You can update your word count by entering your total cumulative word count in the field on the top of your screen and hitting "update". You can also use the novel info module to update your word count.
The word count module (and other novel info like title, genre, synopsis, and cover art) is in your profile page.
To find it, go to My NaNoWriMo in the main menu, then click "Edit Novel Info".
You have two options here:
- Word Count: Simply enter your total cumulative word count (no punctuation please, just numbers) in this box, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click submit.
- Word Count Validator: Copy the entire contents of your novel, and paste it into this box.
Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click submit. Our word count robots will count your words, then delete the file unseen by human eyes. We don't keep a copy of your novel anywhere on our site.
This option may be greyed out during times of high traffic. During those times, just update your count manually. After November 25th, the word count validator can be used to validate your novel and claim winner status.
All methods of updating your word count will overwrite the previous entry in the database. If you enter the incorrect word count, simply update it again with the correct one.
You can sign-up year-round! To sign up for the upcoming National Novel Writing Month, just click on the "Sign Up Now" box at the top of the site (at the tip of the runner's pencil), and fill out the User Registration form.
Kapow! You're officially signed up for National Novel Writing Month.
There's no sign-up fee for National Novel Writing Month, but we do ask ably-financed participants to contribute something towards hosting and administrative costs. Because we're a nonprofit, the donation is tax-deductible! The amount you contribute is up to you.
You must be 13 or older to have an account on NaNoWriMo.org. But all ages are very welcome to take part in National Novel Writing Month, and we encourage younger writers to sign up over at NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program website. It's a similar challenge for participants 12 and under, as well as those participating as part of a K-12 classroom group.
NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program participants get to choose their own word-count goal for November, and also have access to great noveling workbooks and fun, kid-oriented writing activities. Like NaNoWriMo, membership in the Young Writers Program is free.
You begin writing at 12:00:01 AM local time on November 1. You write your novel off-line, on whatever word processor you like. If you write 50,000 words or more, you upload the manuscript to our site between November 25 and November 30 for word-count verification to win.
The way to win NaNoWriMo is by writing 50,000 words by midnight on November 30. Every year, there are many, many winners. There are no "Best Novel" or "Quickest-Written Novel" awards given out. All winners will get an official "Winner" web badge and a PDF Winner's Certificate.
The real prize in NaNoWriMo is the manuscript itself, and the exhilarating feeling of setting an ambitious creative goal and nailing it. And the $1,000,000.
Just kidding about the $1,000,000!
The actual winning process works like this: From 12:00:01 AM, local time, November 25 until 11:59:59 PM, local time, on November 30, all participants who have written more than 50,000 words can have their winning word counts verified by our site. Uploading your novel to the Word Count Validator makes your NaNoWriMo victory official, gets you listed on our Winners Page, and routes you to the secret spot where you can collect this year's winner's certificate. It will also turn your word count bar purple.
To become a winner, first make sure that you have written a manuscript that is 50,000 words or longer. Then sign in to the site, click on Edit Profile, then scroll down to the area labeled Word Count Validator. Copy and paste your entire novel into this box. Then hit the "Submit" button, and prepare for your accolades.
We understand that you may be reluctant to upload your novel to a random website, even to one as winsome as ours. If you are using Microsoft Word it is very easy to completely scramble your novel before uploading it in a way that will not affect its word count.
1. Open the file and make a new copy of your novel using 'Save As...'
2. Open the Find and Replace dialog box (Edit -> Replace).
3. Click the "More" button to expand the box.
4. Check the "Use Wildcards" checkbox.
5. In the "Find What" field, put this: [a-zA-Z0-9] (include the square brackets, no spaces before or after)
6. In the "Replace With" field, put this: a
7. Click "Replace All"
8. Select All (Ctrl+A) and Copy & Paste into the validator!
The procedure for Open Office is essentially the same, except that Open Office refers to 'Regular Expressions' instead of 'Wildcards'. (Thanks to Peter Dudley for this advice!)
You can get the same effect in a more cumbersome way by just doing a find-and-replace on every letter in the alphabet, one letter at a time. Open the find-and-replace interface on your word processing program and tell it to replace every "b" in your story with an "a," and every "c" with an "a," then every "d" with an "a." And so on.
We realize that people can cheat and upload something that's not a novel and still "win." But since the only real prize of NaNoWriMo is the self-satisfaction that comes with pulling off such a great, creative feat, we don't really worry too much about people cheating. Those who upload 50,000 words they copied from Wikipedia.org just to see their name on the Winner's page are pitiful indeed, and likely need more help than a downloadable winner's certificate can provide them.
NaNoWriMo is all about the magical power of deadlines. Give someone a goal and a goal-minded community and miracles are bound to happen. Pies will be eaten at amazing rates. Alfalfa will be harvested like never before. And novels will be written in a month.
Part of the reason we organize NaNoWriMo is just to get a book written. We love the fringe benefits accrued to novelists. For one month out of the year, we can stew and storm, and make a huge mess of our apartments and drink lots of coffee at odd hours. And we can do all of these things loudly, in front of people. As satisfying as it is to reach deep within yourself and pull out an unexpectedly passable work of art, it is equally (if not more) satisfying to be able to dramatize the process at social gatherings.
But that artsy drama window is woefully short. The other reason we do NaNoWriMo is because the glow from making big, messy art, and watching others make big, messy art, lasts for a long, long time. The act of sustained creation does bizarre, wonderful things to you. It changes the way you read. And changes, a little bit, your sense of self. We like that.
You bet! We are very proud to be an international event, and don't consider the "National" in the title to refer to the United States. This is an event for all nations. We'd change the name to "International Novel Writing Month," but InNoWriMo doesn't roll off the tongue in quite the same way.
You can write novels in any language you like. Our validator doesn't handle non-Latin characters sets, sadly, so there may be an issue with becoming an official winner. But this is just icing on the NaNoWriMo cake, and we encourage you to write in whatever language is most comfortable for you.
Novels that are uploaded to us for verification and victory between November 25 and November 30 are counted by a computer script, and then automatically deleted. We do not read or keep any novels sent in, and NaNoWriMo authors retain all rights to everything they write during the event.
Many, many winning novels have been written through NaNoWriMo. Our stats:
1999: 21 participants and six winners
2000: 140 participants and 29 winners
2001: 5,000 participants and more than 700 winners
2002: 13,500 participants and around 2,100 winners
2003: 25,500 participants and about 3,500 winners
2004: 42,000 participants and just shy of 6,000 winners
2005: 59,000 participants and 9,769 winners
2006: 79,000 participants and 13,000 winners
2007: 101,510 participants and 15,333 winners
And a growing number of these novels have found publishers, including one New York Times #1 Bestseller!
Jon F. Merz---NaNoWriMo novel: The Destructor (Pinnacle Books, 2003). Contact: Pinnacle Books
Lani Diane Rich---NaNoWriMo novels: Time Off for Good Behavior
(Warner Books, 2004) and Maybe Baby (Warner Books, 2005). Contact: www.lanidianerich.com
Sara Gruen---NaNoWriMo novels: Flying Changes (HarperCollins, 2005) and Water for Elephants (Algonquin, 2007). Contact: www.saragruen.com
Rebecca Agiewich---NaNoWriMo novel: BreakupBabe (Ballantine Books, 2006). Contact: http://rebecca.agiewich.net
Francesca Segre---NaNoWriMo novel: Daughter of the Bride (Berkeley Books, 2006). Contact: www.FrancescaSegre.com.
David Niall Wilson---NaNoWriMo novels: Vintage Soul (Five Star/Gale, 2007) and The Mote in Andrea's Eye (Five Star/Gale, 2006). Contact: Five Star/Gale
Gayle Brandeis---NaNoWriMo novel: Self Storage (Ballantine Books, 2007). Contact: www.gaylebrandeis.com
Kimberly Llewellyn---NaNoWriMo novel: Cashmere Boulevard (Berkley Books, 2007). Contact: www.KimberlyLlewellyn.com
Geonn Cannon---NaNoWriMo novel: On the Air (P.D. Publishing, 2007). Contact: P.D Publishing.
Lisa Daily---NaNoWriMo novel: The Dreamgirl Academy (Plume/Penguin Putnam, 2008). Contact: http://stopgettingdumped.com
Jacob and Diane Anderson-Minshall---NaNoWriMo novel: Blind Curves (Bold Strokes Books, 2007) Contact: www.boldstrokesbooks.com
James R. Strickland---NaNoWriMo novel: Looking Glass (Flying Pen Press, 2007) Contact: www.jamesrstrickland.com
Kathy Cano-Murillo---NaNoWriMo novel: Love Shine (Grand Central Publishing, 2007) Contact: www.CraftyChica.com
Ann Gonzalez---NaNoWriMo novel: Running for My Life (WestSide Books, 2008) Contact: www.AnnGonzalez.com
Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen---NaNoWriMo novel: The Compound (Feiwel and Friends, 2008) Contact: www.rockforadoll.com
Jessica Burkhart---NaNoWriMo novel: High Jumps at Collins Academy (Simon & Schuster, 2007).
Jenna Bayley-Burke---NaNoWriMo novel: Just One Spark (Mills & Boon, 2006). Contact: www.jennabayleyburke.com
Teryl Cartwright---NaNoWriMo novel: A Sensible Match (Vintage Romance, 2007). Contact: www.terylcartwright.com
Dave Casler---NaNoWriMo novel: The Story of the Great American Flying Broomstick, Book 1: Genesis (Mt. Sneffels Press, 2007). Contact: www.americanflyingbroomstick.com
Liz Hegarty---NaNoWriMo novel: Salt River (Scholastic New Zealand, April 2009). Contact: www.scholastic.co.nz/
C.J. Lines---NaNoWriMo novel: Filth Kiss (Hadesgate Publishing , 2007). Contact: http://cjlines.com
Moondancer Drake---NaNoWriMo novel: Worlds Collide (PD Publishing). Contact: www.moondancerdrake.com.
Simon Haynes---NaNoWriMo novel: Hal Spacejock No Free Lunch (Fremantle Press, June 2008).
Farhan Devji---NaNoWriMo novel: The Hockey Farmer (Cacoethes Publishing, June 2008). Contact: Cacoethes Publishing
Kalayna-Nicole Price---NaNoWriMo novel: Once Bitten (Bell Bridge Books). Contact: www.Kalayna.com
No. But we would like to take this opportunity to plug our Script Frenzy event. Script Frenzy participants write a 100-page stage play or screenplay in April, and for Script Frenzy you are welcome to work with a partner.
Our experiences over the past nine years show that 50,000 is a difficult but doable goal, even for people with full-time jobs and children. The length makes it a short novel. We don't use the word "novella" because it doesn't seem to impress people the way "novel" does.
We define a novel as "a lengthy work of fiction." Beyond that, we let you decide whether what you're writing falls under the heading of "novel." In short: If you believe you're writing a novel, we believe you're writing a novel too.
Yes.
This sounds like a dumb, arbitrary rule, we know. But bringing a half-finished manuscript into NaNoWriMo all but guarantees a miserable month. You'll care about the characters and story too much to write with the gleeful, anything-goes approach that makes NaNoWriMo such a creative rush. Give yourself the gift of a clean slate, and you'll tap into realms of imagination and intuition that are out-of-reach when working on pre-existing manuscripts.
Outlines and plot notes are very much encouraged, and can be started months ahead of the actual novel-writing adventure. Previously written prose, though, is punishable by death.
There are three reasons.
1) If you don't do it now, you probably never will. Novel writing is mostly a "one day" event. As in "One day, I'd like to write a novel." Here's the truth: 99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It's just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists. The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away all those self-defeating worries and START. Once you have the first five chapters under your belt, the rest will come easily. Or painfully. But it will come. And you'll have friends to help you see it through to 50k.
2) Aiming low is the best way to succeed. With entry-level novel writing, shooting for the moon is the surest way to get nowhere. With high expectations, everything you write will sound cheesy and awkward. Once you start evaluating your story in terms of word count, you take that pressure off yourself. And you'll start surprising yourself with a great bit of dialogue here and a ingenious plot twist there. Characters will start doing things you never expected, taking the story places you'd never imagined. There will be much execrable prose, yes. But amidst the crap, there will be beauty. A lot of it.
3) Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.
Everyone participating in NaNoWriMo gets a little mini-email program built into their user account. It's called "NaNoMail," and it allows you to send private messages to other participants without having to know their actual email address. You'll see a "Check and Send NaNoMail" link on your Author Profile page.
NaNoMail is turned on by default. To make it so participants can't send you NaNoMail, just sign in, then head to My NaNoWriMo-->Edit User Settings and uncheck the box marked "Allow Private Messages."
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
And the 50,000-word goal is a threshold, not necessarily a stopping place. Reaching 50k and realizing you still have a lot of wrapping up to do is a good thing---it gives you something to come back and work on later.
Absolutely. Validation simply confirms that you have crossed the 50,000-word mark. You can continue to add to your word count in the usual fashion until 11:59:59 PM, local time, on November 30th.
Word counters rarely agree with each other, and there is a good chance there will be a discrepancy between our counter and the one on your word processor. Some people gain words and others lose them. We'll have the official word counter available before the end of the challenge (in My NaNoWriMo- > Novel Info) where you can copy & paste your current draft for our count.
Unfortunately, the two sites are not connected at this time, so you'll need to register separate accounts for each. Hopefully next year you will only need to register one account for both sites.
No, unfortunately you will need to sign up separately on both sites. Feel free to use the same username and password on both, though.
Nope! Just click "User Login" and enter your existing user name and password. That’s it!
If you try to create a new account and you get a message that says “Address and/or user name have already been taken,” it’s because you are already registered.
Returning participants should not click on the "Sign Up Now" option, as you will create a new account and that's not what you want to do!
No problem! All you need to proceed is the email address that you signed up with. Go to the login page and enter your email address in the lost password form. The following will happen:
- A "New Password Request" email will automatically be sent to you within minutes.
- Open the email and click on the link.
- Another "New Password" email will be sent to you that contains both your username and your *new* password. Once you log back in with the new password, you can change your password again to whatever floats your boat.
If you are not receiving confirmation emails from our system, please check your spam folder. If you have a white-list or another way of telling your email system which addresses are not spammers, please add "noreply@nanowrimo.org" to the list.
You will need to start over with a new account.
No, unfortunately you cannot change your username.
No, however we periodically clean up the user list by removing accounts that haven't logged in for more than a year. So eventually your old account will be purged.
Locations can be 64 characters or less.
Signature banners must be no more than 500 pixels wide by 100 pixels high.
Invoke the Luddite Clause!
What you do is write your 50,000 words, then have someone you trust verify that it is, indeed, 50,000 words. Then using something like the Lorem Ipsum generator, submit a file of the exact number of words of your handwritten manuscript to our word count validator.
One of several things might be at work here.
1) Your post is there, but has not refreshed yet. We have a 15 minute site cache to reduce server strain, so wait a while and see if it comes up.
2) Your post was moved. We frequently move threads to more appropriate forums (for example a question about character motivations would be more appropriate in Plot Doctoring than Character and Plot Realism. Some threads may violate our guidelines, or may have comments that violate our guidelines, and we may move it to an administrative forum for review.
You may contact the forums moderator if you have looked in your subscriptions, the forums, or other forums it might be, and can't find it.
The way our content management system works, the more comments a thread has, the more likely they are to bog the site down.
Thanks to some instability at the end of the 2007 season, some very large threads caused system failure, so we are now limiting topics to a maximum of 500 comments. You are welcome to start new threads on the same topic, but to keep this site up and running, we'll have to close the old ones.
Yes, you can change your email address on the Edit Profile page.
Once you're logged in, click "Edit Profile" there at the very top of the the site. There's an option there under "Account Settings" called "Upload Photo."
Click on this link and use the form on the next page to upload your photo.
Photos must by 100x100 pixels or smaller at 72dpi, and must be under 50kb.
You can use any photo editing program (even the Paint program built into Windows) to resize your image.
Participants can post a novel excerpt, synopsis, and book cover of their NaNoWriMo novels by signing in and heading to the My NaNoWriMo page. On the left-hand menu, you'll see an "Edit Novel Info" link.
Novel excerpts are locked October 1-November 1.
To have your profile deleted, please sign into your NaNoWriMo account, and then click on the General Contact form link on our Contact page and send us a message requesting profile deletion.
Being signed in when you send this message confirms your identity as the account-holder with our robots, and prevents people from maliciously requesting the deletion of other participants' accounts.
Because of the way our database and forums are set up, we can delete your profile immediately if all of the following are true:
- You have no posts in the forums of the NaNoWriMo site
- You have no posts in the forums of the Script Frenzy site
If we cannot delete your profile immediately, we can still help by disabling all mail, notifications, and regional affiliations. Your account will then automatically be cleared out when NaNoWriMo relaunches on October 1.
Dropping by the Regional Lounge for your area in the NaNoWriMo forums is a great first step towards meeting up with Wrimos in your area. To see your Regional Lounge, you have to first affiliate with your region by clicking the "My Regions" link from your Author Profile, choosing your region, and clicking the "Join" link. From then on, your Regional Lounge will be visible at the bottom of the Forums.
Many regions have Municipal Liaisons---volunteer chapterheads who organize local writing events. Check your Regional Lounge to see the calendar of events for your area. You can also just post a note in your Regional Lounge inviting fellow participants to join you at a cafe for an impromptu writing session!
If you see something in any forum that you think violates the Terms & Conditions of the site in any way, please flag that post using the "Report" button and a moderator will look into it.
Some display problems and log in issues can be solved by clearing your cookies.
If you are using Internet Explorer on Windows, you can delete all your cookies by selecting 'Internet Options' from the 'Tools' menu, and then clicking the 'Delete Cookies' button.
If you just want to delete the nanowrimo.org cookie, you should be able to find it in the C:\Windows\Cookies or C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Cookies directory.
Please post in the Tech Help & Site Bug Reports Forum if you need cookie removal instructions for another browser.
Some personal firewall products don't play nicely with the built in security features of our site. The easiest way to resolve this problem is to add www.nanowrimo.org to the list of trusted or permitted sites in your personal firewall settings.
If you are using Norton Internet Security, or Norton Personal Firewall, please follow these instructions to add nanowrimo to the permitted list:
- Open NIS/NPF
- Click on "Privacy Control", then click the yellow "Configure" button in the right-hand sidebar.
- Click "Advanced"
- Click "Add Site" and type "www.nanowrimo.org" in the dialog box that appears
- In both the Global Settings and User Settings boxes, uncheck the boxes, and change the settings to "Permit"
- Click "OK" and close NIS/NPF
(Thanks to RedBearOC for these instructions!)
If you are using Internet Explorer, you may also need to add www.nanowrimo.org to the Trusted Sites list in IE:
- Go to Tools> Internet Options> Security Tab
- Click on the green checkmark (Trusted Sites)
- Click on the Sites button to see the list of trusted sites
- Another dialogue box comes up to allow you to add www.nanowrimo.org
(Thanks to Cybele for these instructions!)
During times of high site traffic, NaNo HQ will disable the "Authors Search" in order to speed up the site. Have no fear, you will be able to search for your favorite Wrimo authors shortly.
Broswers are too different and too numerous for us to test and support every possible browser option. We decide which browsers to support based on a couple of criteria. First, we check our site logs and make sure that we support the most popular browsers. Next, we want to make sure that we support at least one free browser on each Operating System.
We test the site on the following browsers:
-Internet Explorer 6 and 7
-Firefox 3 and 2 (Windows and Macintosh)
-Safari 2
We do not support other browsers, although things will probably work just fine on most of them.
After a minimum donation of $10, you'll get your very own halo to show off on our forums. We try to add these as soon as possible, but sometimes it takes a little while, so please be patient with us.
Heck yes! Again this year we have a tie-in with Firstgiving.com, which will make it really easy to get sponsors, with all funds going to National Novel Writing Month and our Young Writers Program. Even better: We'll send you donor goodies at whatever your cumulative fundraising level is for November.
You can find many more details about the program and how it works on our Author Sponsorship page under Our Programs.
National Novel Writing Month is a project of the Office of Letters and Light, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California. All donations made to National Novel Writing Month---in the form of cash and in-kind donations of helicopters and lavish chocolate fountains---are tax-deductible.
If you work for a sizable company, chances are good that your employer will match your donation to National Novel Writing Month. Companies that have generously matched donations to NaNoWriMo in the past include Microsoft, Adobe, Google, IBM, Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, Air Products and Chemicals Inc., Sallie Mae, and EnCana. Ask your HR manager for more information.
Our complete information for corporate matching gifts is:
The Office of Letters and Light
2101 Telegraph Ave, Suite A
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 628-0327
Tax ID: 65-1282653
Yes. We're absolutely thrilled to get donations by check! Please make your check payable to "National Novel Writing Month."
Our mailing address is:
National Novel Writing Month
2101 Telegraph Ave, Suite A
Oakland, CA 94612 USA
Things to include with your check:
- Your NaNoWriMo Username (so we can put a donor halo on your profile)
- How you'd like to be credited on our Brought To You By page (real name, pen name, organization name, anonymous, etc.)
- (For $25 and higher donations) The best mailing address for us to use when sending you your thank-you goodies.
- (For $250 and higher donations) What - if any - website you'd like to have your name on the Brought to You By page linked to.
- (For $500 and higher donations) What - if any - name we should use when heralding your generosity on our WrimoRadio broadcast.
It will likely take us approximately two weeks from the time we get your check to get your esteemed name up on our site, and get your thank-you treats in the mail to you.
Checks in foreign currencies are also welcome!
Absolutely. All donations, regardless of national origin, will be loved and respected here at NaNo headquarters. Our bank charges us $5 for every foreign check deposited, though, so if you are sending a check in a foreign currency we ask that its value be over US $5.
While generous, dedicated volunteers do perform a number of important NaNo-duties, we rely on a part-time staff of paid employees for most of the core work of organizing and faciliating the event. Interested in working for NaNoWriMo either as a staff member or volunteer? We'll post all job openings on our Help Wanted page.
Yes, we ship internationally! When you place an order at our store and enter your address, you'll see international shipping options which will calculate the shipping costs for you.
Maybe! Some areas already have high-functioning, monstrously encouraging MLs who have spent the last three or four NaNoWriMos honing their cheerful whip-cracking skills to an Olympic level. Other areas are ML-less, and could really use someone with a little organizational moxie. To check out the regions that have MLs, visit the ML Contact Form; the regions that are already covered are listed in the drop down menu. If your region is not covered, fill out the Prospective ML Questionnaire and send it in.
Please feel free to get in touch and tell us more about what you do, and how it can benefit NaNoWriMo participants.
Absolutely! We've put together a Media Kit stuffed with useful information about getting in touch with participants and other journalistic FAQs. After you've read it, please get in touch and let us know what we can do to help you with your article.
If you are using Microsoft Word it is very easy to scramble your novel in a way that will not affect its word count.
- Open the file and make a new copy of your novel using 'Save As...'
- Open the Find and Replace dialog box (Edit -> Replace).
- Click the "More" button to expand the box.
- Check the "Use Wildcards" checkbox.
- In the "Find What" field, put this: [a-zA-Z0-9] (include the square brackets, no spaces before or after)
- In the "Replace With" field, put this: a
- Click "Replace All"
- Save the scrambled file as a text file, and upload away!
The procedure for Open Office is essentially the same, except that Open Office refers to 'Regular Expressions' instead of 'Wildcards'. (Thanks to Peter Dudley for this advice!)
You can get the same effect in a more cumbersome way by just doing a find-and-replace on every letter in the alphabet, one letter at a time. Open the find-and-replace interface on your word processing program and tell it to replace every "b" in your story with an "a," and every "c" with an "a," then every "d" with an "a." And so on.
