NaNoWriMo Replacements
Tuesday, October 21st, 2025 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizvogelSo, November's coming, and I'm thinking it would be good to take the twice-NaNo-project novel (Apocollapse) and use a NaNo-like thing to get it bloody finished. I could simply set myself a goal for November, but there are a plethora of NaNo-replacements out there, and I am tempted to sign up with one.
So I'm rounding up links here, mostly for my own reference but others are welcome to use, or to suggest more.
- AbsoluteWrite has the November Novel challenge, in which you write 60K of a novel during the month. That's 2000 words a day, folks. (Because NaNo's 50K wasn't insane enough, I guess?)
- There's Thirty 30K, with the less intimidating goal of, you guessed it, 30K words in November (aka 1000 words/day). This sounded pretty cool in the Brandon Sanderson vid I heard about it from, but there seems to be no way to get a taste of the site/process without creating an account.
- Chris Baty, the originator of NaNoWriMo, has lent his name to NaNo 2.0. There are... issues... around this, some of which I'll let this reddit thread go into so I don't have to.
- This one, Novel November, I happened across... somewhere. It looks like not a bad structure, but very very beta and with almost no participants yet. (That being the biggest challenge for any replacement: much of old NaNo's appeal hinged on the vast number of participants, and no start-up is going to be able to replicate that out of the gate.) Despite the name, this is not to be confused with Novel November by ProWritingAid, which is just, ewww.
There are lots more floating around out there, I'm sure. (https://fic.fan/sitenews/31 and https://www.o2wchallenge.com/november-challenge came up in a quick search; none of this constitutes an endorsement.)
So far I'm most likely to try to AW one -- not that I need an additional 10K, ghod no, but I'm already on AW and it seems like the most active community of those I've investigated. What I really want is that bloody progress chart from pre-f'd-up NaNo (not a progress bar, please note, but an actual chart, which I can replicate in Excel but theirs was more fun and of course public). The public accountability of potentially failing in front of a lot of other people is motivating for me, so just declaring it here doesn't quite do the trick. (Though I'm sure all three of you who read this would either cheer or point and laugh, as appropriate!)
If you know of another November novel writing challenge that's worth investigating, let me know in the comments.
So I'm rounding up links here, mostly for my own reference but others are welcome to use, or to suggest more.
- AbsoluteWrite has the November Novel challenge, in which you write 60K of a novel during the month. That's 2000 words a day, folks. (Because NaNo's 50K wasn't insane enough, I guess?)
- There's Thirty 30K, with the less intimidating goal of, you guessed it, 30K words in November (aka 1000 words/day). This sounded pretty cool in the Brandon Sanderson vid I heard about it from, but there seems to be no way to get a taste of the site/process without creating an account.
- Chris Baty, the originator of NaNoWriMo, has lent his name to NaNo 2.0. There are... issues... around this, some of which I'll let this reddit thread go into so I don't have to.
- This one, Novel November, I happened across... somewhere. It looks like not a bad structure, but very very beta and with almost no participants yet. (That being the biggest challenge for any replacement: much of old NaNo's appeal hinged on the vast number of participants, and no start-up is going to be able to replicate that out of the gate.) Despite the name, this is not to be confused with Novel November by ProWritingAid, which is just, ewww.
There are lots more floating around out there, I'm sure. (https://fic.fan/sitenews/31 and https://www.o2wchallenge.com/november-challenge came up in a quick search; none of this constitutes an endorsement.)
So far I'm most likely to try to AW one -- not that I need an additional 10K, ghod no, but I'm already on AW and it seems like the most active community of those I've investigated. What I really want is that bloody progress chart from pre-f'd-up NaNo (not a progress bar, please note, but an actual chart, which I can replicate in Excel but theirs was more fun and of course public). The public accountability of potentially failing in front of a lot of other people is motivating for me, so just declaring it here doesn't quite do the trick. (Though I'm sure all three of you who read this would either cheer or point and laugh, as appropriate!)
If you know of another November novel writing challenge that's worth investigating, let me know in the comments.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-Oct-22, Wednesday 11:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-Oct-23, Thursday 03:39 pm (UTC)"We should start something new, not in November, and not associated with NaNo as it was before. Something like "International Words for Authors" (InWo = pronounced 'in-woah') or "International Spring Creators" (InSpiRe = pronounced 'inspire'). And think of it more as a gathering. InSpiRe Gathering would take place during the spring months: March, April, May for the northern hemisphere and September, October, November for the southern hemisphere. And people would strive to write, be it a novel, novella, collection of poems or essays, etc. And not 50,000 words, but for 3 months, 100,000 words."