Nanowrimo

Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's an event that happens every November where participants from all around the world spend 30 days writing their own 50,000 word novel. The idea behind Nanawrimo is to write without the constraints of an inner editor. If you're going to write an average of 1677 words per day, you can't labor over each one. There will be plenty of time for editing in December. 

I've done this several times and it's a great motivator to just write without going back to tweak what I wrote yesterday. 

How do you participate? First, you need to go to www.nanowrimo.org and sign up. You can also get there by clicking on the badge over there ----->.

When you sign up you can go to the Fun Stuff tab and get your own web badge for your blog. We'll be part of the cool kids club.

It's free and you can create an account with your spanko email and username or your real name. You can find me listed as Celeste Jones and we can be Nano friends and encourage each other. 

On your page you can keep track of your word count. I don't know why, but watching that little meter fill in on my page motivates me. 

You're a Winner if you write 50K words by the end of the month. You can fill in your own word count for the first couple weeks and after that you can cut and paste your document into the official word counter. Don't worry, they don't keep it (no matter how brilliant you think it is) and you'll get an official word count. Be sure to keep your own copy. 

Throughout the month there are challenges through the site or you can find others on Twitter for word sprints. You can even get together with local groups at coffee shops and libraries for write ins. 

There's lots of information available on the website. Here's are some basics from their website: 

The rules state that, to be an official NaNoWriMo winner, you must…

• Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
• Start from scratch. 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).
• Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you’re writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
• Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.
• Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.
• Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30. 

With just a couple weeks to go before November 1 (how is that possible?) you can use this time to register, work on outlines, buy frozen dinners for your family and get yourself pumped up. 

Even if you never edit or attempt to publish what you write (I still have several Nano projects on my hard drive) it's a great feeling to reach 50,000 words. You can do it! Go sign up and come back and let me know. 

Anybody out there who has participated in the past----any tips for newbies?