Why isn’t there a National Short Story Writing WEEK? (NaShoStoWriWe)

I am considering some alternatives to NaNoWriMo, including:

Writing a Cook Book for National Cook Book Writing Month: NaCoBoWriMo.

Writing a Pamphlet for National Pamphlet Writing Month: NaPaWriMo (unfortunately you have to be living in Napa, California to fully participate. It’s more of a NapaCaPaWriMo.)

Write an Opera for November Opera Writing Month: NoOpWriMo, not to be confused with the planned post-election No OpEd Writing Month, also NoOpWriMo.

Then, of course there’s November Economic Forecast Writing Month (NoEcFoWriMo), leading directly into December Excuses For Not Giving Presents Writing Month (DeExFoNoGiPreWriMo).

And then there’s Blog Mediation Writing Month (BloMeWriMo), which I suspect will be very popular this year.

The “Famous People” of the title were all deceased (avoiding various legal issues), and most were historically so. My first assignment was the pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, and the editors provided me with research material – two biographies, 50 to 75 years old at the time. Being written long before anyone thought of publishing “Intimate Sex Lives” books, both volumes required a lot of ‘reading between the lines’ to extract much of a sexual biography. And a couple weeks after I sent in my thousand words, I got back a tactfully worded request to rewrite it, in which the Assistant Editor (no relative of Irving Wallace) pointed out that I had failed to note that Schopenhauer had died of complications from syphillis.

Obviously, I hadn’t read nearly enough between the lines. I felt like I had just flunked History, Philosophy, Creative Writing and Sex Education on the same day.