Background

You may be familiar with National Novel Writing Month, which takes place in November each year. This great event, also known as NaNoWriMo, challenges participants to write a 50,000-word novel in a month. November has thirty days, so that’s an average of 1,667 words per day, which is too much for some people to sustain, especially if they have day jobs. For those who want something that is, ahem, more challenging, how about NaHaiWriMo, National Haiku Writing Month? Oh, sure, all you have to do is write one little poem each day, but don’t think it’s easy to write a really good haiku. French philosopher and literary theorist Roland Barthes once observed that “Haiku has this rather fantasmagorical property: that we always suppose we ourselves can write such things easily.” If each of your haiku has as many as ten words (which is probably too many), that’s only 280 words you have to write (290 in leap years), but really, don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s easy. To find out more, visit “Why No 5-7-5.” And then learn how to participate.

NaHaiWriMo was created in 2010 by Michael Dylan Welch (see also www.graceguts.com). The first National Haiku Writing Month, with most activity on the NaHaiWriMo page on Facebook, took place in February 2011. Facebook and Twitter participants enjoy the daily writing prompts year round, but February is the “official” month for NaHaiWriMo.