Thread: Na-What-O?

Sorry to be a pain, but can someone explain to me what national novel writing month is? I tried to find a thread but everyone seems to already know what it is and theres no sticky thread!

Its a month (november) where writers around the world compete to write a novel within a month (50k words). It's more of a self achievement thing than an actual competition, but you register to the website and keep score of your word count each day and your word count goes towards the collective word count of your area.

Or something like that.

^ What he said. There are "summer camp" editions now taking place in June and August, so there are three NaNoWriMo opportunities every year. You essentially get the opportunity to write recklessly for thirty days with other writers who are also writing recklessly and try to boost your word count. In the last week you have the opportunity to "validate" your novel and the site's word counter will check to make sure you hit the 50k mark (you can surpass it too!).

It's a lot of fun. I just wrote my first draft last month doing NaNoWriMo and had a blast with my "cabin mates." I definitely recommend trying it out. I plan to continue the novel I won with last month during the next month. It's a great challenge and it motivated me to get past the writer's block I was struggling with.

So it doesn't have to be a best seller or anything? You just go for it?

Oh, and what are the rules on drafting it up before the month begins?

National Novel Writing Month

Originally Posted by HKayG

Oh, and what are the rules on drafting it up before the month begins?

Think of it like a big, community-organized race for fun. Everyone gets together and agrees upon a starting line (0 words) and a finish line (50,000 words).

On November 1st, the starting gun goes BANG! and everyone yells, "Woohoo!! Here we go!" and you begin to write your novel. You could work from a plot outline or you could just wing it. It's up to you. But you start with your word-counter at 0. Every day you can update your word-count as you go, and you shoot for 50,000 by the end of the month.

If you reach 50,000 words you win A MILLION DOLLARS!! Well, okay, not really. But you'll have a first draft of a novel! Done in a month, that's not bad at all!

I tried last year and I gave up after chapter two My problem was I kept going backwards and editing, and it killed my creative momentum. So, if I do participate this year, I'm going to just write, write, write!!

So no stopping to go back and make it perfect, just a marathon of writing! Excellent. I predict i'll have run out of steam by the second chapter. But i'll do it anyway!

So we do it as a group?

You do it on your own, but you can "friend" others to watch each other's progress (it shows everyone's word-counter and whatever info about your novel that you put in). Also they have forums and group boards to post in so you can say, "I'm at 3,000 words and loving it! How about you guys?" or "I've got writer's block! Help!" or whatever. Last year there was a WritingForums.com group on there.

Oh lovely, I hope there's one again so I can see how everyone's doing - massively excited now!

Oh, and what are the rules on drafting it up before the month begins?

I know a lot of people that plan it out, but the only planning I did was for characters and some important story aspects.

When I began last month for camp, I went into it thinking "Here's to my first draft. I will not go back and read anything more than my last sentence, I will not delete any parts. That's what July is for." I'd attempted to do Camp last year and flopped at 23k, but this year I made it! I have a "Cabin" so to speak of friends who have helped me along the way and I found the program Write or Die to be EXTREMELY helpful. It allowed me to release any inhibitions I had, which would've held me back.


Edit to include this...:

Water for Elephants, The Night Circus, and Cinder are all works of prose that have been drafted during NaNoWriMo and hit a good deal success as a result. There's actually a page on the official NaNoWriMo website that lists a bunch of novels that have been written and published as a result of NaNoWriMo.

Hi Kay

Goto the NaNo site linked above and join the forums. From there you join your local group and / or your area. This is where you get a good community going during the month, you will usually find they arrange meetings etc to get people motivated.

It is a good experience and although I have tried for two years I have failed both times at around 12k words. I have started planning mine now as I do not want to fail again, I need to do it this time.

Good luck with yours.

Graham

Good luck everyone!

And Primrose - thank you, that made my day seeing that! That people have made Novels from this is amazing!

Wow. I hadn'tthought that published novels came out of that.

I'm up for a nanowrimo challenge. It would be interesting to try!

Hmm....if a novel is 50k words.....I think I might be able to make that...need motivation to do it. I'm geting bogged down by character summaries, describing my world, diagraming out the political ties., plot summaries....not geting much for chapter writing down