NaNo 2.0 Lexicon
1667 – The magic number of words required to write each day in November to reach the original goal of 50,000 words.
Badges – Fun downloadable icons that share information about you and your writing journey. There are three types:
- Writer badges that describe the type of writer you are
- Milestone badges for sharing what you have accomplished so far
- Experience badges that describe what else you did during the challenge.
You can find all of our badges here.
Camp NaNoWriMo – An event usually held in April and July where individual small groups of friends joined together to write something new or revise their nano-novel from November.
Chris Baty – The original founder of NaNoWriMo and a volunteer with NaNo 2.0. Here’s his bio.
Epilogue party – A party held after November where writers can socialize with other writer friends (writing an actual epilogue is optional).
Kick-off party – An in-person or virtual party held before November 1 to help everyone find writer friends, socialize, and prepare for the challenge.
Municipal Liaison or ML – Historically, these were volunteers who ran in-person and virtual events for all the participants who aligned with their geographical area.
NaNo 2.0 – Us! See what we do and who we are.
NaNoer – A nickname for a writer participating in the challenge.
NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month, also the original organization that ran the “50K in 30 days” challenge.
Pantser – A writer who shows up to the blank page and just starts typing by the seat of their pants. Organization comes in revision.
Plantser – Someone who both plots and writes by the seat of their pants.
Plotter – Someone who plots out what they are going to write using tools like outlining, etc.
Rebel – In the olden days, this was a writer who wanted to participate, but who did not want to write 50K in 30-days, and instead came up with their own challenge.
Regions – Historically, this meant the geographical regions a writer could join for in-person meet-ups or find virtual writer friends.
Swag – Previously, this meant branded merch a writer could buy to support the original nonprofit. Here, this means all the free stuff such as badges, winner certificates, etc.
TGIO party – The “Thank Goodness It’s Over party,” held in-person or online after Nov. 30th, to celebrate the end of NaNoWriMo.
Validator – Historically, a writer would upload a text file of their novel and have the website count and verify that the writer made their 50K goal. Our newer version allows for either word count or hours edited.
Winners certificate – A pdf that a writer can download to certify they have successfully completed their writing challenge. Certificates for November 2025 are now available.
Word crawl – Another type of party where writers go from place to place, write their minimum, socialize a bit, and move on. This can be in person, or online.
Wordcount padding – When the seconds are ticking away, and a writer is only a few hundred words away. To ensure victory, the writer can do two things: 1) convert all their contractions like don’t and won’t into two words (do not and will not); and 2) expand all descriptions down to the most ridiculous detail.
Word sprints – A timed event where writers write as fast and furiously as they can. The person with the most handwritten words and the writer with the most typed words sometimes wins a prize. We will be running virtual sprints this year on our Bluesky account.
Word tracker – Anything used to keep track of a writer’s word count. It can be a paper download, an Excel spreadsheet, or electronic tracker. Check out our tracker collection.
Word war – When two groups challenge each other and add up all the words written by the members of each group. The group with the most words is declared the winner. Historically, both sides then send each other care packages of goodies to share at in-person events.
Write-in – Either in-person or virtual events where people write in parallel while cheering each other on.
Wrimo – Another nickname for writers who participate in National Novel Writing Month.
Writing buddy – Friends who decide to write together (physically or virtually) for mutual support and accountability.
Young Novelist Challenge – A collection of materials that support teachers who want to get their students involved in a modified challenge based on age. See our NaNo 2.0’s free, downloadable resources.