November is National Novel Writing Month

"National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. 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." [From the web site] San Francisco writer Chris Baty and 20 others started National Novel Writing Month in 1999.  Almost 78,000 participants registered for NaNoWriMo in 2006, including 687 from the Twin Cities.  Below are some resources for writing your own novel, or reading what others have written.   Start writing!

Web Sites

National Novel Writing Month official site

Minnesota::Twin Cities
NaNoWriMo regional forum

Profile of National Novel Writing Month from About.com

NaNoWriMo Blog

Podcast: The Writing Show
2005 interview with Chris Baty (downloads a 28 minute mp3 file)

Chris Baty's Approach to Writing
2004 interview with NaNoWriMo's founder

No Plot? No Problem!: a low-stress, high-velocity guide to writing a novel in 30 days
Chris Baty's NaNoWriMo handbook

Facebook Group: NaNoWriMo

Books

Search CLICnet for books about writing:
Subject: creative writing
Subject: fiction technique
Subject: fiction authorship

Reference Books

Garner's Modern American Usage

Ref PE 2827 .G37 2003
 

Literary Market Place

Ref PN 161 .L5 2005
"The directory of the American book publishing industry"
 

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions

Ref PN 43 .W384 1999
 

NTC's American Idioms Dictionary

Ref PE 2839 .S64 2000
 

NTC's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions

Ref PE 2846 .S64 2000
 

Roget's International Thesaurus

Ref PE 1591 .R73 1992
 

The Thinker's Thesaurus: sophisticated alternatives to common words

Ref PE 1591 .M464 2005