Nanowrimo

Tomorrow is November first, which in the world of the writer is an important day! Why? November first marks the first day of national novel writing month. It is known as nanowrimo. It may sound like a rare type of rhino or some strange disease. Really though, it means craziness. People across the nation pick up their pens and start writing the novels they always wanted to write, and they write the entire thing (minimum of 50,000 words) in a month. If it sounds nuts, it is. To be a writer, you have to be insane. Writers hear voices in their heads. For real. When a story is brewing, we hear the conversations of our characters, we picture the scenery, and we live in a half dream-like state drifting from real life to our own fictional world. So, crazy? You bet!

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty facts! The event starts at 12:00 AM November first and ends November 30^th at 11:59 PM. You can go to www.nanowrimo.org to sign up. Here you can set up your account, receive pep talks from published authors, and upload your word count everyday! Then for the next month, you write like a madman. If you complete your 50,000 word novel by the end of the month you are considered a winner. This includes a nice pat on the back for yourself. Okay, so you also get a web badge if you have a blog, and there are other incentives. My very favorite is that there is a company called CreateSpace (a sponsor) who will print five copies of your finished novel for free!

There are not very many rules. You have to write 50,000 words minimum. It has to be a novel you haven’t started any writing on. You can have an outline, research, and character sketches done, but no actual chapters, sentences, words from your novel written. You also can’t write with another person. It is you and only you on this. However, you can converse with other nanowrimo writers on the forums on their webpage listed above.

If you are a teen older than 13, you can participate in the adult contest, or you can do the young writers program. In the young writers program you can make a word count goal to shoot for instead of writing the full 50,000 words! Here is the website for the young writers- www.ywp.nanowrimo.org .

Look for more nanowrimo posts coming soon!