Today is November 1st, the first day of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, in which participants are challenged to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month. That comes to about 1,667 words a day, or 6.67 typed pages a day—which qualifies as insanely fast writing, especially when sustained over a 30-day period.
The goal is mainly to encourage writers to get some words out without overthinking them, but some NaNoWriMo novels have actually been published, including Water for Elephants (2006) by Sara Gruen. One author, Marissa Meyer, drafted an entire trilogy, The Lunar Chronicles (2012-1015), during a single NaNoWriMo. Other NaNo novels that have been published include the bestselling fantasy novel The Night Circus (2011) by Erin Morganstern, the horror/sf novel The Beautiful Land (2013) by Alan Averill, and the YA novel Fangirl (2013) by Rainbow Rowell. And there are more.
The first NaNoWriMo kicked off in July 1999 among a group of friends in the San Francisco Bay area. The second year, the event was moved to November, got its first website, and acquired most of its regulations; there were about 140 participants. The third year, 5,000 people participated. By 2013, NaNoWriMo had 310,000 adult novelists participating and 89,500 young people. In 2017, over 402,000 adults participated.
Consider joining NaNoWriMo this bleak Thursday, or, oh, I don’t know, celebrate the first of November by taking your boys in to be tested for strep. Either way, stay scrupulously honest to the data.
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