Here I am, once more sitting with my laptop, a mug of one of my favourite teas, Milk Oolong, ready to hand, as I commit words of horror to ‘page’.
Twenty-six years ago, a freelance writer named Chris Baty started NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with just 21 participants. Originally set during July, in 2000 the event was moved to November “to more fully take advantage of the miserable weather”. An official website, designed by a friend of Baty’s, was launched, and people began signing up from other countries.
NaNoWriMo kept growing as each year passed. Baty had created a phenomenon.
The idea was to buckle down and try to write 50,000 words of whatever story had previously been percolating in your head. That was pretty much it. You could track your progress on the website, and earn badges for reaching certain milestones. There were all kinds of subgroups featuring a different theme, such as ‘Sci-fi Writers’ or ‘Women Writing Romance’, that you could join and interact with through a specific Discord group, cheering each other on and providing moral support.
It was a community, formed with thousands of people around the world who were going to dedicate November to writing a book, or at least giving it their best shot. There was enormous camaraderie.
We were all responsible for our own progress – nobody cracking the whip, just our own determination to finally put pen to paper (or, more often, fingers to keyboard).
Some people began completely from scratch, without even the bare bones of a plot; I’m not sure they got very far. I had the general plot for all three of my novels in my head – where each one would begin and end. I had a few major plot points for the first book. I had ‘mood boards’ for each main character. And I had maps, in considerable detail, for the fictional town that my heroine moved to after the inciting incident, and the rather unusual college campus that had offered her a new job.
By the time November 2020 wrapped up, I had a smidge over 50,000 words, and almost every badge on my profile. And it seemed I had the makings of a full novel. (Fantasy novels typically have anywhere from 90,000 to 200,000 words.) I plugged on, and on July 2021 I typed “The End”. It was momentous. My hubby and I cracked open a bottle of champagne.
I signed up for NaNoWriMo twice more and wrote the beginnings of books two and three. I looked forward to the excitement of each year’s push to succeed. There were also spring and summer camps in between, but I felt that November was a good month, at least here in Canada: Thanksgiving and Halloween had wrapped up, and the Christmas season hadn’t reached full swing.
And I was very sad to learn of NaNoWriMo’s closing this past spring. As a lot of people were, apparently, because quite a few organizations have taken up the mantle and created their own version of a November writing sprint. Whatever the politics that eventually sunk the original NaNo, a beloved tradition had been born, and I’m happy to see the results. I’ve signed up for two ‘sprints’ to see how they go. One is run by Reedsy, who I’ve used as a fantastic resource since I first researched how to write a novel; the other is a newer NaNo, called NaNo2.0, by the original creator, Chris Baty. Each have their own style, and Reedsy has its own writing software, which I’m trying out to see if I like it better than MS Word.
And so the excitement and drive are back. Most things are accomplished better with a deadline, and belonging to a group of like-minded seekers is a nice thing also.
Personal circumstances have changed somewhat since my first foray into the November sprints, as they tend to do, but I’ll do my best. The Summer Door will be a horror novel, blended with a rather twisted dark romance, delving into the deepest shadows that underlie the world of Llithfaen and surrounding dimensions.
So far I’m having a spine-tingling good time.
The story begins with this quote:
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill
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