Carolyn’s Team Pick: National Novel Writing Month

November is National Novel Writing Month. If you’ve ever thought, wow, I’d really like to write a 50,000-word novel in the next 30 days (1,667 words a day) because I think it will be an awesome time, then now would be a good time to sign up and start thinking of a plot (or at least a few good character names and a randomized series of events to string between all the sexual tension) for November 1. Or not! No plot, no problem, hope springs eternal. If you haven’t ever thought that, what is wrong with you. Go now. It is fun and less scary than you think it is.

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Ryan Yates

Ryan Yates was the NSFW Editor (2013–2018) and Literary Editor for Autostraddle.com, with bylines in Nylon, Refinery29, The Toast, Bitch, The Daily Beast, Jezebel, and elsewhere. They live in Los Angeles and also on twitter and instagram.

Ryan has written 1142 articles for us.

9 Comments

  1. Guys you should do it. So much fun.
    I have been since I was a sophomore in high school. The best part is meeting up with all of your local wrimos and having write-ins. For example in my hometown we rented out the back room of a Perkins (only restaurant here open 24hrs) and are having a kick-off word war party. How could you not want to do that?
    Nothing is better than a bunch of writing nerds, I swear.

  2. Omg I want to do this. I wish this was set for a summer break month. But from their website: “Because of the limited writing window, 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.”

    I am in it.

  3. NaNoWriMo is the shit, y’all. Think you can’t write? YOU ACTUALLY CAN. I’ve been doing it for the past three years and so I feel old hat or something.
    However…I kind of have writer’s block this year…so I might be out. But someone else should do it in my place!

  4. I’m doing it for the first time this year. I’m fairly sure that I must be completey insane for doing it, but who cares because I might ACTUALLY write something.

  5. Nano is my favorite thing in the world, and the fact that it’s being endorsed on AS basically completes my life.

  6. HAVE YOU ALL STARTED YET?!
    I’m 558 words in. No real plot yet. Hoping it will come to me.
    So excited to see this on here! I have been participating for a few years, but I’ve never won. I hope this will be the year…

  7. YES I STARTED OMG SO EXCITING. I got a little over excited and outlined the whole thing out on my phone over the weekend.

    I actually had a first-day-of-middle-school-esque dream about this, in which it was Tuesday and I realized I’d forgotten to start on Monday, and then it was all ruined and I may as well have waited until next year.

    But no I got my 1667 words in today.

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