What on earth is NaNoWriMo?
It’s short for National Novel Writing Month, founded in 1999 by a freelance writer with a straightforward – if daunting – goal: writing 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. In the decades since, millions of people have found motivation and support for their writing goals in the NaNoWriMo community. And while the month may be almost over, don’t fret: there’s still plenty of inspiration and advice to be found, no matter what your writing goals are.
“Officially” participating in NaNoWriMo is as simple as creating a free account on the website, then tracking your words written. If you’d like a certificate to say that you’ve won NaNoWriMo, just upload your document of at least 50,000 words by midnight on the 30th of November. You’ll also find a lot of helpful resources like NanoPrep, a free handbook for aspiring participants that offers tips on developing an idea, creating characters, organizing your plot, and managing your writing time.
The library is a great place to find resources to help you on your writing journey, as well:
Looking for inspiration? Try these:
The Creativity Project: No Rules, Anything Goes, Awesometastic Storytelling
Refuse to be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts
Looking for support?
The O’Fallon Writer’s Group meets the first Saturday of every month to think, consider, explore, create, and learn as a group. The next meeting is December 3.
Looking for a place to write?
There’s no better source of inspiration than being in a building surrounded by books and book lovers. We offer study rooms you can reserve for a dedicated quiet space, as well as many cozy nooks and tables that offer the perfect spot for getting some writing done.
There have been many best-selling novels that began their life as a NaNoWriMo project, including Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, and Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. Marissa Meyer was so prolific that she wrote not one but THREE novels during one (apparently very productive!) NaNoWriMo, including Cinder, the first book in her Lunar Chronicles series.
Of course, while it might be nice to get a best-selling book out of your time, NaNoWriMo is really all about getting going – getting writing, no matter how much. You may have a day, a week, a month. As long as you’re putting pen to paper or hand to keyboard, that’s a win.
Additional Resources:
Writing Prompts: Hundreds of inspiring storytelling prompts for authors of all ages, from the editors at Writer’s Digest magazine.
Thesaurus.com and Dictionary.com: Keep your writing fresh with a plethora of new words from these helpful sites.
The O'Fallon Public Library News 