From nanowrimo.org: National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down. As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and -- when the thing is done -- the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children. In 2005, we had over 59,000 participants. Nearly 10,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists. So, to recap: What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time. Who: You! We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together. Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work. When: Sign-ups begin October 1, 2006. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins. Still confused? Just visit the How NaNoWriMo Works page!
To those that are doing this contest, what is yours about? Mine right now is a redo of one of my old stories. They said that is allowed.
That's really the point of it, to get people to write a novel fast. It's supposed to be quantity over quality, so you're pretty much going to be writing a lot of crap. But then later, you can go back and turn it into something great.
Agreed - if you take a long time to write things (like me) then this is perfect because it FORCES you to crank out a new novel in a month so you don't have to wait 2 years to read one of your finished works . ZB
I feel when I start a book and write it fast, it isn't the same when I go back to do a rewrite, it can be tedious, if you liked the story you dug into so fast. This is judging from previous experiences.
Weird, I missed this entirely and yet have set myself the goal of writing 100k in January. Up to 50k already! Hope you all did well.
There is an unofficial JaNo challenge for those that find November too busy. I'm doing this and the WriYe - a year long challenge in which my target is 400K.
Tell me about JaNo - I'm doing it already and I never heard of it. I just finished the sixth of my 10k chapters - though I break chapters into short scenes of 2-5k, and there's a 500 word opener that I posted on the novel forum. Averaging about 4k a day - but I won't be able to keep that up forever.
This is the first time I will be trying Nanowrimo, and I am already 1667 words behind. What are WriYe and Jano? I cant figure oiut where to begin the story so maybe i should just writye a lot about a couple of characters and see what shakes out... foxbrains
Actually, JaNo, is JaNoWriMo, meaning January Novel Writing Month. So far as I can see, it's the same as NaNo, but in January rather than November.
The key is to just write. If the story doesn't flow then move to a part that does. And a tip, the best way to catch up (at least for me and many others) is to do word wars. There's a forum for them on the Nano website and they are excellent for catching up. I do all my writing in word wars, that way I get the daily quota over and done with in about 45 minutes.
This is my 3rd year doing nanowrimo. I meet with a local group and we all bring our laptops and write. We have a forum on the nano site and there's usually somebody willing to do a word war with you. I have a problem suspending my self editor so I haven't made it to 50K yet but hopefully this will be the year. Jo
I'd never heard of JaNoWriMo. That's actually really cool. I wish we had something like that around here.
