November kicks off National Novel Writing Month

November 2, 1:11 AMDC Publishing Industry ExaminerWendy Coakley-Thompson

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One National Novel Writing Month contestant waxes about her experiences as a participant.

NaNoWriMo Logo, recently replaced with by a
horned shield.

National Novel Writing Month started November 1 at 12:01 a.m. For the uninitiated, National Novel Writing Month, affectionately called NaNoWriMo, challenges all comers to write a 50,000-word novel in one month.

The brainchild of freelance writer Chris Baty, the first National Novel Writing Month started in July 1999 in the San Francisco Bay area with twenty-one participants. Ten years later, NaNoWriMo has become something of an international rite of passage and endurance test for authors. There are NaNoWriMo regions as close as your hometown and as far away as Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. In 2007, NaNoWriMo passed its 100,000th author mark for the first time. Last year, 120,000 writers took up the gauntlet. This year, Baty and his crew anticipate 150,000 writers from over 90 countries will participate. There’s no need to possess any writing talent to join. In fact, as they say in the NaNoWriMo press release:

There are some who say writing a novel takes awesome talent, strong language skills, academic training, and years of education. Not true. All it really takes is a deadline – a very tight deadline – and a whole lot of coffee.”

So, just how does NaNoWriMo work? Starting in October, participants log on to the NaNoWriMo website, set up their accounts, and create their profiles. Writers can also keep track of their word counts, find writing buddies, and join local regions. At midnight on November 1, they strap in on a rollercoaster writing ride that lasts until 11:59 PM on November 30. Baty suggests that in order to get to the 50,000-word mark, writers should log at least 1667 words a day. In his NaNoWriMo companion book No Plot, No Problem, Baty gives fun tips to get writers through, like suggesting that authors turn off their internal editors and do not revise. He also suggests attending write-ins, hosted by municipal liaisons, or MLs, in locations like coffee shops or wherever one feels comfortable. Nearing the end of November, writers who have completed at least 50,000 words can upload their masterpieces for verification. There is no other requirement; everyone who reaches 50,000 words before the allotted time is a winner. Approximately 18% of the participants win every year.

Some past NaNoWriMo participants have gone on to literary greatness, most notably Sara Gruen. Water for Elephants, Gruen’s New York Times bestseller, started out as a NaNoWriMo novel. In the immediate future, NaNoWriMo winners can at least look forward to an ego-massaging certificate for their thirty days of toil... and to the satisfaction of having completed a novel.

National Novel Writing Month ends at 11:59 PM on November 30.