It is the end of an era for writers all over the world.
The non-profit National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) sent notice to users on Monday that it is shutting down as a non-profit. This comes on the heels of some controversy in the past three years, which I will not address in this blog post. I do not know enough details to comment on those situations.
Rather, I would like to focus on my own history with this wonderful writing challenge. While I am sad that it is over, I am appreciative for all of the years of writing challenges I was able to participate in.
The early years
I first heard of NaNoWriMo four days into the 2011 challenge. The website, according to my own knowledge of it, had just undergone a re-design for that year’s challenge.
I walked into Andover State Bank to visit a friend of mine named Andrea. Andrea had served as the student teacher for my high school band in the spring of 2010. We had bonded over a shared love of writing, specifically writing fanfiction, and she mentioned the challenge to me. I hadn’t heard of the challenge, but I committed just enough information to memory and hurried home to find out what I could.
At home, I learned about the challenge of NaNoWriMo: Write a 50,000 word manuscript in a span of 30 days during the month of November. It was already November 4th, when on time Wrimos (NaNo participants) should be at 6,668 words in order to be on track. I had no words written, but a story quickly entered my mind and I started to write, not caring much of the quality of the work; I just wanted to get the words out of me and onto my computer screen.
The end result was my first NaNoWriMo win: a story called Rise to the Top about a journalist and his rise to the top of his career, including his investigation of a murder spree in his home town.
I ended up self-publishing that story and its two related books that were written in 2012 and 2013. My second NaNo challenge was about the aftermath of a school shooting in which the shooter and would-be victim survive.
My third story was a prequel to the first two books that told the backstory of one of the main characters who appeared in the other stories. I self published all three stories, and it’s still possible to buy copies of them (though I don’t recommend it).
The later stories
I took a break from the challenge after 2013. In 2014, I was serving as editor in chief of my college newspaper and had nowhere near enough time to commit to the project. The following two years, I was far too busy with college and career that there was no time to devote to the project.
Then in 2017, I was unemployed. I reread the Harry Potter books. While reading, I started to play with the idea of revisiting a Harry Potter fanfiction of my own. I had originally written the story, A Loyal Friend, in 2011-2012 in the wake of the final movies.
The story, however, always felt incomplete to me. So, I decided to rewrite the story and expand it. In the end, the story went from about 16,000 words to more than 100,000 words by the time I finished rewriting it. I spent two Camp projects (July 2017 and April 2018) and the November 2017 challenge to complete that story.
My next project was another rewrite. When I was a teenager, I had written a Star Wars story that detailed the birth of the Sith. Having enjoyed revisiting my Potter story, I decided to revisit my Star Wars story, which I called Birth of the Sith. I rewrote the entire story for NaNoWriMo 2018.
From 2019 on, not counting 2021, my NaNoWriMo projects have largely been Stranger Things fanfiction projects. In 2019, I wrote an original story called Shipboard Romance, which followed the characters on board a Disney cruise ship, where some of them found love.
In 2020, I combined Stranger Things with the Terminator films. I took the basic plot of the first two Terminator films and stripped away most of the human characters. In their place, I replaced them with the Stranger Things characters. Without speaking too much, Joyce Byers was my Sarah Connor, Jim Hopper was my Kyle Reese, Will and Jonathan Byers both served as my John Connor and so on.
For 2021, I took a completely different course for NaNoWriMo. Rather than write a fictional story, I went non-fiction. And it was about my own life. My reporter’s memoir, which I called Headline Goes Here: A Reporter’s Adventures, served as my project for that year. I also spent at least three camp events working on the manuscript, finally finishing it in July 2024. I don’t have a final word count, but I’m certain it’s my longest manuscript: about 150,000 words.
In 2022, I returned to the world of fanfiction, again combining fandoms. For this project, I took the basic plot of the original Star Wars trilogy and stripped away most of the characters. In their stead were, once again, the Stranger Things characters. El Hopper was my Luke, Will Byers was my Leia and Mike Wheeler was my Han.
The next year, I came back with an original fanfiction story. I wrote E Pluribus Unum, which was a Stranger Things fanfiction that followed the presidential campaign of Karen Wheeler (mother of Mike and Nancy). It also followed the race for Speaker of the House by Joyce Byers. Although an original story, the book Red, White and Royal Blue certainly inspired the story.
For what ended up being my last NaNoWriMo challenge, NaNoWriMo 2024, I had several works that I wrote bits of, although there was one main story. That main story was Nightmares on Elm Street, a legacy sequel story to the original Nightmare on Elm Street film. I’m only midway through that story, and will finish it sometime in the future.
What’s next
Although the non-profit has come to an end, my love of writing will never diminish. I had been planning on participating in Camp NaNoWriMo for April when the news came of the end of the non-profit.
However, I’m still going to spend much of April working on that story. The idea fell into my head a few days ago and has not left since. As you probably have guessed, it is a Stranger Things story. I won’t say much, other than it will contain plot elements from the 1995 film, Twister.
I am disappointed the challenge will no longer happen. I’ve always looked forward to every challenge, and not to be too braggy, I’ve won every challenge.
However, it is somewhat serendipitous that the non-profit is shutting down at this time, at least for me. In December, I wrote enough words for my overall NaNoWriMo word count to be one million words. I won that challenge and my word count stands at the 1 million word mark. It’s kind of cool that my time with the challenge ends on that milestone.
I am going to miss the writing community NaNoWriMo created. I loved tracking the progress of fellow writers, both those I’ve known and complete strangers.
Thank you to NaNoWriMo for allowing all of these stories to be born. The challenge always kind of forced me to write; not that I needed much persuasion to write anyway. As I always say when I write or post on social media about my writing: Onward!
Leave a Reply