After you decipher the seemingly complex acronym, NaNoWriMo is surprisingly easy to understand. National Novel Writing Month takes place every November¹ with one goal and one goal alone: for each participant to write a 50,000 word novel in just thirty days.

The brainchild of American Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo began in 1999 with just 140 participants and has grown exponentially every year with now more than 100,000 participants spread all around the world. To win, one simply has to complete a 50,000 word novel. Despite the huge number of participants there aren't too many "winners"; in an average year only 18% of entrants succeed. This is hardly surprising as in order to complete the challenge a writer has to average 1666 and two-thirds words each and every day on top of their normal day-to-day lives. In order to keep on schedule some writers even have been known to chart their progress in graphs and multi-coloured spreadsheets.

Participation in the competition is free and there are no prizes; fame and fortune does not beckon those who win and the novel might not even be read by anyone other than the author, so what is the point of it all? The point is to get people writing. Since there are no prizes participants are disinclined to cheat as the only person they'd be cheating is him- or herself. Completed works are verified for word count by automated software².

There have been some successes, at least fifteen writers have had their NaNoWriMo creations published and no doubt they, like all of the others who have succeeded, were grinning manically for days afterwards, delighted by their literary verbosity; as one successful NaNoWriMoer put it "on 30th November you post your 50,122 words with a huge grin on your face, and for a few days you're walking on air, and all your real life friends think you're mad. But your invisible (NaNo) friends are all doing the same so you feel part of something." This particular Researcher has yet to "win", but as Baty says, "win or lose, you rock for even trying". Whether you write 50,122 or 30,000 words because you have to write rather than just want to write, there's a sense of inhibition as you just put the words down on (virtual) paper, regardless of what your inner critic is saying.

Using the website run by the non-profit organisation, The Office Of Letter And Light, participants can chat with others who are taking part in the competition, seek advice and encouragement if they need it and, of course, submit their work for the word count verification. It's not actually necessary to register to take part in NaNoWriMo, you can quite as easily write your novel alone, but the purpose of the website and forums is to encourage a sense of community. You're all in this together, and come November 30th, the world will theoretically have 100,000 new novels to sink its teeth into.

Quantity Over Quality

NaNoWriMo champions quantity over quality, everyone who successfully submits 50,000 words by November 30 is a winner³, no matter how dreadful the writing may be. It doesn't even have to be a novel; entries can be epic poetry, fan-fiction or 50,000 words worth of terrible rhyming couplets if the writer so chooses. The basic belief is that if you, the writer, believes it to be a novel then it is a novel; even if it doesn't have the most rudimentary of structures. As Baty says "No plot? No problem". Your prose doesn't have to be in English either, you can write your novel in whatever language you want; why not be the first to write an epic, rhyming ode to your lover in Klingon?

Charity Work

NaNoWriMo is not all about having fun and writing just for the sake of it. There's a serious side to it as well. As a non-profit organisation it raises money by selling themed merchandise to aid literacy projects around the world. Aside from running a laptop lending service⁴ and running literacy programs in schools throughout America, The Office Of Letter And Light also provides funds to build libraries throughout South-East Asia.

Spin-offs

There are many, many spin-offs from the original NaNoWriMo most with their own similarly-acronymed name. These include challenges to write a novel in a year, to edit the NaNoWriMo novel in a month⁵ and BBC Radio Scotland's Write Here Right Now challenge to write 1000 words a day throughout the month of February.