What is NaNoWriMo?
If you’re interested in writing, you may have heard someone mention this word in the last few weeks. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and has been an online writing competition since 2001. The goal of the challenge is to write 50 000 words, or a novel, in the month of November, or fail trying.
With the original non-profit that ran NaNoWriMo shutting down (nanowrimo.org) for warranted reasons, a new one has taken over (https://nanowrimo.ca/), and the writing challenge is still well and alive. In past years there would be rewards and sponsors for the event, but this time around it is focusing just on the challenge of writing 50 000 words of a novel in one month. Not as exciting, but generally people who are really trying to write a novel aren’t doing it for a small monetary award at the end of the day.
Many people take the month of June or October to write a rough draft in preparation for November, although plenty of people go into writing blind, with only a few things written down. For myself this year I’ll be writing a bit of a draft, but nothing much else, which will hopefully keep me on track in comparison to previous years, which haven’t gone quite so well.
But hey, if this is your first time hearing about this competition? Look into it! There’s plenty of forums to chat with others about it and progress with. Be it that you’re writing in prose or verse, it’s a tough challenge to take on. Even if you didn’t succeed, well, you can say that you tried to write a novel. Though that doesn’t sound so impressive, I suppose.
I know a lot of people have that novel they’ve been meaning to write lying around, after all. You could even try to rope some friends into joining you in NaNoWriMo, it’s a good way to get your mind thinking even if you can’t finish it. 1667 words of a coherent story in a day sounds easier than it might seem, but there are plenty of methods to achieve them.
If you so choose to partake, I’d recommend to start planning soon, November comes faster than you might realise. Good luck! And don’t stress it, just hope you end up past the goal wordcount!
Link for the website: https://nanowrimo.ca/
