November has been a crazy month with crazy things happening, including the 2020 presidential election. But, of course, that can be very stressful and mentally draining on certain people, so here is something that can hopefully lift the spirits of my readers! Let me introduce you to…National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo!

NaNoWriMo is a writing challenge that comes around every year, similar to Inktober (an art challenge), except the goal is to write a 50,000-word manuscript by the end of the month. There are actually two different kinds of NaNoWriMo, there’s one for adults and then there’s a youth program for people under the age of 18. The youth program still has the same concept as the adult NaNoWriMo, except that there are activities to help the writing process. 

The internet-based competition was actually launched 21 years ago on July 1, 1999, so while the concept itself is still fairly new, it has been enjoyed by smaller authors that are known on platforms like Youtube or Twitter. Included with NaNoWriMo, there is Preptober which is when contestants use the entire month of October to layout their entire story and plan how things will go so when November rolls around, they are set and ready to write.

AuthorTube, a community of writers, encourages new writers to take on the NaNoWriMo challenge. The community even gives new writers a bunch of tips and gives detailed explanations on how to get everything written and ready for a stress-free writing process. And at the end of the whole thing, after those long thirty days, the writers who win get a chance to have their written work published as a book!