May, 2008
The Rules
So, you're signed up and that's all fine and dandy, but ... how do you participate and win ? The only way to win is to follow…
1.Start writing at 12:00am on November 1st. *Not* before.
2.Stop writing by November 30th at 11:59pm at the latest.
3. Your play must be a brand new play ( no screenplay) ; ie: you can not work on a previously started draft. ( yes, we changed it this year, sorry)
4.Your draft has to be at least 75 pages. (we’re talking a standard script page such as this one, offered by The Playwriting Seminars site or something close enough to that, with a font no larger than 12pt courier). 75 pages is what we consider good length for a full length play these days. You can write more of course but consider the life of your play after you've written it and consider that 75 page plays get produced a lot more frequently than 90 page plays or 5 act tragedies.
5.You gotta write it all by yourself ( in the future, perhaps we’ll have teams, but for now, just little you - I know, we’re mean, I know).
6.You must report weekly ( by Sunday of each week) on the forums page. We can't force you to do this of course but we firmly believe that these who report to their community have more chances of finishing and of staying in the challenge.
7.You must upload your play to the site by 12:30 am, December 1st if you want to be considered a winner.
Yes these are the rules. Yes, we made them up. No we can’t make you follow them. Yes, your integrity will be intact if you do. Again, no screenplays sorry. Musicals are okay. ( but *are* they really ? ) Oh and the 8th unofficial rule which is that your fingers must feel sore come November 30th and your zygomatic bone must hurt from all the fun you had.
How do I sign up?
So you've figured out what NaPlWriMo is all about and now you want to participate ?
Great !
If you want to write a play and you have access to a computer with web access, you're almost all the way there ! The first thing you want to do is register and create your own Naplwrimo account. Registering will give you access to your own little community based corner where you can upload your plays, share with other participants and report to base about your progress. The cool thing about this login is that you'll keep it year after year and there will only be 1 login for the entire site ( as opposed to previous years where you needed like 3 different logins to access blogs, forums and upload your play).
You can do this at anytime before 12am on November 1st and you are ready to go ! Of course, you are always welcome to join us once Naplwrimo has started but you'll be losing days if you start after the 1st, which will make the challenge even more difficult to win. You mean it's that easy to sign up ?
Yup.
If you're willing to write a play in 30 days, go ahead, create an account and join us !
Oh and have I mentioned it's free ?
FREE.
Wow. These rhinos really are awesome beasts.
Na-Pl-What ?
Naplwrimo’s mission is to encourage and nurture playwrights while fostering community and the creation of new theatrical works on a global level.
Nap-ple-wri-mo.
See, it’s not that hard to prounounce !
It stands for National Playwriting Month... and yah , we should take out the na for national because really we are in-ternational but so is NaNoWriMo and they inspired us. So there.
NaPlWriMo was created in 2006 by Seattle based theatre artist, Dorothy Lemoult. She has since relocated to the Bay area but that's another story for another time.
I was watching all the excitement happening around NaNoWriMo and being a playwright and not a novelist, I was really feeling left-out. I was talking to my friend Steve ( another playwright) and told him jokingly : “maybe we should just have NaPlWriMo.” “YES, YES”, he exclaimed. “Do it ! You should. You should really do it.” And so I did !
The first edition of Naplwrimo, in 2006, had 20 participants. Everyone had a blast and 13 won. In 2007, twice as many people showed up online on November 1st. Alas, the site crashed on that day leading to much confusion for the participants and much sleep deprivation for Dorothy, its fearless leader whose rudimentary web skills only went so far. NaPlWriMo 2007 did end up running successfully even though its grassroots web ways tried everyone's patience.
Shortly after that, NaPlWriMo became a partner artist project of The Shunpike. The Shunpike provided a 501c3 umbrella for NaPlWriMo, which, in plain English, means that money could be raised and donations tax deductible.
On October 15th 2008, NaPlWriMo launched its new website, on a much improved platform : Drupal. Thanks to many kind donors and a fabulous web designer, NaPlWriMo will kick off its 3rd edition in style. These who participated in 2006 and 2007 will surely notice the significant upgrade !
Write a play in November. That’s what it’s all about. No screenplays. Screenplays aren’t the same thing and besides, we like Script Frenzy and they do it in April. (You can write another play there too...)
Oh and have I mentioned it's FREE !
What more do you need to know ?
You know you want to play with us...
So go ahead... Sign up, familiarize yourself with the Rules of The Rhino , and we'll see you in the starting blocks come November 1 !
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Rhino Love
Naplwrimo runs on love, sweat and your generous help.
We couldn't do it without you...
Thank you! new donors:
Machelle Allman
Leslie Liautaud
Holly Arsenault
Michael Lee
Jeff Mackey
♥♥♥♥
