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Hi Writer,

You made it to the second week of NaNoWriMo! It’s so great to see you here.

If you’ve hit your writing goals and are on track with your project, I salute you. Keep up the amazing work.    

If you, like me, are behind schedule, I applaud you too. You’re still writing, which means you’re exactly where you need to be. And who doesn’t love a come-from-behind victory? You’re not underperforming, you’re just honoring one of the most beloved story arcs in human history. Well done. 

And now Week Two is upon us. This is when stories bloom in beautiful ways, but it’s also when life’s demands can make writing tough.  

Welcome to NaNo 2.0 Week Two of noveling abandon! Looking for continued support for your writing challenge, be it 50K in 30 days or a rebel project? You’ve come to the right place. This is what the plot bunny has gathered up for you this week: 

We’re wrapping up the first week of November, so we hope that the words are flowing freely and everyone is hitting their goals! Still, we wanted to inspire and encourage you with a new collection of writer badges.

Based on a suggestion by one of our community members, I created this set of badges that you can award yourself after writing specific scenes or in special circumstances. There are badges for betrayals, breakups, first kisses and more. There’s no requirement to collect them all, but we encourage you to be creative and use these badges as inspiration.

Author Rachael Herron has drafted a dozen of her novels during NaNoWriMo, and knows a lot about navigating the twists and turns of a month-long writing adventure. I called her in New Zealand to get her tips for surviving and thriving in the second week of the challenge. 

Welcome to NaNo 2.0 Week One of noveling abandon! Looking for support for your writing challenge, be it 50K in 30 days or a rebel project? You’ve come to the right place. Here’s what we’re cooking up this week: 

Hi Writer,

It’s here! Our month of literary abandon is finally upon us.

My name is Chris Baty. I founded NaNoWriMo in 1999 and ran it for many overcaffeinated years before departing in 2012. Now I’m one of the volunteers working on NaNo 2.0.

I’m also an excited, terrified participant in this year’s challenge. If you, like me, are wondering if you really have the time or talent to tackle a ginormous writing project in November, I have good news for you.

You don’t have to write anything this month.

Nope.

Because your imagination will be taking care of it for you.

Hey all you young scribes, I’ve got good news for you. You already have the most important element you need to write a novel. How do I know that without knowing you? ‘Cause you’re reading this. The most important element is want-to.

That was me when I was young, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I wasn’t a very good student. Parents and teachers didn’t know much about ADD or ADHD (pretty much the same thing) back then, so I thought the reason I couldn’t concentrate was that I wasn’t smart. I had a hard time getting through a story that wasn’t interesting to me, which was true about most of the stories teachers gave me to read in school. But then I discovered when they assigned a story that did interest me, I’d get completely lost in it. I loved writing that made me laugh. I loved writing that made me cry, or get angry.

Then it hit me! I wanted to write stories that made other people feel those things.

Helloooooo Wrimos!

Let’s see if this scenario is familiar to you:

You want to do something… say, write a novel. You go to work all day, then after work you run all your errands, then you come home and maybe have to deal with the exceedingly foul emissions of a very old cat (just me?), then you cook dinner and clean up and send the last email of the day and finally—finally—it’s seven o’clock. 

It’s your time.

Time to write. You promised yourself you would write for one hour every day and get that novel written, and now… here we go!

For all you teachers bringing the joy of NaNoWriMo to your students, we’ve got a guest post from Wyatt Bessing. Wyatt is a writer and educator who has guided middle and high school students through NaNoWriMo since 2012. Today he shares how he uses the “Sparking An Idea” activity from our free Young Novelist Challenge workbooks to help students brainstorm. (Pro tip: this activity also works for adults!)

One of my favorite activities in the workbooks is called “Sparking an Idea.” It’s all about brainstorming, and it has students focus on the concrete task of listing twenty ideas or things, topics or characters that made them feel curious or excited, wonder or awe.

One of the missions nearest and dearest to our hearts here at NaNo 2.0 (besides writing) is sharing as many resources as we can to help others write! And many* of us know** that the most important resource out there is community. That’s why we’ve gathered information on a few communities to share below. 

We know some of these communities well, but don’t have first-hand experience with all of them. We’ve included information on cost and age inclusion for each community, and we encourage you to explore their sites before joining to find what’s right for you. 

There are many writing communities and challenges out there, and we’re excited to spotlight more in the future. Are you part of a community that you’d like to see featured? Let us know!