NaNoWriMo is a great workshop opportunity for YOU! Take advantage!

It's not often that you have a great diversity of people to read your work. I encourage each of you to post as much of your novel as you feel comfortable. The more you post, the more we can help! You don't have to take anyone's suggestions, but it's often helpful to get someone outside of your brain to read your work.

That being said, I also challenge you to make constructive comments to other students. "You're doing great" is encouraging and positive, but it doesn't help us improve our work. Point out sections that may not make sense, or are a little jumbled, or plot or character suggestions. Remember we still have 25 more days of writing! That's a lot of plot!

Everyone's doing a great job! Keep up the great work!

NaNoWriMo News

The site may be a little slow this weekend, with people cramming to get in there. Be patient and try again later if you can't get in!

Wiki Tech Tip - Adding HTML

If you want to insert HTML, in the top toolbar you'll see an Icon that says "insert plugin". Click on that and then "PBWiki Magic", and you'll see the HTML option. You have to wait until you save the whole page for the image to appear. Until you do that you just see a little green box.

So what is NaNoWriMo?

The Young Writers Program of National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your- pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a novel by midnight, November 30. The word-count goal for our adult program is 50,000 words, but our Young Writers Program allows participants who are 17 years old and younger to set reasonable, yet challenging, word-count

goals.

The only thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: you will be writing a lot of strange stuff, and some of it will be just plain bad. But that's a good thing! For 30 days, you get to lock that inner editor in the basement, let your imagination take over, and just create!

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants of all ages are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel.

In 2007, over 100,000 adults participated through our main site, and 14,000 young writers participated through our Young Writers Program.

Check out NaNoWriMo's really cool and fun interactive website!

Join me on the NaNoWriMo Quest!