National Novel Writing Month Challenge
Complete a Rough Draft of Your Novel in 30 Days This November
Sep 7, 2009
As the name suggests, The National Novel Writing Month's (NaNoWriMo) goal is to encourage writers and potential writers to write a novel. It doesn't have to be a best seller or even good, the point is just to write—to create a habit of sitting down at the computer or with a pen and paper and string words together into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters, and so on, until you have produced a novel. To "win" the challenge, you must complete your novel (50,000 words) in one month.
Benefits of the National Novel Writing Challenge
Without the pressure of having to produce high quality writing, the competitors send their inner critics on vacation and focus on putting the required 50,000 words down on paper in the allotted time frame. And with a specific and short deadline, they don't have time to procrastinate—to meet this goal, they have to write whether they feel like it or not.
But, they don't have to do it alone. NaNoWriMo organizers arrange for groups to get together and write, chat, complain, whine, and otherwise support each other through the process. In the NaNoWriMo challenge, everyone who completes the task on time is deemed a winner. Since NaNoWriMo doesn’t have a lone winner and a bunch of losers, this challenge fosters a supportive atmosphere where competitors are happy to help each other along the way.
How the Challenge Began
NaNoWriMo began in 1999 when Chris Baty, a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay area and 20 friends challenged each other to write a novel in a month. Rather than sitting alone in front of their computer screens struggling through the process in isolation, they met and went through it together. In that first year, six of the challengers completed the assignment and were deemed "winners". Ten years later, in 2008, the challenge had grown to include over 500 chapters around the world and registered 119,301 participants and 21,683 winners.
Get the Official Guide to NaNoWriMo
For additional support and tips for surviving NaNoWriMo, you can purchase the "official guide", No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days written by Chris Baty in 2004. This humorous and fun-filled guide to writing aims to convince writers to cast aside their inhibitions and strive for quantity of words over quality and to inspire would-be writers to sit down and produce a viable first draft.
How to Participate in NaNoWriMo
You can sign up for NaNoWriMo for free at the NaNoWriMo website. Once you are registered, you can access the numerous resources on the website including information about meet up groups in your area. On November 1, start writing—alone, at meet up groups, or both. You can log your progress on your NaNoWriMo account as you go, but to win, you are required to submit your finished draft for verification by midnight on November 30. If it has a word count of 50,000 words or more, you win!
All wnners are added to the Winner’s Page and receive a winner’s certificate and web badge, but as they say on the NaNoWriMo website, "Win or Lose, you rock for even trying."
 |
