The annual National Novel Writing Month program(NaNoWriMo) challenged children and adults worldwide to commit to structured novel writing in November to help them reach their creative literary potential.

Participants are tasked to create and write their own 50,000 word novels by the end of the month. To assist participants, NaNoWriMo hosts local writer meetups, provides feedback and encouragement from staff and professional authors, supplies prep resources for novel-crafting and time management and runs an online forum of writers, all free of charge.

“A program like [NaNoWriMo], I think, just focuses people,” English teacher Nicholas Manjoine said. “There’s a definite end and beginning to it; there’s a specific rule, and in the end, it probably doesn’t matter how good the novel is, but the whole idea is to just practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.”

NaNoWriMo started in 1999, and became a non profit in 2005.Supported by charitable donations, the NaNoWriMo organization also sells its own merchandise to fund its program. The Amazon Literary Partnership awarded NaNoWriMo a $25,000 grant on Nov. 6.

325,142 participants, with 81,311 students and educators in the Young Writers Program, took part in NaNoWriMo in 2014. Since its establishment, 324 novels written as part of NaNoWriMo were officially published, and 155 NaNoWriMo novels were self-published.

“It is developing the practice of being a writer, which mostly means writing every day whether you feel like it or not,” English teacher Christopher Hurshman said. “That is a little bit different from how most Harker students approach writing in their classes, which is basically you have a deadline, [and] you write the night before that deadline.”

Sophomore Emily Chen participated in NaNoWriMo two years ago at her previous middle school because of a class requirement and her enjoyment of writing.

“It was a very stressful experience, because we had to reach a certain word count for the junior NaNoWriMo writers, so, like a lot of my fellow classmates, we crammed towards the end of the month, like the 28th and 29th, but it was really fun,” she said. “It was a really nice experience and I liked it.”

The event has programs other than the National Novel Writing Month in November, such as the Young Writers, Come Write In and “Now What?” Months.

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on November 20, 2015.