Young Writers Society

This will be my first year in NaNoWriMo, and one thing's been bugging me. You don't have to finish your novel, right? I might only be halfway through my story when November is done, although I still hope to beat the word count goal with that.

Hey, Ender. Although NaNoWriMo in November has a pretty set "write a novel in a month" (or 50k words) goal, Camp NaNoWriMo in July is a bit more easy-going, setting your own goals and trying to meet your daily word count goal.

A couple quotes taken from the "Camp NaNo: Post your plots" board:

Wondering what it is? It's like NaNoWriMo but in July - write as many words of your novel as you like in a month!

To clarify, in Camp NaNo you can actually set your own word count! You can stick to 50,000 words, or do something smaller or something even bigger!

So, yeah. Take out of it what you wish. I'm taking part in it and my final goal is 15,500, which certainly is quite a bit less than 50k. And some others are striving for 50k. So it's totally up to you. Hope this helped!

-Lefty

Yes, I am doing camp. However, I want to be prepared for the actual event, and this question's been nagging at me. I'm not asking about the word count, I'm wondering if I have to finish the novel by the end of the month.

Also, can I rewrite my Camp story for the event in November?

Oh dear, this is an old question.

1: You don't have to finish your novel to win! You just have to hit the 50k word mark.

2: In order to win NaNoWriMo, you can't use or rewrite any previously-written material. Everything you write must be part of a new (not necessarily standalone) project. (But that's going by the site's rules. A lot of people make up their own kind of rules for NaNo, and do it "unofficially", so they rewrite or continue other projects, even though that's technically not allowed in the actual thing.)

Basically, in order to win NaNo you can do whatever you want, as long as you're satisfied -- just, if you want to win it by the site's rules, you can't rewrite.