The more I get involved in this stuff, the more interesting stuff I find.
Did you know that this is National Novel Writing Month. NanNoWriMo is an organization that wants you to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month and upload it to the group.
Here is what NanNoWriMo says:
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.
What is amazing is how may people participate.
Here are their figures:
Annual participant/winner totals
1999: 21 participants and six winners
2000: 140 participants and 29 winners
2001: 5000 participants and more than 700 winners
2002: 13,500 participants and around 2,100 winners
2003: 25,500 participants and about 3,500 winners
2004: 42,000 participants and just shy of 6,000 winners
2005: 59,000 participants and 9,769 winners
2006: 79,813 participants and 12,948 winners
2007: 101,510 participants and 15,333 winners
Number of official NaNoWriMo chapters around the world: Over 500
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2005: Over 100
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2006: Over 300
Number of K-12 schools who participated in 2007: 366
Number of NaNoWriMo manuscripts that have been sold to publishing houses: Many (details below)
Number of words officially logged by participants during the 2004 event: 428,164,975
Number of words officially logged by participants during the 2005 event: 714,227,354
Number of words officially logged by participants during the 2006 event: 982,564,701
Number of words officially logged by participants during the 2007 event: 1,187,931,929
From what I read on the site, you upload your work to them and they verify the word count and then delete the book. They don’t place them on line for us to read. I’m just amazed that so many people will go to so much work.
Well, as I’ve said in my latest blog post, it’s now super easy to self-publish on Feedbooks and I’d love to do a special feature for NaNoWriMo: we could imagine a dedicated catalog entry on Stanza and in our Kindle guide for example.
I love NaNo — I’ve used it since ’06 to start new novel projects.
Speaking of self-publishing, Amazon’s jumping into the NaNoWriMo pool by offering a free “promo” copy of your book if you win NaNo (write 50K words). I’m sure they’re hoping some authors will opt up to a more comprehensive (and expensive) publishing package.
I think it’s worth mentioning, too, that NaNo strongly urges authors to encrypt their manuscripts before uploading, for everyone’s protection.
for the record, I’m participating this year. At one of the local meetings, I met a woman who wrote 400,000 words (not 40,000 words) last year. My mind reels at that..
I’m participating as well. I started a new book today in honor of the occasion.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForaBuck.com
I applaud anyone who can do that.
It took me a year and 3 months to get that far.
(I started around last August and I’m now at around 50,702 words – and only half done with the story…)
I’ve been trying NaNo for the last 4 years and while I have never finished within the 30 days, I always have more when it’s over than when it started, which is a kind of success. I intend to finish This year (I Always intend) because I have a first reader who’s been very patient with me thru all this time. Amazon may be offering to publish this year’s works, but Lulu has made the same offer in the past. Either way, I’ll be Very Happy to send my Baby off into the wide world next month.