Nanowrimo

by Startacus Admin

Are you one of those people who believes that “everyone has a book inside them” or who has “write a book” down on your bucket list of things you have to do? Or maybe you have an idea for a book that you’ll get round to writing one of these days...Well, if you answered yes to any of the above, Nanowrimo is for you.

Nanowrimo is an annual online creative writing project which takes place between November 1 and 30. The project started in 1999 with just 21 participants from the San Francisco area and has now grown globally with over 250,000 worldwide participants taking part last year.

The challenge and premise behind it is quite simple - all participants sign up and agree to write a 50,000 word novel by midnight, local time on November 30th. Simple eh?

In terms of other rules, there aren’t too many; the main ones being that you start your novel from scratch on November 1st, that you write it alone, that you write a novel ( i.e. a lengthy work of fiction) and that you write more than one word repeated 50,000 times! Yes, that must have been tried!
If you do reach your goal and finish your book by 30th November, you can then upload it for official verification and then be added to the Nanowrimo Winner’s Page.

Where Nanowrimo comes into its’ own, is the fact that there is a real sense of community and support from all the other participants. As well as an extremely active forum where you can get advice and share tips and strategies with other writers, there are also hundreds of Nanowrimo groups and meetups held worldwide where you can engage and write with fellow writers in your local area.Whatever you decide to do - the underlying ethos is the same - write! write! write!Although not everyone who participates in Nanowrimo completes the required 50000 words in the allocated time and is deemed an official “winner”, they all still win in the sense that they are devoting proper time to doing something they love and to being creative.

So with only a matter of days left before it all kicks off, why not stop your procrastinating, stock up on the coffee and start planning your own writing.

If you’ve done Nanowrimo before and have any tips you’d like to share, why not let us know over at the forum.

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Published on: 23rd October 2012