What Is NaNoWriMo? Its History, How It Works and Doing It Now

For twenty-five Novembers, hundreds of thousands of people tried to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Most of them did not finish. A great many of them finished something for the first time in their lives, and a few of those drafts became books you have probably read.

The organisation that ran it is gone, but the idea never belonged to an organisation in the first place. Here is where it came from, how it works, why it ended, and how to do it yourself this year.

How it started

In July 1999 a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay Area, Chris Baty, talked twenty friends into writing a novel in a month. Not because any of them had a great book in them. As Baty put it, they wanted to write novels "for the same dumb reasons twentysomethings start bands".

The target came from a rough count of the shortest novel on his shelf, which, the story goes, was Brave New World. That gave them 50,000 words. Six of the twenty-one made it.

The next year Baty moved the event to November, "to more fully take advantage of the miserable weather". 140 people signed up and 29 finished. By 2001 it was 5,000. Then it stopped being a group of friends and became an institution:

• 2004: a Young Writers Program for schools, where students set their own word goals.
• 2006: a nonprofit, The Office of Letters and Light, to run it.
• 2011: Camp NaNoWriMo, the same idea in other months (later April and July) with goals you chose yourself.
• 2022: more than 400,000 participants.

Along the way it produced real books. Water for Elephants, The Night Circus, Cinder, Fangirl and Wool all began as November drafts.

What it is actually about

The rules mattered less than the permission they gave.

Most people who want to write a novel never finish a draft, and the reason is rarely time. More often it's the editor in their head, the voice that rereads yesterday's chapter and finds it wanting, and rewrites it, and never gets to chapter four. NaNoWriMo's answer was blunt: there is no time for that voice. At 1,667 words a day you cannot afford to polish. You can only go forward.

That changes what a draft is for. It stops being a test of your talent and becomes raw material, something you will fix later, because you now have something to fix. Quantity, for one month, is allowed to beat quality. A finished bad draft is worth more than a perfect first chapter, because you can revise the one and only admire the other.

The second ingredient was company. Write-ins in cafés and libraries, forum threads at two in the morning, a word-count graph you could compare with a friend's. Writing a novel is solitary work, but in November you did it alongside everyone else.

How it works

The challenge is simple enough to fit on an index card:

Writers sorted themselves into planners, who spent October building an outline, and pantsers, who started on the first with a premise and a name. Both work. The people who struggled were usually the ones who planned so carefully that the draft felt like filling in a form, or who planned nothing and stalled in week two.

Why the organisation ended

The last two years were hard. In 2023 a moderation scandal in the forums ended with the forums frozen and the board admitting the staff had "overpromised and underdelivered". In 2024 the organisation published a statement saying that "the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones". For a community built on the joy of writing your own words, that landed badly. Board members resigned and sponsors left.

On 31 March 2025 the nonprofit announced it was closing, citing years of financial trouble and "community vitriol". The challenge itself carried straight on: writers who had done it for a decade simply did it again, alone or with friends, and new events grew in its place, such as ProWritingAid's Novel November, which 68,000 writers joined that year.

For anyone doing it now, the lesson is that the website was never required: you need thirty days, a number, and a reason to keep going.

What 50,000 words is, and isn't

It is a draft, and usually not a finished novel: most adult fiction runs longer, and the length that fits your genre may be nearer 80,000 or 90,000 words. A November draft is the first two thirds of a book written fast, or a complete short novel written roughly.

That's fine. The challenge solves the hardest problem in fiction, which is the blank middle. It does not solve December, when you open the file and see what you made. Plan for that too: rest for a week or two, then revise in passes, structure first and sentences last.

How to run your own thirty days

• Prepare in October, lightly. A premise, a protagonist who wants something, an ending you're aiming at, and a dozen scenes you're excited to write. A loose outline is a map, not a contract.
• Protect the daily number, not the daily hours. 1,667 words is about an hour for most people once they stop editing. If your days are full, the same rules as writing around a job apply: a fixed slot beats a free afternoon.
• Bank words early. The first weekend is the easiest time to get ahead, and every writer needs a cushion for the day life takes.
• Never reread. Keep a running list of "fix later" notes instead: her brother's name changes in chapter six, the storm needs foreshadowing. Then keep going.
• When you stall, skip. Write the scene you want to write, not the next one in order. If it's worse than that, here is what to do about the block.
• Tell someone. A friend with the same target is worth more than any amount of willpower.

Doing NaNoWriMo in Narrale

Narrale has a NaNoWriMo template built for exactly this. Start a new story with it and you get:

• The challenge set up for you. A 50,000-word target, a deadline thirty days out, a daily goal of 1,667 words, and five empty chapters to start in. The thirty days run from the day you create the story, so create it on 1 November, or run your own challenge in April or July, as Camp did.
• A page that answers one question: am I on pace? The Challenge tab shows the day you're on, your words today, the pace you now need, and where you stand against par, the line you'd be on writing 1,667 words every day. There's a chart of your words against that line, a calendar of all thirty days, your streak, a projected finish, milestones on the way, and a dare each day: a small prompt to write around, if it helps.
• No editor in the room. While the challenge runs, the editing phase stays out of sight. The template's own description says it: write, don't edit.
• An honest count. Only the words you add count towards the day. Cutting a paragraph never takes words off your total, and an imported manuscript never counts as November's writing.
• Company, if you want it. Start a writing group from the Challenge tab and share its code. Each member joins with one of their own NaNoWriMo stories and sees everyone's progress, daily words and streaks, and the draft itself of anyone who chooses to share it.
• A certificate when you win. Reach 50,000 and the Challenge tab offers a certificate drawn from your own numbers. It's made in your browser and stored nowhere, so download it.

When the thirty days end, or on the day you pass 50,000, the story becomes an ordinary novel again. The editing phase returns, the Challenge tab stays as a record of the month, and everything you need for December is where it always was: the Story Bible, the editorial lenses, and Story Intelligence to tell you what you actually wrote. None of it writes for you; the words in a Narrale draft are yours, which is what the month is for.

The challenge, the writing groups and the certificate are free on every plan. Narrale has no connection to the former NaNoWriMo organisation; we just think the idea is too good to let go.

So pick a premise, clear an hour a day, and start the month in Narrale.