Young Writers Society

If you're not familiar with NaNo (which has started popping up around the site recently), take a quick glance at the official National Novel Writing Month website.

If you've participated before, it might be easier for you to find your favorite part. If this is your first time around, comment about what you're looking forward to most.

Choose an option in the poll above and comment in the responses below.

October is half over.
#PlanMo is warming up.
And the battle of #NaNo is upon us.

Okay I love NaNo. I checked almost every box before I realized I could only pick two.

I love the camaraderie between everyone as we all attempt to do the very difficult together. Word sprints and word wars in writerfeed pads are what wrote my 6th novel (which turned into a NaNo novel). And I love that it forces me to actually write something and get back in the zone!

Hands down all of it! I won't be doing a full project for it this year, instead trying to finish up my current WIP in its first draft, but I'm still looking forward to it.

Word crawls are also my bae <3

I just have to giggle about the fact that so far no one has said "having a plan." Anyway, I love everything about NaNo, but one of the things I love most is just that feeling of really having a writing community and knowing that writers all over the world are working toward the same goal you are. Writing can be such a solitary pursuit, and NaNoWriMo makes it feel so much less lonely - although now that there are at least casual write-ins around YWS more or less constantly, writing feels a lot less lonely to begin with!

I like setting irresponsible targets that will clearly cause me stress, disrupt my life, interrupt my sleeping and eating pattern, cause me to detach from reality for some significant portion of every day, to an end goal of a badge and a hundred thousand words of nonsense, whilst the people who love and care about me the most cheer me on and support me in my stupidity. It's so wonderfully bizarre =]

@Tenyo how about getting involved in a community working towards a common goal? Learning your limits and how to work on a strict schedule? Learning when you can push yourself and when to back down? Learning how to struggle through the middle part of a novel instead of perfecting the beginning and dreaming of the end?

NaNo is something a lot of people do for fun. Obviously not everyone loves it, nor do they have to, but painting it as some monster and telling people their fun is wrong isn't a way to convince them.

@Carlito and @Vervain
Sorry to put a limit on selecting everything but I didn't want it to get too out of hand before NaNo started. Try to keep that sanity level up for another week or so.

@Blueafrica
I have bets laid down on the one person who is going to show up with a plan.
And the community, the community aspect is one of the best parts of NaNo, that doesn't exist most of the year for novel writers.

@Tenyo
This bot does hope you're being sarcastic and not bashing this time old tradition.

And again to @Vervain, above all else, NaNo is probably meant to be fun. It might hurt a little bit to get to the end but it is overall about the community and the fun aspects.

@PlanBot
No sarcasm intended, nor am I bashing the tradition. This is my fourteenth year doing nano, I started in '05 with a novella. Each year I do it for a different reason and it's a different journey. This year is a particularly hard one.

@Vervain

There are a hundred reasons why people might do nano, fun or not, but I don't believe I implied an opinion on any one of them except my own.

For clarity of my earlier post;

My favourite thing about nano is going all out and doing something other than being productive while people cheer me on. It's a rare thing in my life for people to take interest or support me for putting effort into something that has no formal value. Mostly I get asked about jobs and careers and grades, and other things I don't really care about.

For me, my nano is a monster I choose to fight (which is why I pick such stupidly high targets) instead of all the obligatory monsters that I have to face every day whether I want to or not, and it's one of the few things I feel like I don't have to do alone. It's tough, and exhausting, and usually gets in the way of more important things. Life is sucky and right now and everything is hard, nano is a challenge I choose and it's going to be difficult as hell, but I choose it, and that's what matters to me.

My nano is my monster and I will love it dearly and face it courageously, and probably make a lot of bad life choices along the way. I'll cheer on my friends and nanoing community who also do it for their own reasons and can celebrate their own triumphs regardless of the outcome, and I hope they'll do the same for me.

My favourite thing about nano is making bad choices for an outcome that is irrelevant to the rest of my life, while people who care about me cheer me on.

NaNo was one of my first experiences actually getting involved in a writing community, so although I haven't participated in years, NaNo holds a special place in my heart.