National Novel Writing Month

Web Badge for NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo, is a novel-writing challenge that takes place every November. Participants begin writing on November first with a goal of completing a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month.

Participation

Upon signing up, users gain posting privileges on the website's forum, and a set of user pages in which they can post a basic profile about themselves, and a summer, excerpt, and cover for their novel.

The challenge begins at midnight on November first, and ends on midnight at December first. From November 25-30, you can verify your wordcount by way of copy/pasting your novel into the NaNoWriMo word counter under user pages. If it counts over 50,000 words, your word count bar turns purple and you are listed as a winner. You also receive a winner icon and certificate.

Forums

Main article: NaNoWriMo forums

The NaNoWriMo forums are extremely busy during October and November, and have regular activity even during the off-season. They are a place for research, memes, plot ideas, Adoptables, and just hanging out (and procrastinating, another traditional NaNo activity). Wrimos can ask questions and get answers about their novels, about NaNo itself, or about nearly anything. The forums are a culture unto themselves, with some of the forums, such as the roleplaying and procrastination forums creating entire mini-cultures within the forums.

History

The first year

NaNoWriMo was founded by Chris Baty in July 1999. Twenty other people participated that year, all from the San Francisco Bay Area. The project began not because Baty and his friends had ideas for the great American novel but because they "wanted to write novels for the same dumb reasons twentysomethings start bands". After grabbing the shortest novel on his shelf (which happened to be Aldous Huxley's Brave New World) and doing a rough word count, the number that Wrimos today strive for was set in stone. Six of the twenty-one participants, including Baty, completed the challenge. After 1999, NaNoWriMo was moved from July to November to take advantage of the miserable weather.

The pre-forum era

2000 was a year of firsts for NaNoWriMo. It was the first year that NaNoWriMo had a website, calling nanowrimo.com home. It was the first year of the Yahoo! group. 2000 was also the first year of rules, as Wrimos started to ask Chris Baty what they could write. That year Baty verified the winning novels himself by running a word counter on each novel.

In 2001, the event became much more popular when 5000 participants showed up. Like the year before, Baty (with the help of some friends) entered each participant into the system and invited them to the Yahoo! group manually but eventually had to put a deadline on signing up because of the volume of participants. The NaNoWriMo.com site was encouraged to find a new webhost due to consuming the resources of the other sites on the server. When he announced that official validation would be canceled that year due to the number of winners, participants validated each other's novels.

The early age of the forums

In 2002 Chris Baty came across Dan Sanderson, who created most of the features Wrimos associate with NaNoWriMo today. Sanderson introduced the automatic word counter, which relieved Chris and the participants of having to do any validation. Sanderson also introduced the blue bar, which turned green upon reaching 50,000 words and purple upon validation, and the phpBB forums, which meant that Wrimos could finally communicate in a less confusing medium than Yahoo! groups.

The NaNoWriMo site also moved to NaNoWriMo.org that year, and the forums, like the Yahoo! groups, became an instant hub of activity with its own culture. Discussions of urinal cakes and dares abounded. Plot quandaries were asked and answered. Wrimos who ordered NaNo shirts wondered why they received something completely different from what they originally ordered, likely not realizing that Chris was packing the orders right out of his own living room.

2002 was also the first year of Municipal Liaisons, which enabled local Wrimos to find each other more easily. Regional Lounges were created in the NaNo forums, and Wrimos got together for Write-ins and other get-togethers. Lauren Ayer joined the NaNo staff in 2003 to be a contact person for the MLs, and Julia Cardis joined the NaNo team to help with duties such as answering emails and overseeing donations and t-shirt sales.

External Links

• National Novel Writing Month's offical website
• NaNoWriMo's Twitter page
• NaNoWriMo's Facebook page
• NaNoWriMo's Flickr group