Unleash your creative superpowers with NaNoWriMo

One part writing boot camp, one part rollicking party, National Novel Writing Month, more popularly known as NaNoWriMo, celebrates its 19th year of encouraging creativity, education, and the power of the imagination through the largest writing event in the world.

According to Wikipedia, NaNoWriMo is an annual, Internet-based creative writing project that takes place during the month of November. Participants attempt to write a 50,000-word manuscript between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30.

This year, NaNoWriMo expects over 400,000 people—including over 70,000 K-1 2 students and educators on our Young Writers Program website—to start a 50,000-word novel in the month of November.

Throughout the month, they’ll be guided by this year’s theme: Superpowered Noveling.

“NaNoWriMo ignites people’s superheroic creative powers every year by empowering them to write their stories. It takes courage, grit, resilience—and wild imaginative leaps—to write 50,000 words of a novel in a month. Our stories save us from villainous forces that we encounter every day. Our stories determine the future of our world,” said Grant Faulkner, executive director of NaNoWriMo.

Last year, NaNoWriMo welcomed 384,126 participants, in 646 different regions, on six continents. Of these, more than 34,000 met the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month.

This year, participants will be inspired by weekly “pep talks” penned by published authors, including Roxane Gay, Kevin Kwan, Julie Murphy, and Grant Faulkner. NaNoWriMo will also provide participants access to mentorship from authors including Emily X.R. Pan, Mur Lafferty, and Jasmine Guillory.

This is the 12th year of the Young Writers Program, which brings NaNoWriMo’s unique style of creative writing into classrooms. The YWP helps young writers—participating both in classrooms and independently—set individualized word-count goals and divide their work into daily, achievable milestones.

“NaNoWriMo gives kids a crazy task, but a real, authentic one: tell your story, whatever story matters to you. It doesn’t matter how you tell it, just that you get it out into the world. Students, even those who thought they hated writing, get invested. It becomes the best part of their day. By the end of the month, they’ve worked hard, developed confidence and new skills, and have their very own novel to show off!” says Marya Brennan, Young Writers program director. (PR)