That time of year is fast approaching… NaNoWriMo is on our doorstep!
10-day countdown
Now, apparently, only, like, 6 of you knew what NaNoWriMo even was last year, so allow me a moment to learn y’all about it real quick.
National Novel Writing Month is a free annual challenge taken on by hundreds of thousands of people across the world. In 10 days, starting on the 1st of November, participants will attempt to write a novel of at least 50,000 words (over the course of 30 days that works out to be about 1,667 words per day). Those who manage to complete this task get to bask in the glory of their accomplishments (and enjoy some neat NaNoWriMo Winner images and banners they can display proudly). To get the full story, learn about the history and current status of the nonprofit organization and sign up, you can check out the official site here
Intended to force would-be writers to stop sweating the small stuff, getting caught up on editing and revision, etc., the idea was for the writer to instead just go all out and focus on getting the words on screen/paper. After all, what good is it wanting to be a best-selling author if you never even get around to completing the first, rough draft?
It’s an excellent opportunity to push yourself as a writer and see how well you can work within the constraints set out. It can also give you a fresh outlook on your writing process if it’s something you’ve been struggling with previously.
RanGen X NaNoWriMo?
For those of you who have been following along with my Writing Challenges, this may seem familiar. It was all part of the plan… I have been training you, moulding and preparing you for this moment. Normally, I don’t do a Writing Challenge in November on account of NaNoWriMo, but this time around, I will be issuing a special challenge.
The NaNoWriMo challenge allows you to write about pretty much whatever you want, but you MUST write at least 50,000 words to be considered a winner.
On the other hand, in my challenges, you only have to aim for at least 10,000 words, but it MUST be about whatever specific generator results you’re given.
For this upcoming challenge, you’ll be given a mixture of both worlds; 50,000+ words and generator results are required, but which generators you use will be entirely up to you. In this case, you can choose when Gens to work with, and can freely mix and match the results as you see fit.
For now, there is still plenty of time to decide whether you’d like to give either challenge a go and start planning/panicking ahead of time, but for those of you who want pain or who feel too spoilt for choice, I will give a few specific Gen suggestions or plot points to work with as we get closer to the start time, as well as going over the challenge specifications. Watch this space!
