Holding one another accountable and sharing advice and insights is motivating in itself. There are benefits to doing NaNoWriMo beyond how many words you produce.Ī major benefit is connecting with other writers. Learn More Nurture connections with other writers Get writing tools and accountability in constructive online writing groups. Stay accountable with critique and support Structure helps us keep putting one word after another, freely. Having a structure in your process, whether it’s a 30-day plan to write a novel or something slower and gentler is useful for being able to check in with your own progress and objectives. Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way for Parents: Raising Creative Children (2013) Yet as Julia Cameron says in The Artist’s Way for Parents, structure helps creativity to flourish: The NaNoWriMo rules aside, you don’t necessarily have to write 50,000 words in November alone.Īs Grimes says, writing is hard and writing meaningful, polished scenes with clear, communicative style and playful verve takes time. Whatever you use NaNoWriMo for (making progress on a work already underway or starting a new project ‘just for kicks’), you’re bound to learn something along the way by dedicating as much time as you can to writing. They may be tackling writing challenges that arise in your first NaNoWriMo and finding creative solutions in discussion with other writers. These stepping stones may be collaborative processes such as working with a book writing coach, critique circle or editor. Let’s briefly explore the ideas above and the ways they bring nuance to NaNoWriMo rules: Learn what you can doĮven though Grimes stopped doing NaNoWriMo every year for the reasons she mentions, she touched on an important point: Creative process has valuable stepping stones. So what are some of the benefits of NaNoWriMo, whether you keep to (or judiciously break) NaNoWriMo rules on word count and other aspects?

Grimes acknowledges exactly this when she says:ĭoing it was magical for me, because once I knew I could write a novel, I knew I could learn to write one well.

Shaunta Grimes, ‘Why I Don’t NaNoWriMo Anymore’, Medium, May 22 2019.Ī counter to this is you can view NaNoWriMo as a step in what is ultimately your process. In fact, it took me longer to make that first book readable because I rushed it out. But here’s something that I guess someone ought to tell you: You might finish your first draft this November, but it takes a lot longer than that to produce a work of fiction that’s fit for public consumption. It’s like this shining beacon that promises all of the good stuff now. Grimes says something very true about the payoff of gradual (versus instant) gratification: Shaunta Grimes, for example, in a popular Medium article titled ‘Why I Don’t NaNoWriMo Anymore’ advocates slowing things down if you want to build a sustainable writing career. Some authors are on the fence about NaNoWriMo. What are the benefits of doing NaNoWriMo? Heather Dudley, ‘Welcome to Rules & Regs! What ARE the rules, anyway?’, NaNoWriMo forum. – Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up. If you consider the book you’re writing a novel, we consider it a novel too! We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people’s works). – Only count words written during November. Traditionally, this had to be on a new novel now, we allow you to continue existing works. – Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30. Heather Dudley supplied rules in the official NaNoWriMo forum which are (as of May 2019): … to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds - on and off the page. National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short) is an annual write-a-thon that takes place for the month of November each year.ĭuring the event, writers around the world attempt to write 50, 000 words of fiction between the 1st and 30th of November.įounded by writer Chris Baty ‘accidentally’ in 1999, NaNoWriMo has grown from 21 participants in its first year to hundreds of thousands of registered participants annually. What is NaNoWriMo? Why take part? What are the rules? These are some of the questions we explore here.

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