“If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” ~ Toni Morrison
Welcome to the first day of our preparation month for NaNoWriMo! We will be posting some tips to help you prepare and get the most out of your experience every couple days. If you are interested in getting more personal support during your NaNo journey, please check out our Facebook group. Whether you are new to this event or a regular participant, I hope that this event will transform your life as much as it has mine.
To get started, let’s look at what National Novel Writing Month is and some of the history behind it…
NaNoWriMo is an intense novel-writing experience. It is an opportunity to both push your boundaries and chase those dreams of writing a book. It is a month to put your creative foot forward and leave everything else behind (including cleaning, laundry, and other non-artistic pursuits).
NaNoWriMo was founded in 1999 by Chris Baty. He and 21 other fearless novelists of the San Francisco Bay Area began this phenomenon to make a statement (and because they had nothing better to do) in July of that year. I believe that only six of the participants met their goal that year, but it was the beginning of an event that would span the world.
In the year 2009, 167,150 people participated in NaNoWriMo, 32,173 of which met their goal. Collectively, we wrote 2,427,190,537 words. The experience was amazing!
So, let’s move on to the rules of NaNoWriMo…
Like any other competition, National Novel Writing Month has rules. There are not many cute or clever things that I can write to make this one more interesting, so please bear with me.
As we are doing now, October is when NaNoWriMo preparation usually begins. The geniuses at NaNoWriMo.org wipe the forums clean of last year’s stats and forums, re-launching a bigger and more awesome website each year (October 10th is the date this year). This is when the NaNo Addicts start getting feisty and the NaNo Virgins start making their way towards becoming NaNo Junkies.
However, any serious plotting or other pre-work should not be started until the last week of October. This keeps you from over-preparing and burning out on your story before the actual writing commences.
You may not write the first word of your novel until 12:00 am on November 1st. You have until 11:59 pm on November 30th to get to 50,000 words with your novel. That works out to about 1,667 words per day for the entire month of November.
It is that simple – 50,000 words in 30 days! Or is it?
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