Daily Pioneer News

PLATTEVILLE - Seven University of Wisconsin-Platteville students and an English instructor each wrote a 50,000-word novel during the month of November.

This is the third novel that Wendy Perkins, lecturer in humanities/English, has written during the month of November as part of a nationwide project, the National Novel Writing Month. She's made four attempts, but fallen short of the 50,000-word bar once.

Every year, Perkins encourages students in her freshman composition class to take the challenge, too. This year, seven UWP students "won" - meaning they achieved 50,000 words - while about seven others made "significant progress." More students started the project, but abandoned it when the reality of averaging nearly 1,700 words a day sank in.

"A lot of students start and get to the fourth or fifth day of the month and can't keep up the pace," she said.

Are all of these novels ready for prime time? Hardly. Perkins said the point is to give people the peer support they need to start writing.

"You can correct a bad first draft, but you can't correct a blank page," she said.

One of the UWP students who achieved her goal of writing 50,000 words this year was Epros Weiss, a freshman from Peoria, Ill., majoring in criminal justice and psychology. She isn't in Perkins' class and this was her fourth successful attempt to get down 50,000 words in a month. In addition to writing, she coordinated the project - her title was municipal liaison for Wisconsin: Elsewhere - for all areas in the state aside from Milwaukee and Madison.

All of Weiss' novels have been what she described as "fantasy - they're on the same planet, but not the same characters." Perkins said her novel is a coming of age story across multiple universes.

Weiss said that keeping up with the daily word quota is daunting. If you fall behind by a couple days - either because of class responsibilities or just lack of motivation - it can be a difficult to recover. She said she wrote 12,000 words over the Thanksgiving break from classes.

Some writers - they call themselves WriMos, for writing in a month - encourage each other by getting together to write and bounce ideas off of each other.

"There's a lot of chatting about the insanity of what's going on," she said.

Perkins said more UWP students participated this year than in any of the five years she has encouraged her classes to get involved by offering extra credit. The percentage who "won" by completing 50,000 words was highest the first year when 10 of 12 achieved the goal.

Perkins said she encourages her students to get involved so they can appreciate writing for the sake of writing and the discipline that is involved to complete a project of this magnitude.

"They're doing it because they want to and for no other reason," she said. "And, they all come out better writers."

Do Weiss and Perkins think that their work could be the great American novel? Neither is naïve about what they've accomplished and where they have to go. Both, however, say that now that they have the words down on paper that they want to return to their novels and revise them with an eye toward producing something that can be published.

"It's easy to convince yourself that what you've written is pure garbage," Perkins said. "Months later, your perspective can be a lot different."

In addition to Weiss, the other UWP students who wrote 50,000-word novels in November were: Katie Shanahan, Chelsie Fritz, Matt Pagel, Ryan DeFlorin, Melinda Rupp, and Nick Vis. Perkins said two others came very close: Chris Behling, Racine, and John Wardlow.

While 50,000 words sounds like an insurmountable hurdle, UWP students have found it to be an achievable goal. Each individual project works out to be about 85 pages of single-spaced typing or a 175-page regular-size paperback novel, Perkins said.

For more information on the National Novel Writing Month, contact Perkins at (608) 342-1209 or perkinsw@uwplatt.edu. Information also is available at the project's website: www.nanowrimo.org.

Contact: Wendy Perkins, lecturer, humanities/English, (608) 342-1209, perkinsw@uwplatt.edu Written by: Gary Achterberg, UWP Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, achterbergg@uwplatt.edu