Writing
Month

Writing Month (WriMo) is a journey to write a story. From first-timers to award-winning authors, join a community of creative minds all around the world. There's no prescribed genre, no theme, no plot but your own, no harsh reviewers, no grammar police, no grades. It's only you, the page, and us: the friends you'll make along the way. Every November, write 50,000 words in 30 days.

How to participate

• Find your local community. Writing is more fun when there's other people to share the times with. A favoured activity is a Write-In, an in-person (or virtual) event where a group of people meet socially to write, talk, and hang out together. Communities will also have a trove of resources to help you write and dream, and once November is over, to help you edit and, if you wish, publish.
• Get an idea. Whether you're a plotter (someone who likes to meticulously plan their story) or a pantser (someone who writes "by the seat of their pants", without a plan) or something in between, to start with you'll need an idea of something to write. Any genre is good, including non-fiction, fan-fiction, and more. Make up chracters, find a setting, and get ready to write the story you've always wanted to read.
• Pick a goal. 50,000 words is the traditional number. It's the length of an average-sized novel. But there's no real rules here: you can choose a smaller or larger number, or even change your mind midway. 15,000 is completely doable for the busiest of professionals, and some prolific writers are known to write over 200,000 words in the month. If you write long-hand or on a typewriter, you may choose to instead reach a number of pages. The guideline is 450 words per page: 50,000 words makes for about 110 pages.
• Track your words. We recommend TrackBear to record your progress and share it and even compete on leaderboards. Your local community may have a private leaderboard for the event, or other recommendations. You can also track your wordcount in your writing software, a spreadsheet, or good old paper. To achieve 50,000 words in 30 days, you'll need to write 1,667 words per day. It's a good idea to track not only your total, but also how you've done per day, so you can tell if you need to speed up or can relax for a while.
• Write! Starting November 1st, write! Writing every day is a good habit, but it's entirely okay to take breaks or make your own schedule. The general advice is Don't Edit. You can leave spelling mistakes and grammar mishaps where they are. Characters with placeholder names are totally okay. Don't know the name of the country your star-crossed lovers are fleeing to? TK Countryname is your friend (TK is a copywriting convention for marking placeholders). If you need to delete a sentence or paragraph, cross it out or set its colour to white instead of erasing it, so it's still counted. The goal is to write 50,000 words, not have 50,000 usable words at the end of the month. There's always editing.
• Sprint! "Word wars" or "Word sprints" are short timed events, often organised in a community. It's also a great way to focus or challenge yourself to write. In a sprint, you set a timer (typically for 20 minutes) and write as much as you can before time runs out. Many Writing Months are made up entirely of sprints, writing a few hundred words at a time and then taking a break. You may also know of the Pomodoro technique: sprints are like that, but with others.
• November 30th: You're Done! Take a break! Then you can edit your book (if you want) and yes, even get it published (or self-publish), or put it all on the internet, or leave it at the bottom of a drawer ne'er to see the light of day again. What matters is you've done it! Brag about it, have a rest and relax, and come back next November to do it all again.

Here's a 7-minute vlog-style video of someone doing the event in 2018, which gives you a great idea of how a typical Writing Month event goes.

Community & Resources

There's no one place that Wrimos hang out. Here's a bunch of places and directories of places that we know about. You'll also want to check out the #nanowrimo or #wrimo hashtags on social media. If you run a writers' community that does the November event, open a ticket or shoot me an email to get added here.

General
• TrackBear, a web app to track and share your writing progress.
• Novel November, platform for the November event which offers mentorship/encouragement livestreams from professional authors.
• Shut Up And Write!, event-finding platform and writing resources.
• Writing Quests, guided writing events.
• WritingMonth.org, a platform to connect monthly challenge writers together and track writing progress (unrelated to this website).
• Rough Draft Month, Discord / Trackbear community and curated resources.
• FaNoWriMo, Discord server and event specially for the fantasy genre.
• Book or Bust, Discord server for Finishing That Book! (links and invites expire frequently, do a google or reddit search for a recent/working one).
• Coze & Prose, Discord server for writers, organises writing challenges. Ages 25+ only.
• NaNoWriMo Fans, Discord server for (former) fans of the original event, still runs challenges.
• Behind the Name, random name generator (for new characters) sourced from real names from all around the world and history, plus fictional databanks.
• r/nanowrimo on Reddit, especially see the alternatives megathread for a whole list of resources and communities.
• Wikiwrimo has (somewhat old) lists of regional websites, Facebook pages, writing software, and archived word crawls.
Regional
• ToWriMo, Canada (Toronto)
• Pluméa, France Discord server
• Wrimos du Nord, France (Nord) Discord server and Facebook page
• Le Café Littéraire, France (Paris) Discord server
• Schreibhörnchen, Germany Discourse forums
• NZ Not-Nano, New Zealand Discord server
• Canterbury Writers, New Zealand (Canterbury)
• West Michigan Author Alliance, United States (Michigan)

Other Events

Writing a book not for you? November not a good time? There's more out there:

• Camps: in April and July there's two more Writing Months. These are meant to be more relaxed. Pick a smaller target, continue an existing work, or do editing work.
• Stop fucking about & start writing: UK-based weekly creative writing challenges and courses.
• Rough Draft Challenge: Youtube-based community and creative event (not limited to writing) with tiered goals aiming to avoid the burnout and toxic energy from the Winning/Losing/Cheating approach from NaNoWriMo.
• 48-hour film project: runs over a weekend in cities all around the world. The New Zealand version is now its own independent event.
• NaPoWriMo: write 30 poems in 30 days. Runs in April.
• End of Play: create a new stage work in 30 days. Runs in April.
• Many more @ the wiki

Wrimo.nz is not affiliated to (now defunct) NaNoWriMo organisation. Neither is this page affiliated with any of the other communities and resources linked above. The author of this page hangs out in the NZ Not-Nano discord instance.