It’s almost that time of the year again! From the beginning until the end of November is National Novel Writing month - a great opportunity for people who have been looking for that motivation, or purpose, to get words to pages. While it does start in a few days, at the creation of this thread, I thought now would be a good time to get the discussion going as you can start sifting through and blocking out your ideas for preparation.
So, what it is? To quote straight from the official website itself;
"NaNoWriMo is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization that provides tools, structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds — on and off the page.
NaNoWriMo believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page."
More directly;
“National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel during the thirty days of November.”
Essentially, Nano is a self-driven challenge to write 50,000 words within the timeframe of November 1st ‘till November 30th at midnight. The official website has many outlets to editing and publishing completed novels that met this goal, but outside of that Nano is used by authors and writers everywhere to encourage and support one another into progressing their writing.
For the writers here;
While NaNoWriMo is traditionally for starting a brand-new novel, it also works as motivation for the writing we do here. You can use it to develop a game you’re currently working on, to work on creating a shorter game as a practice tool, or even for developing your traditional writing and giving yourself a break from branching. Whatever you think you would enjoy, it’s a wonderful project full of people and tools to support you.
More tools;
The website is completely free to sign up for and has a plethora of tools at your disposal once you do. Outside of those wonderful resources, I’ve compiled a few below in case they are something you might be interested in.
- FocusWriter - A tool to help keep you focused if your mind wanders a lot when concentrating.
- FreeMind - To help you map out/brainstorm ideas and the sequences of events.
- ProWritingAid - A great editor that offers suggestions in style and grammar. However, for Nano, I would recommend putting a backseat to editing until later stages/the completion.
More tools for the week before Nano/to help you get started;
Quoted from Eadeverell:
- No time to plot? HERE’S A READY-MADE OUTLINE!
- Learn HOW TO PLOT YOUR NOVEL ON ONE PAGE.
- Take a quick WORLDBUILDING WORKSHOP.
- You might like these TIPS ON HOW TO WRITE FAST.
- Brainstorm some ideas with a GENRE MINDMAP.
- Create a LAST-MINUTE CHARACTER.
- Still need a CHARACTER NAME?
- Thinking of writing your novel in GOOGLE DOCS?
- Need to (urgently) CALL UPON YOUR MUSE?
Purpose of this thread;
My favorite part of Nano is the outpour of support that comes from writers lamenting and celebrating together their progress, struggles, inspiration, and ideas. You can use this thread to do any of those things, have a discussion, get support when you need it, and offer support to others. Even if you don’t hit the word-count, any amount of writing is good writing and is progress towards either a project or to improving.
The only thing I ask is - be kind to others. People can complain about their progress, people can rave about their own, but please keep this a friendly place! : )
The turnout last year was lovely, I hope this year we continue to see that growth and all the amazing works that are produced from this one. (Though I completely forgot Nano was just around the corner until my friend mentioned it - hopefully y’all are more prepared than I haha.)
Trying to translate the worlds and characters and emotions I see in my head the same way to words, and capturing all they are to me, ages me like 50 years I swear.
