November is just around the corner. Y’know what that means? National Novel Writing Month! (NaNoWriMo for short.)
NaNoWriMo challenges you to write throughout November, piecing together a narrative until, voila! You’ve got a 175-page, 50,000-word novel on your hands.
That may sound daunting, but it’s totally doable! In fact, more than 15,000 people did it last year.
I lasted about two days when I gave it a go during my senior year in college. But you? You’ve got gumption, and an awesome blog here on WordPress.
If you want to go for it, just follow this simple plan:
- Every day, take a minute to sit down and write a story. You don’t need to have it all planned out, just write.
- Post each delicious literary morsel to your blog and tag it with “nanowrimo08.”
- When you’re hitting a wall, use that tag to check out what others are doing and gain inspiration.
- Go to NaNoWriMo by midnight on Nov. 30 to have your novel verified.
- Print business cards with your new title: Great American (or Indonesian or Argentinian or…) Novelist.
For some extra motivation, you could read an excellent novel while you write one! Some Automattic faves…
Jane: Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, Maus by Art Spiegelman.
Michael: Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille, Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, The Plague by Albert Camus, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.
Marianne: Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
Mark: The Stand (Uncut) by Stephen King.
Nick: Anything by James Patterson.
UPDATE 11/04: A number of you have asked about international participation and writing in other languages. You’re free and welcome to participate, regardless of language or location. Check out the NaNoWriMo FAQ for details.
WordPress.com News 
Great project. Last year achieved 25000 words. At the very least, it’s a very supportive creative energy
knowing that so many people round the world are writing this month!
NanoWriMo can fit all! I was too far into the novel I was already working on to start from scratch, but I have been writing every day. I’m shooting for 15,000 new words in November. It doesn’t matter what your goal is– just that you have one
This is an amazing idea, can’t wait to get started. Thank you for being so neat wordpress.
This is my fourth year – so glad you’re supporting it! Not only do you get the opportunity to spit a novel out of your imagination (whether you’re a writer or not), but the Nanowrimo organization does cool things with (I think) half of it’s proceeds
It is free, but you can donate and/or shop in their store to support them.
So much fun – wheee!
Serena Mira Asta (my Nano user name – look me up on http://www.nanowrimo.org)
can i really do it? no i could but no. time would be wasted. but i might just make a novel on my penguins adventures!
What a wonderful idea. Good Luck to all you brave souls.
🙂
I’m about 28 thousand words in. It’s awesome. I’m having a great time. Started Halloween.
Yeah..! We can do it! 4 Now..
Thank you for letting us know. 😉
I signed up, 9 days into the race.
Oh well – wish us luck and no writer’s block.
thanks for your news but this project don’t support Persian (Farsi) Language! 🙂
I started a day late and just crossed the 22k line. Best of luck to everybody else!
Funny I got this blognews today. I´m right now prisoner in a big glasshouse inside the national library of Denmark on my third day of write a novel of 25000 words in only 7 days non-stop. Unfortunatly its in Danish so some of you might have a lot of trouble reading it – there is some funny pictures thou http://www.skabelsen.wordpress.com. Good luck to all.
I know its already late in the game… thinking of trying this with little tiny words. Words of no more than 4 letters maybe. That oughta boost my word count if I can keep with the process. I guess I could try and say something as well. You can probably say an awful lot with only 4 letters. If I could only decide what order to put the words in…
I HAVE AN IDEIA OF VERY SMALL PLAY. WHICH IS CONTAINS ABOUT TEN TO FIFTEEN THOUSANDS WORDS.IT IS TOTALLY BASED ON POLITICS. BUT I START JUST NOW FOR NOVE.
Would I be disqualified if i finished it earlier than November 30, say, today?
Although I’m not officially joining this event, might as well try to write one. I’m feeling a little inspired. Thanks for the idea.
Gah! I’m suppose to be at 13k by tonight and I’m only at 6k right now!!! The terror!!!! Nanowrimo first timer here if anyone has any tips!!!
lol! I’m totally doing this. I don’t think I’ll make it though. But it’s fun trying
Three chapters; 55,534 words; 289,864 with spaces, 106 pages according to my count. What do i do now? Edit it or submit it and edit it later?
Woops, it’s over now, but for future reference: That’s up to you! As long as you’re over the 50,000-word cutoff, you’ve got a novel in the eyes of NaNoWriMo. If you have time and space to refine, that’s great. See the official NaNoWriMo site for details.
This was great! With a discipline of writing at least 30 minutes every day (okay, so I missed three, but I made them up and then some on subsequent days), I got over 28,000 words into my manuscript. It’s far from finished, but there’s enough there that I feel like it will be (maybe just another couple of months to a complete first draft). That’s amazing for me. And I’m going to try to keep up my writing practice through December (I already know January will be nearly impossible).
I second solomonproject – just knowing you were all out there writing helped me keep with it.
Love them words, people!