spending a lot of time just learning . I find that poetry and fiction demand different kinds of energy . Poetry requires a much more intense focus , while fiction requires less precise focus for a longer period of time . I just had
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