National Novel Writing Month 2007

Weekend Novelists Forum Index

The Free Dictionary.com

From The Desk of Liz Ensley:

What, you may ask, is National Novel Writing Month?

You there, in the back row, stop laughing, there are actually people who have never heard of NaNoWriMo. Be nice...

Anyway, it's one month, out of twelve, where you try to write 1,667 words per day for the entire month, to have a total of 50,000 words by month's end. At the conclusion of this month, assuming you reach the 50k, you get

1. A downloadable certificate exclaiming that you won by writing 50k for the month. Even if the novel's not finished, and you may want to write past that to reach the end, the 50,000 words makes you a winner. Why? Because look at how many words you wrote, and on the same book!

2. An icon you can use most anywhere, declaring you a NaNoWriMo winner.

3. You may be able to get a free copy of your book, at least in e-format, from Lulu.com. It was past my time (I won in 2004), but they started offering something like that. I don't know if they will do it again this year, but you can check on it at the site.

4. The camaraderie of other writers, plus meeting a lto of people on-site that you already know, only you didn't know they were crazy enough to NaNo.

Hey, you never know, after the revision/rewrite, if you go back over your novel at month's end, you might just have a best-seller on your hands. If not, well, hey, it was fun!