For some, completing a novel is the goal of a lifetime.
But this November, as part of National Novel Writing Month, hundreds of thousands of writers worldwide will attempt the feat in just 30 days.
The competition, known as NaNoWriMo, or just NaNo, began in July 1999 when a group of 21 friends in San Francisco challenged each other to write a novel in a month. The writing celebration has since moved to November and increased its numbers to approximately 8,000.
The goal is to write a full novel — at least 50,000 words, or roughly 175 pages — between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30. That’s 1,667 words per day.
Last year NaNo had more than 165,000 participants worldwide, according to its website, with more than 30,000 “winners” (the title awarded to anyone who completes the challenge). This year’s numbers are projected to be much higher.
It’s impossible to say how many participants are college students, but the NaNo website hosts more than 100 forums for different universities and campuses around the world (including Arizona State University and the University of Arizona), as well as hordes of regional and special interest forums.
Dozens of writers have posted on ASU threads, some suggesting favorite spots on campus to write, others trying to organize group writing sessions.
As the ASU forum’s first post put it: “Okay, there are 72k of us, so I’m guessing that there are other Sun Devils out there doing [NaNo]. Let’s go ahead and introduce ourselves.”
Erin Flaaen, a 17–year-old creative writing and journalism freshman, wrote that post to organize biweekly “write-ins” at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing on the Tempe campus.
She and 21-year-old mathematics senior Gavin King type away diligently on laptops, nestled in the comfy, sinking chairs of the Piper Center on a Monday afternoon. Occasionally, the ttt-ttt of clicking keyboards peters out, and spontaneous conversation emerges, rambling from stories about friends to Game Theory to the movie “Titanic.”
It’s a strange mixture of self-contained focus and tight-knit community support.
Flaaen and King are joined by one more person, latecomer Jillian Nusbaum, a 19-year-old screenwriting major who transferred from the U of A this semester.
Nusbaum has participated in NaNoWriMo a few times before, never meeting the 50,000-word deadline. But achieving a word count is not her writing goal.
NaNo is more valuable as an artistic exercise, she says — it forces you to complete creative projects that would otherwise be shelved.
“What’s important is not just thinking up an idea, but articulating that idea,” Nusbaum says.
For fellow NaNo enthusiast King, the difficulty in writing doesn’t seem to be inspiration, but the motivation and opportunity to put these ideas onto the page.
“I already have the stories in my head, I just need to get them down,” he says. “So it’s just a matter of pounding out the words.”
This is King’s fifth year of NaNo; he already has three “wins” to his credit. As school gets busier year by year, his main reason for participating every November is “because it gets me writing again.”
Flaaen, who scored a “win” in her first NaNo attempt last year, says she’s less stressed about the word count and more focused on her story this year. The challenge adds pressure to the writing process in some ways, she says, but also relieves it in others.
If you don’t already have an idea or plot, Flaaen says, the deadline becomes even more stressful. Yet, this blind panic can also obliterate writer’s block.
“When I’m not writing for NaNo, [and] get writer’s block, it usually takes me two to three weeks for me to break through it,” Flaaen says. “But with NaNo, I don’t have two to three weeks to get over it, because then I won’t finish — So I gotta keep writing.”
Contact the reporter at trabens@asu.edu.
