For many young and aspiring writers, November is National Novel Writing Month (i.e. NaNoWriMo). A whole month of community supported obsessive writing!

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words and the only real rule is don’t start writing before November 1st and stop writing November 30th. The website has a word count validator where you have to submit your manuscript to by midnight (local time) on November 30th. It is considered the official word count and whether you win that year is based on the validator’s say.

NaNoWriMo is a non-profit and has a thriving community based online. The website has forums for different regions that facilitate in-person writing meetups. For those who aren’t able to attend in-person meetups, each region has a chatroom where virtual meetups occur. The chatrooms are open 24/7 throughout the month of November and can be a great resource for word sprints, random plot points, and other inspiration. Word sprints are a speed competition where someone sets a time limit and everyone participating writes as many words as they can during that time. The only general rule is no backspacing and post your craziest spelling error that happened during the sprint.

This year is special since it’s NaNoWriMo’s 20th anniversary! Kaila has participated in the past and since Kirk has come up with a few storylines this past year, he decided to join in the fun as well. He has three science fiction novel, potentially novella, ideas that he will be writing about this November while Kaila will be writing an alternative history/sci-fi novel. We are both super excited and have been looking forward to writing for most of October, just like we had been looking forward to October for most of September.

Oh yeah, and Happy Halloween!