Hey there everyone! We're approaching the end of October and getting ready for November, which means we'll be approaching National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short) very soon.
What's NaNoWriMo?Think of it as a yearly contest of sorts, but with no actual prize outside of the satisfaction that you were able to accomplish something great. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50K words of a novel in the 30 days of November. The idea is that you'll use the upcoming months to prepare ideas, outlines, all that jazz if you're the type to do so...or just winging it (or as the site calls people in this category, "Pantsers" since you're flying by the seat of your pants). The idea is wait to do any actual novel writing itself until the moment November 1st hits, and then pushing yourself to churn out 50K words throughout that month.
It's actually a lot harder than it may sound. Distractions are easy to sway you from reaching that goal, and writer's block can be a consistent plague as can that steam of ideas coming to a grinding halt. But pushing through and hitting those 50K words can be a major accomplishment if you're putting in the serious effort.
So if there's no actual reward, why should I do it?Because in the end it's personal satisfaction knowing that you accomplished something difficult. Also, have you ever wanted to write something but couldn't motivate yourself to do it? That's what this "contest" of sorts is all about, pushing you to push yourself. It's that motivation of being able to create something in a time limit. It's also a great tool against people who consistently self-edit, since the deadline leaves little room for people to constantly re-write out of self-doubt if you want to hit that 50K goal.
What happens if I don't hit the word goal in time?/What about if I want to write more than the goal?The great thing about this contest is that it's not only about the big goal, but personal goals as well. Don't feel like you can hit that 50K realistically? Then start yourself small one year with a goal of 10K, push yourself to 25K next year, and just continually work up to it. Or, if you're someone that can churn out 50K easily, you can push yourself to do more. Set yourself a goal of 100K, or 200K. It's all about being able to accomplish your own goals that you can set up, and pushing aside the obstacle that gets in your way: Mainly yourself.
Is there an official site?Yes!
The site itself can be found here. On that site you can learn about NaNoWriMo, and they have tools to help you out during and even before the contest, such as Camp NaNo. There's also a messageboard where you can ask questions and get help from others on practically any aspect of your novel writing...including forums for the various genres of storytelling to ask for specific genre tips or talk about your ideas. You can also join local/other groups that host event such as Write-Ins or other such things that are about helping you in your time during the NaNoWriMo contest (aka all of November). When you sign up, you can earn badges for accomplishing goals as well as give yourself personal badges from their list, such as identifying what kind of writer you see yourself as.
On top of that, you can set up your novel ideas on your profile, letting people know the name and general idea of the story you're going to work on. There's also a word-counter/tracker where you can upload your submission as you progress through it, and the word-counter will publicly show where you're at in your 50K goal (and before you ask, no it doesn't publicly show your story as well). You can also push yourself with Words Per Day that you set up for yourself...in other words you can put up the personal goal of writing a specific amount of words per day, and the site will keep track in the Stats section of your profile.
Overall, there's a lot that the site does to help you out during this time.
So why would a Discord channel be needed?Well, less "needed" and just something nice to have around. Some people may not feel comfortable joining groups or chatting on a different forum when it comes to their writing ideas. We may have people who want to take part, but feel comfortable sharing ideas and getting help from people that they know. So this is where the Discord channel would come in. People taking part could bounce ideas off of each other, and it'd be essentially one of those group types of things that you can find on the site, but it'd be friends that all are already comfortable with each other.
But it'd mainly serve those purposes: bouncing ideas, giving advice when someone hits writer's block, seeing how certain passages sound to others rather than being our own worst self-editor selves, linking tips from writing assistance sites and similar, sharing writing tools that could be helpful (such as free software or web-browser software for writing up characters/outlines and whatnot), and overall it'd just be the central area where people taking part could jump in. And yes, before you ask it'd be role-oriented only and kept spam free (aside from maybe the occasional video or animal pics to help ease any tension).
So if that sounds appealing to you, then please vote for the channel to exist and I'll make it happen! If you plan on taking part this year, feel free to share an idea of what you'll be writing if you wish...or you can share a link of your profile on the NaNoWriMo website!
