Be you freshman or veteran, plotter or pantser, aiming for 100,000 words or thrilled to make it to 50,000, there is one thing for me - 9 NaNoWriMos, 8 wins, 444,883 words and counting - that sums up National Novel Writing Month. It's become a bit of an institution in its own right here in my home region of Brighton, and I've carried the idea of it to the three other regions where I've participated in NaNoWriMo. Here in sunny Sussex it's affectionately known as the Panic Jar.
A literal jar (I think the third incarnation), it is filled with slips and scraps of paper bearing suggestions, prompts, and mimes on bicycles. As the name suggests, it's mainly for those moments during NaNoWrimo (and they are all but inevitable) when you grind to a halt, hit a wall or everything simply freezes - in short, the moments of panic. A lucky dip draw from the jar could have you killing off all of your characters, factoring in a German tongue twister, or perhaps simply switching to narrating from the antagonist's perspective. Of course, if you risk taking something from the jar, the rule is that it has to be incorporated into your novel - recently described as Russian Roulette for novelists.
The Panic Jar represents two vital elements of NaNoWriMo: creativity and community. When you see a fellow Wrimo calculating how to shoehorn screaming hamsters into their novel, you learn that creativity truly has no bounds. NaNoWriMo is designed to help you recognise that when it comes to writing - be it ideas, be it quantity - you have no limits! You may be experiencing the busiest November of your life, but you can still find the time to set off into NaNo-land with a character named Charlie and a possible title (me, NaNo 2012). You might be in the midst of education, doing your A-levels (me, 2006, my first NaNo) or finishing up a degree (me, NaNo 2011, 2013). You might be working full time and trying to organise weekends with your friends and family, too (me, NaNo 2007, 2012, 2014). You might recently have moved to an unfamiliar part of the world several thousand miles from home (me, NaNo 2010). In all of these situations, your imagination is still right there with you, and NaNoWriMo is a superb outlet.
The Panic Jar is a cunning release for creativity, too – anyone can scribble down an idea and drop it into the jar. (We try to keep it family-friendly, and an over-18s only jar was introduced for the less PG suggestions.) For full community interaction, the Brighton Panic Jar attends just about every write-in and social, and is even accessible online, by asking a Municipal Liaison – or Wrimo Wrangler – or whoever is guarding the Panic Jar to pull something out of it for you. And as the Panic Jar is to unexpected plot twists, so NaNoWriMo is to finding like-minded people to befriend. 2010 found me writing some 4,500 miles from home in Vancouver, and NaNoWriMo allowed me to connect with some amazing friends, from all walks of life, who ultimately formed a huge part of my time in Vancouver, and my life since. Writing seems like a solitary pursuit, but NaNoWriMo is packed with write-ins (both in person and online) and socials. Write-ins may well be the least-social social activity I've ever participated in, but the occasional conversation breaks out when someone casts around for the right word and a tangent carries everyone away somewhere unexpected.
Connect up with your fellow Wrimos and tap into the amazing support they offer. Your region is your cheerleading section. They’ll help you along, and before you know it, you’ll be cheering just as hard to encourage other Wrimos over the line. Or perhaps you’ll just be sneaking something into a Panic Jar near you.
Of course, there's also the third way the Panic Jar represents NaNoWriMo – the unexpected, and a little bit of chaos…
Emma is participating in NaNoWriMo for the tenth time in 2015, and for the first time since her inaugural attempt in 2006, she'll begin on 1st November with an actual plan. She is currently busy re-thinking world history for her alternate history NaNovel, The Carpet Salesmen, and you can help her out! Read here for more details, and if you have any questions or suggestions (about alternate histories, NaNoWriMo or life in general) you can find Emma on the NaNoWriMo site, on Twitter, or in real life in the Brighton NaNoWriMo region. All of the Panic Jar prompts mentioned in this post, from German tongue twisters to mimes on bicycles are genuine!
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