Really late getting the thread created this year, mostly because I almost forgot it was time for this again, but also because I think I'm the only person on Bay12 still doing this. That's fine if so, and I'll post progress updates anyway. NaNoWriMo, the organization, is pretty much dead at this point due to their serious community mismanagement, but the challenge itself is informal and lives on.
Obligatory copied content from the last few years:
In case you aren't familiar with NaNoWriMo:
What is NaNoWriMo?NaNoWriMo is an informal challenge to anyone who wants to write. The idea is simple: you simply have to write 50,000 words of a story during the month of November. You don't necessarily have to finish the story, so long as you write that many words, and it doesn't matter
what the story is. This isn't going to be published anywhere without you doing it, so it can be fanfiction for all that the challenge cares.
The point is to just get words down. A lot of writers agree that this is the hard part, and you can easily get stuck trying to edit or world build. From experience, I can say that it's very true, and anyone who wants to give this a shot is strongly encouraged to not fret about the quality of your work and just focus on getting a first draft down. I did last year and hate how it turned out, but I'm still glad I did it since it puts me in a better place to try it this year.
Is this a competition?Not really. You're only challenging yourself. You can certainly compare your progress to others, but it's informal and you won't get anything but a warm, fuzzy feeling for beating someone else.
Is my writing safe?Sure. You don't have to publish anything you write, and the online trackers are just tools for inputting word counts. There's no reason to be afraid of whatever you're writing getting out in the wild without you doing it.
Can I win anything?Only personal satisfaction, which is a surprisingly good thing in my experience.
Can't I just cheat and enter whatever I want in the word count tool then?Sure, but you're only cheating yourself in the end. The whole point is to make something of your own and prove to yourself that you can do it.
Official website:The official website is officially dead now, so instead I'll link to the word tracker I've been using instead:
TrackBearLinks to previous years:
Like the last few years I don't have a solid idea of which concept to tackle this year, which is deeply unfortunate considering that the challenge starts in 11 hours or me.
I've been considering a "magic punk" space exploration story, using magical age of sail technology, and have some character concepts for it but no plot, which is a real problem. I've considered merging it conceptually with one of my previous projects, Vacuum Decay, where the plot was that aliens keep inventing necromancy and wiping themselves out, but I'm not sold on it.
I've also been considering a knock off Star Fox setting, and while I have plenty of world building for it, I also have zero plot. For that one I don't even have a glimmer of an idea yet, so it's unlikely that I'll move forward with it.
If I can't think of anything better, I'll probably fall back to my old Ashen Scales concept and give it like a 6th attempt. That was a story where everyone was a sapient dragon, and an undead apocalypse ruined the world a couple of hundred years ago. I keep making tiny incremental improvements on it, but it's hard to get a solid plot out of the various ideas and threads I have.
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Topic: National Novel Writing Month 2025 (Read 62 times)