NaNoWriMo

Last updated Oct 03, 2009 by David Williamson

For the past three years I’ve had a strange urge (along with nearly 60,000 other people) to try to write a novel during the month of November. Few people realize that November is National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo and that nearly 60,000 people just like you and me sit down at their computers (or with their notebooks) and try to churn out a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. Last year there were 12,961 “winners” who reached that goal. Unfortunately I was not among their ranks, but I did manage to write 5,699 words. Not as high as the year before where I had nearly 13,000 words but last year I had a very busy November and had some personal problems at the same time too.

Below you’ll find links that I’ve found useful or ideas I’m working on. You can keep up with my status by monitoring posts tagged with NaNoWriMo.

WordPress Plugin

I’ve decided during October 2007 to attempt to write a plugin for WordPress to duplicate some of the features of the popular NaNoWriMo Report Card. I’d used it before to keep track of my wordcount and found it to be an awesome tool; the only problem was that I was the only one to ever see it because it just sat on my computer. The idea for this plugin is to make many of the features (especially the automatic calculations) available on a page or in a sidebar widget so all my friends can follow my novel’s progress.

The plugin can be found here. Future updates about the plugin can be found there.

Resource Links

Previous Years’ Novels

  • NaNoWriMo 2006: First Steps
  • NaNoWriMo 2005: Caught!: A Novel
  • NaNoWriMo 2004: Dealing With It