We’re two months away from the start of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and we’re looking for four writers to blog about their experiences here, on the Writers & Artists website.
NaNoWriMo is the month where, if you’re a writer and up for a challenge, you’ll be giving up your free time, shutting the world out and devoting yourself completely to your writing. From 1st to the 30th November, you’ll be joining hundreds of thousands of writers all over the world as you work to complete the first draft of a novel - you have to reach 50,000 words - in just one month.
As a writer, you’ve probably spent days agonising over that paragraph you just couldn’t get right, so you’ll appreciate that 50,000 words in one month is a very big mountain to climb. We want to help you stay motivated during that month and, with that in mind, we’d like to document the NaNoWriMo journeys of four writers, in a series of blogs.
We’ll feature six guest blog posts from you, each including links to your personal blog and Twitter profiles – an introductory one, telling us about you, your work and your NaNoWriMo story, four blogs during the challenge ( one each week and no more than 600 words, as we don’t want to keep you from your manuscript for too long) and a final blog reflecting on your experience. For examples of the kind of thing we're looking for, you can take a look at these blogs written after the first week of the challenge last year.
All you need to do is send them to us and we’ll host them on the Writers’ & Artists’ blog. At the end of the month, all four writers will receive a copy of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2015 to help them take that next step – editing, and then getting the manuscript published!
To enter, all you have to do is send us an email at writersandartists@bloomsbury.com, with a short paragraph on your novel idea and why you’d like to be one of the four writers taking part. The deadline is on Monday 20th October at midnight. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to get in touch.
For full details of the challenge, take a look at the NaNoWriMo website. Sign up and you can update your word count daily, track your progress and stay motivated with encouragement from the organisers, other writers and live events.
To take a look at our coverage of NaNoWriMo 2013, take a look here.
Wow, now that's a challenge for an amateur. I've written 57k words of my novel since February this year, so my output is way behind what's needed here!
But hey... 2500 words per day assuming weekends off for research and family time. Sounds like a great way to kick-start the commitment to getting into the writing flow. Let me just think of which writing ideas I could possibly carry off...
Mark.
50,000 words in a month! It must be easier to walk across water backwards in diving boots.
This sounds like a great idea. I would be very interested to read the blog posts from the NaNoWriMoers.
On a personal note, I will be doing my third annual NaNoWriMo 10% challenge. 5,000 words of polished prose is always a good addition to my work-in-progress. :)