National Writing Month in November

I was watching the local news yesterday and they featured the National Novel Writing Month, which takes part in November of every year. It’s the first time I have heard of this competition, but what a great idea, its too late this year but perhaps next time! Like most people I have always said I would like to write a book or a novel but have never really got round to making a start or known how to actually begin and writing courses can be costly.

National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on the 1^st of November, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand-new novel. As far as I can see its open to everyone and free to take part. It’s for anyone thinking about writing a novel. To take part all you need to do is commit to writing 50,000 words of your novel in the 30 days of November. Which means writing 1,667 words per day. Which doesn’t sound that bad as a daily total.

I feel sure that writing a novel alone must be be difficult, even for seasoned writers. The website- NaNoWriMo helps you to track your progress, set milestones and connect with other writers in a huge community and even participate in events that are designed to make sure you finish your novel. There is a website where you set up a profile, which has incentives in the form of badges and a supportive social media community to cheer you on as you strive to meet your daily word targets.

NaNoWriMo officially became a non-profit organization in 2006 and their programs support writing fluency and education. Their website hosts more than a million writers, serving as a social network with author profiles, personal project libraries and even writing buddies. Hundreds of NaNoWriMo novels have been traditionally published which includes: Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus and Hugh Howey’s Wool. Started by Chris Baty, the author of No Plot, No Problem, in the first year 21 writers took part in the challenge, which has grown every year. In 2017, over 400,000 people participated and this continues to grow.

So, if you’ve ever wanted to get that story out of your brain and onto a page, this could be a wonderful chance to do just that.  NaNoWriMo helps to provide all kinds of support and tools to help you accomplish your writing goal. The competition allows you to do some basic groundwork, but the novel has to written in the November period only.

So, for writers and want-to-be-writers visit https://nanowrimo.org/ for additional information.

Best of luck!