This November, people all over the world will be settling down for a gruelling month in front of their laptops as they attempt to write a novel in 30 days. Here, Lindsey Grant, Programme Director of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and Chris Angotti, Young Writers Program Director (both pictured below), tell us why...
Chris: Often, the thing that holds people back from being creative is themselves, so surrendering yourself to this crazy month of writing kills your inhibitions. Having a deadline also makes you get on and write without procrastinating.
Lindsey: The goal is to write 50,000 words during the 30 days of November. We’re expecting about 200,000 people around the world to take part this year, plus a further 45,000 participants in the Young Writers Program.
Chris: The Young Writers Program is open to anyone age 17 and under. High schoolers often write the full 50,000, but younger kids can set their own goals on the website if that’s too daunting.
Lindsey: Registering to take part is really simple. Just go to the website and create a profile. After that, you wait for 1 November and begin writing. The deadline is midnight, 30 November. At that point, you submit your work online, our system checks the word count, and if it’s over 50,000, you’ve won. Your novel gets validated and you get a PDF of your winner’s certificate.
Nobody at NaNoWriMo reads the entries. There are no judges and no awards. Once the word count is verified, we wipe the manuscript off our database. That’s deliberate; if people don’t feel that they’re necessarily writing to an audience, it allows them to be a lot less self-critical. We’ve been approached by a lot of small publishing houses and independent presses, but we haven’t gone down that road. We don’t want people to feel their work is going to be judged.
Chris: We have partnerships with businesses that offer print-on-demand so you can have a free bound copy of your manuscript made. Really, you can do what you want with your manuscript. If you think its good, you’re welcome to brush it up a bit and seek publication, but that’s not necessarily the goal of the project.
Lindsey: We encourage people to start a new project for NaNoWriMo rather than try to complete something they’ve been working on for a long time. We think you’re too wedded to existing projects to throw caution to the wind, and you tend to worry too much about how good your writing is. Having said that, as long as people are writing, we’re excited.
I don’t think any one type of writing works better than anything else. Obviously novels that require a lot of research are not the easiest thing to try and pound out in 30 days. I see a lot of people in the forums who are writing fan fiction, sci fi, and fantasy novels – those are all very popular genres.
Chris: The great thing about NaNoWriMo is that it’s something people do together, as a community. We try to offer as much support as possible. There are very active forums on the websites where you can ask advice about your novel and see what other people are working on.
Lindsey: As well as the online support, we have wonderful volunteers around the world called Municipal Liaisons. They’re on the ground in cities everywhere from Australia and New Zealand to Southeast Asia, Europe and Canada. They organise write-ins and celebrations throughout the month for participants. We love the in-person component to the web-based event. It makes the challenge feel much more personal.
Lindsey and Chris were talking to Katie Jackson.