Photo from Denise Krebs / Flickr
By Kevin Matyi
Copy Editor
National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it is generally referred to, is an annual online challenge to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November.
Chris Baty, currently an Instructor at Stanford University’s Writer’s Studio and the founder of NaNoWriMo, said that in the first year of NaNoWriMo, “Novel writing, we had discovered, was just like watching TV. You get a bunch of friends together, load up on caffeine and junk food, and stare at a glowing screen for a couple hours. And a story spins itself out in front of you.”
The challenge is based on an honor system, trusting the writers to not start writing before Nov. 1, and not lie about their word counts during the competition. As often as a writer wants to, they can copy their entire story and submit it to the automatic NaNoWriMo word counter to see how much they have written.
For authors writing in languages that use non-Latin characters, or do not write their novels on an internet-capable computer, there is no specific system in place. Instead, the NaNoWriMo website directs them to another website, lipsum.com, which uses a dummy language known as Lorem Ipsum.
The writer’s input however many words they have written, and the website gives them that many randomly generated words, using only Latin alphabetical characters. The writers copy and submit the random text to the NaNoWriMo word counter for their official word count.
Of those who have completed the challenge, over 340 have had their books published through traditional means, and over 150 more through self-publication since 2006, according to the NaNoWriMo Published Wrimos page.
“It isn’t about writing a good novel,” said Stephanie Perkins, author of the book “Lola and the Boy Next Door,” a novel initially written in a NaNoWriMo competition, among others. “It’s about writing a novel. It’s about finishing what you’ve started — a lesson I certainly needed to learn.”
Some of the books published through NaNoWriMo include “The Alchemist of Souls” by Anne Lyle, about a legendary Viking monster coming back during the reign of Elizabeth I, and “Serendipity 101” by Becky Ruhter, about a clown teaching a group of college students.
This year, in the New York City area alone, over 2,500 people participated, according to the official NaNoWriMo website. In total, based on previous years, there are likely over 300,000 participants worldwide.
The challenge began in July 1999 when a group of friends decided that they were each going to try to write novels “because we didn’t have anything better to do,” according to Baty, who at the time was a freelance writer. “We had taken the cloistered, agonized novel-writing process and transformed it into something that was half literary marathon and half block party.”
Of the 21 original participants, six went on to complete the challenge, according to Baty’s account of the first year in his book, “No Plot? No Problem!”
Peak participation, as of the 2014 statistics, was in 2012, when 341,375 people attempted to write novels. Of the nearly 350,000 people, 11 percent, or 38,438, succeeded, according to the official statistics.
Throughout all of the NaNoWriMo competitions, the various participants have written a total of over 20 billion words, according to various official sites, not counting those who have taken the challenge without officially recording their word counts.
As the competition has grown in popularity, the nonprofit National Novel Writing Month Company, formerly known as the Office of Letters and Light, created new programs.
For NaNoWriMo itself, the company has helped new writers to keep writing throughout the month by letting leaders known as Municipal Liaisons schedule Write Ins for people to gather and write at.
One Liaison, Geoff Hawthorne, a 35-year-old groundskeeper living in Liverpool, New York, said that Write Ins are “a big encouraging factor for drawing people together” and that “knowing everyone around you is creating away towards the same goal is a huge confidence booster. It’s fun having folks there to talk to on breaks, making new friends, solving plot problems together, swapping ideas.”
During the competition, aside from support from local liaisons, the writers are also given frequent pep talks.
A pep talk’s author can be anyone from employees of the National Novel Writing Month Company to various novelists ranging from well-known writers such as Lois Lowry, author of the “The Giver,” to past winners and current competitors like Erin Morgenstern, author of “Night Circus.”
Much like with Write Ins, the purpose of the pep talks is to raise the morale of writers to help them complete their novels by deadline. Almost every talk carries a sense of the writer doing something challenging, but possible, and the reward that comes with completing such a challenge.
According to Hawthorne, a seven time participant and one time winner of NaNoWriMo, the feeling of completing the challenge is “mostly, ‘Omg, it’s five minutes until November is over, please let the official word counter not think I have less than I actually do!’ Then, a victory double-fist-pump to the air.”
Over time, January and February have become the “Now What?” months, when the National Novel Writing Month Company offers additional assistance to writers by giving them editing support. The choice of whether or not to publish is left up to the writer.
In addition to NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month Company also started the Young Writer’s Program, Come Write in Program, Camp NaNoWriMo and the now debunked Script Frenzy.
According to the official site, the Young Writer’s Program was founded in 2005. The purpose of the program is to “provide free Common Core-adapted curricula and student workbooks for all grade levels, as well as classroom kits to all educators teaching the program.”
In the final week of NaNoWriMo 2013, all participants received a pep talk from Tai Richle, at the time a middle schooler in California who had participated in the Young Writer’s Program. Thanks to NaNoWriMo, he was also a published author before becoming a teenager.
The Come Write in Program “connects libraries, bookstores, and other neighborhood spaces with their local NaNoWriMo participants,” according to the NaNoWriMo website. A press release said that in 2014, the program had 849 participating libraries, bookstores and community centers.
Camp NaNoWriMo started in 2011 and has sessions both in April and July, according to Educator Innovator. The purpose of the event is to “make the event seem as much like a summer camp as possible,” according to The Guardian.
The program does this by grouping a few people together in “cabins,” according to The Guardian, and the word count goals can range anywhere from 10,000 to 1 million, according to The Odyssey Online.
Script Frenzy was a program that took place in October. Over its “5-year running salute to the art of scripts, that resulted in 85,000 scriptwriters writing more than 1.4 million pages,” according to Heather Dudley, the Lead Forums Moderator of the NaNoWriMo forums.
She continued by saying, “Unfortunately, due to declining participation and donations, we had to retire the event,” but that people could still choose to write scripts for fun, if not officially.
“NaNoWriMo is a great way to learn how to let go and get the ‘golden perfect’ idea in your head down onto imperfect paper,” Hawthorne said. “Finishing NaNo will build your skill and confidence as a writer. Publishing can be a happy afterthought, if that’s what you want.”