“Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!”
So proclaims the slogan of National Novel Writing Month, an annual literary event that takes place throughout November and has been running since 1999. National Novel Writing Month (frequently shortened to NaNoWriMo) is a contest of sorts, although the competition is not between separate participators, but rather between each individual taking place and him- or herself. The goal is simple but daunting: anyone taking place is challenged to write an original novel from scratch, starting on the first day of November and ending with at least fifty-thousand words at the month’s end.
It may sound like quite the challenge, and while it’s certainly not something that most people would do every day (The Hobbit contains almost twice as many words as the NaNoWriMo goal, but it certainly wasn’t written in sixty days!), the point isn’t to write a masterpiece. There are no monetary prizes rewarded, and the system that checks competitors’ efforts at the end of November doesn’t send anything to a panel of judges to be pored over and criticized for value. NaNoWriMo was started as a way of encouraging potential writers to exercise whatever talent they may have. While some have taken issue with the literary marathon churning out mostly “garbage,” others point out that there are still many gems among the final results, and that even “bad” writing is still better than none.
And despite the lack of cash rewards, there are still prizes to be gained for success! CreateSpace, a self-publishing system run by online shipping company Amazon, began a partnership with NaNoWriMo in recent years to offer a small amount of free proofs to those who reach the 50,000-word goal. Proofs allow authors to use CreateSpace to sell their finished novel directly through amazon.com, so in a way, there’s at least potential for winners to make some money from their labors.
Unfortunately, this article is admittedly a bit late – as mentioned, NaNoWriMo began on the first of the month, and it’s probably a bit late for most people to catch up at this point. But that shouldn’t be a discouragement to any potential authors; it will come again next November and shows no signs of slowing down after over a decade running. Eager writers can wait and anticipate the next recurrence of the annual event, but NaNoWriMo encourages them to put their pens to paper (or hands to keyboard) any time of the year and to remember that every story begins with just an inkling of an idea: “No plot? No problem!”