National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo is a month dedicated to creativity, and getting people into the practice of writing their own novels, or creative ideas down. In their words:
What Is NaNoWriMo?
"National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand new novel. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.
NaNoWriMo officially became a nonprofit organization in 2006, and our programs support writing fluency and education. Our website hosts more than a million writers, serving as a social network with author profiles, personal project libraries, and writing buddies. NaNoWriMo tracks words for writers like Fitbit tracks steps, and hosts real-world writing events in cities from Mexico City, to Seoul, to Milwaukee with the help of 900+ volunteers in thousands of partnering libraries and community centers like… well, like nothing else.
NaNoWriMo is internet-famous. It’s community-powered (hello, Wrimos!). It’s hosted authors drafting novels like Water for Elephants, WOOL, and Fangirl. It’s a teaching tool and curriculum taught in 5,920 classrooms, and NaNoWriMo’s programs run year-round.
Whatever you thought NaNoWriMo is, it’s more than that."
The NaNoWriMo website also offers helpful tools to help writers get their creative juices flowing, and give guidelines for how to more fully develop your ideas into a story.
NaNo Prep is their toolkit for developing your ideas. They offer exercises and classes for developing ideas, characters, plotlines, and themes that go along with writing stories as well as forums for interacting with other writers and talking about your ideas. These classes are all virtual and available in their NaNo Prep section.
These exercises and classes can really help budding writers find their voice and truly flesh out their ideas.
The NaNoWriMo website also offers pep talks from other writers that break down their process and what they've learned from writing. These pep talks also include coaches who can offer words of advice to you or encouragement to continue to follow your passion
NaNoWriMo is a fantastic way to motivate yourself to let your creative juices flow and finally get your ideas written down on paper. We offer many books to help writers understand the process, and can help you to get past those tricky ideas that may be keeping you from writing, either due to not knowing how to start writing things like; Compelling dialog, settings, themes, and many other factors that go into writing a novel. We have a selection of books on our displays just for that purpose.
Feel free to ask any of the librarians for help finding the books you need to get started. You do not need to have experience in writing to get started, all that matters is that you try your best. Good luck in your novel writing endeavors, and hopefully this will encourage you to start your novel writing journey.