If you see people in November walking around muttering, “Nanowrimo! Nanowrimo!”, please be assured, they are not from Mars, or Zombies from Planet X. They are participants in National Novel Writing Month (aka Nanowrimo), a yearly ritual for writers that has become an international obsession.

Nanowrimo participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000 word, (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59:59, November 30. That’s right, 50,00 words in one month! That is 1666 words per day…and if you skip a day, double that amount. It is a challenge, but it’s invigorating, trust me, because I’ve done it twice. The idea is to let the writing flow…to never stop and think about it or rewrite it, not until after the month of November is finished. It gets your creative juices flowing.

The first Nanowrimo started in July, 1999 with 21 people in the San Francisco Bay area. Twelve years later, in 2010, 200,530 participants all around the world had written 2,872,682,109 words, with 37,479 winners blowing through the 50,000-word goal. And you could be one of them in 2011.

Go to the National Novel Writing Month website and sign up now…before November starts. You will be able to track your progress, join forums with other writers in the same situation as you, and maybe even get together in person with the local Nanwrimo group.

I’ll be doing it this year, and hope to see you there. Let’s do it together.

nanowrimo.org