NaNoWriMo?

I mentioned NaNoWriMo in my previous entries without clarifying what it was to those who had probably never heard of it.

For those who aren't familiar with NaNoWriMo:

NaNoWriMo is a yearly event in November in which participants challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in one month starting 12:00am November 1st and ending at 11:59pm November 30th.

The name NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, but anyone around the world is welcome to join.

NaNoWriMo was started in July of 1999 by Chris Baty, who then moved the event to November.

In 1999 NaNoWriMo started out with 21 participants and in 2011 it had over 250,000 participants.

Participants start out with either no outline, a vague outline or a structured outline, but the writing itself has been described as seat-of-your-pants writing.

December is known as a month for both finishing the novel, if participants hadn't already finished it in November, as well as a month for editing.

NaNoWriMo has inspired many timed challenges, which can be found at this wiki page.

There is also National Novel Writing Day (not an official challenge), where participants set aside a period of 24 hours and write. Most aim for 50,000 words, which would be a minimum of 2,084 words each hour.


My first experience with NaNoWriMo was in November of 2003. I don't remember how I found it but I read about what NaNoWriMo was on the site itself, thought about it, wrote up a quick outline the next day and then started participating the day after that on the 7th.


I won with a finished novel that was a little over 50,000 words with an hour to spare. I found it to be fun and exciting and decided to do it again the next year.


The following year I found I wasn't that interested in participating, but enjoyed reading posts in the forum, especially the nanoisms.


Looking back I realize I participated in NaNoWriMo every other year, except in November 2011, which was a month after my husband and I moved here to Washington state.


I do intend to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year as I have about 16 other book ideas I would like to flesh out. 


There was one year I decided to write 17 novels in 11 months just so they would no longer be just sitting in my computer gathering dust, but I realized I needed a break from writing after that year's NaNoWriMo so I never attempted doing so, just as I never attempted NaNoWriDay myself.


Perhaps I will one day.