WriMos

I remember the first time I heard the word(?) NaNoWriMo. First I thought: What in the world does that word(?) mean? It sounds a bit like an alien planet. Once I found out what it was, I thought: You people are insane. Write a novel in a month? That’s crazy.

I still think NaNoWriMo is crazy. But it has spurred several other WriMos that seem a little more useful to my current life: DigiWriMo and AcWriMo. Both of these challenges begin in about a week on November 1. And I’m going to try to do them both. I feel pretty certain that I won’t make it to 50,000 words, but you never know.

The cool thing about AcWriMo and DigiWriMo is that they work in tandem. I intend to do a large portion of my academic writing for the month online, thereby fulfilling the requirements for both challenges. (Is that cheating? If it is, oh well. I’m doing it anyway.)

Both WriMos have challenged participants to set outlandish goals and make them public. So here’s my plan for the month.

The overall goal: Populate Preble’s Boys with bios of each officer and ship.

The specifics:

1. Write one officer bio every day for the first 17 days, taking off Sundays.

2. Write one or two ship bios for the remaining days. (Take Thanksgiving Day and Sundays off.)

3. Blog about the progress and challenges of the site at least twice during the month.

The challenges:

1. Language exam, Nov. 16.

2. A live-in toddler.

3. Need for more research. (My intention is to write the bios using secondary sources for now and when I have the chance to travel to archives, then flesh them out with primary sources if needed.)

4. Thanksgiving!

The preparation:

1. Research: I need to build up my Zotero library about each of these officers so that I don’t have to do a lot of reading when it’s writing time.

2. Organization: I need to set up a good system for keeping myself organized. I’ve been working in a sort of piecemeal fashion up to this point. I need to get it together.

And that’s the plan. We shall see whether my site is text-heavy by the end of the month!

I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone else is doing for DigiWriMo and AcWriMo!