Through the month of November, the Coffee Planet in Ballston Spa has locals writing a community novel page by page.
On November 1st at “First Fridays in Ballston Spa,” Coffee Planet announced their November project: a community novel. National Novel Writing Month is a program that takes place every November and the goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month
To celebrate National Novel Writing Month they are asking their patrons to help contribute to the Coffee Planet community novel by welcoming any aspiring writers to stop by and continue the ongoing story through the month of November by writing a page or two.
“We’ve set up a bound journal for members of the community to stop by and collectively write a novel,” says owner Matthew Galbraith.
What is the book about? Even Coffee Planet doesn’t know yet, and that’s the beauty of it. Coffee Planet kicked off the book by writing one single page to start off and from there, the story will go wherever the writers take it.
Would-be authors from all over the area will be meeting up at Coffee Planet to work on their National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) novels together to get some fresh ideas and much needed feedback! The Coffee Planet community novel shows off area authors creativity and sometimes helps with their writers block!
The story began as a murder mystery. And what does the book hold so far? As of November 6, our key character Jess arrived in town to tell her parents of her engagement. Today, her father is dying, there’s a treasure only she can find and her family is falling apart at the seams.
“From what’s been written so far, it’s looking to be some kind of treasure mystery in the mold of National Treasure, albeit on a smaller scale,” says Galbraith. “It’s set right here in Ballston Spa!”
What will happen next? Stop by to keep writing the story.
If you want to start writing your own novel this month, sign up at www.NaNoWriMo.org today and get started! The website provides you with a variety of tools to assist you, a forum to communicate with fellow participants in your area and beyond, and a calendar of local events for your region. Your personal profile keeps track of pertinent statistics, from word count, to estimated day of completion at your current writing pace. The organization has connections with a variety of self-publishing companies and writing besides that provide prizes to people who successfully complete the challenge. Roughly 300,000 people were successful last year. Apart from NaNoWriMo, they are also active in promoting literacy and reading amongst children.