November is National Novel Writing Month

Chris Baty’s Project Has Influenced Many Aspiring Novelists

Oct 31, 2009

Every November, tens of thousands of people around the world spend 30 days and nights frantically trying to write 50,000-word novels.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) started out as something almost like a joke. Chris Baty and a few friends decided they wanted to try to write a novel in one month. After doing some basic research, they concluded that a 50,000-word novel (about 175 pages) would be a worthwhile goal, putting their books into the same size range as The Great Gatsby. After the first year, a few more people joined, and the program began to grow from there. This year, NaNo has over 100,000 participants signed up to write. NaNo is now in its eleventh year.

National Novel Writing Month

The goal of NaNo is to write 50,000 words in 30 days –or, about 1,667 words per day for the entire month of November. It’s no small task, but each year, thousands of people finish writing an entire novel. Some fall short of the 50,000 word goal while others find the inspiration and the time to soar past it, but no one who participates in NaNo leaves unchanged.

Nanowrimo.org, the official website for National Novel Writing Month, encourages readers to “write on the fly,” turn of their internal editors and boldly write large amounts of bad work. For the month of November, quantity is placed over quality; revisions come after the entire book is written. NaNo is focused on encouraging people to write the novel they always wanted to.

Writing a Novel in a Month

There are very few rules associated with National Novel Writing Month. The most important one for all participants is to write a novel completely from scratch; trying to rush work on an established product usually ends up frustrating the writer and a lot of the writing will get scrapped.

Beginning with a fresh new idea is a way for writers to expand their imaginations, experiment with different forms of writing and create a novel that they may never have written otherwise.

National Novel Writing Month Community

Nanowrimo.org has forums, question and answer guides, user profiles, word count tools and many other useful pieces of information. Perhaps one of the most useful parts of the NaNo website is that it allows users from the same area to set up write-ins.

A write-in can take place in a house, a coffee shop, a restaurant, a library or anywhere else that allows a group of people to meet and write. The goal of write-ins is to get a group of people working on their novels to meet up and spend a few hours just writing without any distractions.

Having a supportive community of other writers, both on the internet and in one’s community, can make a huge difference in whether a writer crosses the 50,000 word threshold at the end of the month. NaNo moderators encourage writers to get involved with writers in their community.

National Novel Writing Month is a non-profit organization that relies largely on donations and merchandise funding to keep the website running and to continue operating their Young Writers Program.

Baty’s book about how he started National Novel Writing Month and its continued development also contains an excellent guide for writers who are new to NaNo and those who have participated before. Featuring weekly guidelines, encouragement and helpful tips, No Plot, No Problem! is an excellent buy for anyone interested in writing or learning more about National Novel Writing Month.

Createspace.com and Scrivener

Amazon’s print-on-demand company is offering a free copy of a novel to any NaNo participants who meet the 50,000-word goal. Createspace allows users to design, format and publish a professional looking book; the finished product can belong solely to its creator, or it can be sold on Amazon.com.

Scrivener is a writing program developed for Mac computers that combines numerous elements into one screen –places for story boards, editing, research pages, synopses and more are all available to those writing papers, novels, graphic novels, lectures, screenplays and other types of work. The makers of Scrivener are offering a 30-day trial for NaNo participants, as well as a discount on the program.

The copyright of the article November is National Novel Writing Month in Writing Novels is owned by Bailey Shoemaker Richards. Permission to republish November is National Novel Writing Month in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.