The Town Herald

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Inner workings of NanoWriMo

by [Kaeirdwyn]




The Inner Workings Of NaNoWriMo

By [Kaeirdwyn] Kristie Baker

Having discovered NaNoWriMo in 2003, this writer was overjoyed to find a program for aspiring novelists. For anyone who has toyed with the idea of writing novels, this is a great endeavor. It challenges even those who are used to writing every day to do more, achieve more, and ultimately let go of their inner editor and go for broke. The website to join this program is www.nanowrimo.org and in the beginning couple of days the website is slightly slow, and times out now and again, not to worry as this is because so many people around the world are logging in to write their novels as well. The site has just upgraded all their computer servers and systems and though had a couple of minor setbacks and problems, as of a week later, the site is much smoother and working well. The sense of community and craziness is so wonderful it is like being in an exclusive club that has all the perks no one else has. Knowing there are people right here in the community writing as well helps tremendously with a feeling of community and knowledge that as writers, we are not alone in our endeavor.

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and was created and founded by Chris Baty. He arbitrarily chose the month of November and every October his website resets the forums and gets ready for the many new people joining en masse. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. The first year there were only 21 friends who participated. All lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was done in July. The next year it was changed to November to use up those winter dreary days. There were 140 people and some were from Canada, making it already an international event. This was the first year people wanted to know what the rules were. Chris Baty didn't really have any rules, so this was the beginning of the many rules that circle around writing the NaNoWriMo novel.

The third year Chris Baty had not paid any attention to blogging or bloggers or word of mouth. First there were 200, then 400 and he began to worry. There was no automated sign up system and it took him five minutes to sign up each person. Suddenly the NaNo population bounded up to 2,000 people and the volunteers came in thankfully. Even then it wasn't quite over. It might have ended there, except then they were written up in the LA Times and their population jumped again. This time up to 5,000 people. The volunteers took vacations from their jobs and worked NaNoWriMo 16 hours a day for days getting everyone signed up, messages and invites sent out and trying to deal with the rush of participants. The verification of the novel being finished this year was done by everyone. Complete strangers verified each others novels. This was the first time Chris asked for a donation of one dollar for his trouble, so that he could get an automated site up for the next year, pay the hosting bills and thank the volunteers with a giant pizza. Of course, that was when he realized that even when people's hearts are in it, people are busy and most of them just forget or don't have the time or the money to donate, even when they want to.

Year four happened and thankfully Chris Baty had met Dan Sanderson who single-handedly yanked NaNo into the 21st century. Progress and winner bars were invented by Dan, as well as the novel verification program that counts your words and then once the word count is recorded it deletes your novel, so there is no copy out there in cyberspace floating around. This of course makes many novelists relieved that they don't have to worry about copyrights and such. The forums were created and have been loved ever since. 14,000 people signed up for NaNoWriMo this year. Things did not spiral out of control, but because of common courtesy and kindness worked quite well. Media attention helped tremendously as there was a segment on the CBS Evening News, and Chris had the opportunity to wake up in the middle of the night to talk to the BBC in Scotland.

The fifth year Chris took it upon himself to make up the Municipal Liasons who are the local people cheering you on with pens, stickers and local kick pff meetings and write-ins. Embarrassing yourself by not finishing in front of disembodied voices in cyberspace or far away is one thing. It is quite another when there are people right there in the same area living and breathing NaNo right along with you. This year Chris hired people to help with certain aspects of NaNoWriMo, such as T-shirt sales, and taking care of emails, donations, and sending out stickers, pens, and other neat things to the small municipalities to get people to come out to participate in person as well as in their own living rooms and online. This was the year Russ Uman joined as part time computer guru.

Year Six was where The Running Man with the pencil, which is the icon of NaNoWriMo came onboard and a newer and more energetic website to fullfill growing needs. Expected were 40,000 writers, and 42,000 writers showed up for the count. More and more classrooms were using NaNo for their young writers. Teachers felt that NaNo was a good tool for teaching. This was also the first year of NaNoWriMo's partnership with Room To Read, an international children's literacy program. This is the year Chris wrote his guide to writing a novel in a month. It was titled, "No Plot? No Problem!" The problem was that it was due out in December. He wrote his other novel while at the same time as writing the guide for publication in December. He said "This completely proved the NaNoWriMo maxim, 'The busier you are, the easier it is'". This was the first year Chris realized "real" writers were doing NaNo and happy with it. It helped them write their novels and publish and isn't that what all writers want? To be able to quiet the inner editors and get their stories out.

Year seven was the year of WriMoRadio, and the Young Writer's Program. Young writers has their own site that you can find on the NaNoWriMo site and they are allowed to set their own word count goals. They are kids who are 12 years old and younger. WriMoRadio is the "attempt to capture writer's voices and stories and they wrestled with their manuscripts and triumphed over their inner editors," as Chris Baty put it in his History section on the site. There was no written record of the amount of people who joined this year, however the amount almost always tended to double from year to year.

Year eight, 2005, was a big year for NaNoWriMo. They were so big and complex they had come to a crossroads. They had to become a non-profit charity to make ends meet and to be able to continue doing what they loved doing. Once everything is set up government wise, tax wise it turns out that running the company through coffee shop meetings and out of houses cost much less, but was not nearly as stable or long lasting as making it into a corporation. They came up with the name of The Office of Letters and Light. Chris Baty said, "It's like a little glowing governmental bureaucracy staffed by elves." By August of the next year the corporation hired the enthusiastic and tireless Tavia Stewart as Managing Editor.

For NaNoWriMo 2006, they had planned to get all they needed first, tape, paper, bubblewrap...however when the huge truck arrived with their supplies they realized two things. The driver asked for a loading dock and a forklift. They had neither and spent several hours bringing their supplies in off the sidewalk. Up and running with supplies, things were going well, until October 31st. The site was timing out, sluggish and to take his mind off things Chris got on the internet to putz around a little. Lo and behold, NaNoWriMo was on the front page of Yahoo in the featured section. It was taken down 24 hours later, but those signed up had grown by 7,000 people in a single day. There is no record how many people had signed up altogether, but from this writer's recollection it was above 80,000 and perhaps over 100,000. The Young Writer's Program grew from 4,000 kids to 15,000 writing children.

The best part of NaNoWriMo is that it comes around every year. The forums stay open all year long, only reseting on October 1st, when sign-ups start up again. Sign-ups last for one full month until midnight October 31st and writing madness starts at 12:01 am November 1st. That is when the crazy writer in people comes out like a lion. No matter how much a person has planned for November, most people plan around their NaNo. Those in the United States choose to write extra at different times to make up for those writing moments lost during the Thanksgiving holiday. Mothers plan different ways to make up time taken from all those parent teacher conferences mid November. No matter how much is done on the novel, winning is wonderful, but just trying it, doing your best can be rewarding, whether 50,000 words is reached or not.

Computers are not necessary and even verifying word count with the crew at NaNo is not necessary. The certificate and winner bar is not given to those who do not verify though. The forums can be a great and wonderful help, and at the same time they can distract one horribly. As a five time joiner in NaNo, this writer didn't lose twice becauseof forums, or distractions online. It was lost because of real life situations that couldn't be ignored or put off for the month. The two times this writer won, 50,000 words were reached, but neither novel was ever finished to satisfaction.

Many other websites have sprung up around NaNoWriMo to help these aspiring novelists go as far as they can go. The other programs are based on, but not affiliated with NaNoWriMo and are: National Novel Publishing Year which is said to be "a plan to follow after the craziness of NaNoWriMo" and is at www.nanopubye.org and National Novel Finishing Month which is a challenge to finish the existing project in the month of December following the November WriMo. This website is located at www.nanofimo.org and the last program that follows after the WriMo plan is called National Novel Writing Year. The word count for this program is picked by the writer and can be up to 3 million and beyond, but this is a program that continues throughout the year. The website for them is www.nanowriye.com and all of these look to be interesting spin offs of an original. There could be no replacing the original NaNoWriMo and the world would be a dimmer place without it. Anyone with an inkling of the need to write a novel in them should try this method. Whether a person wins by word count, or just wins by turning off the internal editor for a while it is a most successful adventure. Hopefully those readers out there with an adventurous spirit will think of joining NaNoWriMo next year. It can be a fun filled month and a once in a lifetime opportunity every single year. This writer must go write the NaNo novel now. The word count is begging to be updated. Happy Writing. [Kaeirdwyn]



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