Local coffee shop My Friend Joe is celebrating National Novel Writing Month, not by trying to write a novel in a month as most participants do, but instead Alexis Bauer and her band of mad, merry writers set out to create a novel in a single day.

National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo started in San Francisco in Nov. 1999 when 21 aspiring authors gathered together “to make some noise.” Their goal was to each write 50,000 words, approximately 175 pages, between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30. From the seeds sown by those 21 intrepid writers, the NaNoWriMo has grown to 167,150 participants in 2009.

While the World’s Fastest Novel is not associated with NaNoWriMo, it does draw inspiration from this project. Unlike NaNoWriMo the World’s Fastest Novel does not put the pressure to write a full novel on one author. Instead the goal is to produce a collaborative work of fiction in one day.

Participants gathered Nov. 12 at 8 a.m. with the intention of creating a novel from scratch. Plotting, character design and chapter breakdowns were all created in the first half of the day. In the second half of the day the chapters would be assigned to participating writers. By 7 p.m. the novel would be compiled, bound and printed.

The Worlds Fastest Novel got off to a good start. By 9 a.m. there where five writers creating characters and weaving a plot around them. However as the day progressed the number of writers dwindled, by 1 p.m. the numbers had dwindled to two.

Unwilling to give up Bauer and her fellow writers came up with a new plan: to write the novel over the cours of the next week. There are still chapters available if any aspiring writers would like to participate. Contact the staff at My Friend Joe at (707) 844-4699.