Day 10 – The NaNoWriMo Website

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you probably know that NaNoWriMo provides a motivational structure within which you can bang out the draft of a novel in 30 days.

But there’s a lot more to NaNoWriMo. It’s hard to give full treatment to the wealth of features they’ve designed to give support and encouragement to over 100,000 novel writers, all doing the same thing, alone in their writing rooms all over the world.

Start with the fact that NaNoWriMo is all about turning a grueling lonely journey into a joyous collective celebration. Here’s Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo: “We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well.”

This paradox is reflected in the NaNoWriMo website, which takes on 2 jobs:

(1) Supporting you in your personal novel writing effort.

(2) Hooking you up with others, if you wish.

Folding those two jobs into one is an ambitious and elaborate undertaking, and it’s one reason why the NaNoWriMo website isn’t simple or transparent.

Yet if you really want to understand NaNoWriMo, that’s where you’ll want to go. If you know the website, you know NaNoWriMo.

I started to write a detailed breakdown of the site and its features, but it was boring me to death. I don’t know about you, but if we’re talking about a website, I have to see it. Thus the screencast (above).

Unless you’re Internet-phobic, today’s mini-task will be nothing but fun. Just go to the website, sign up (if you haven’t yet) and hang around for a while. Click around. Surf. Explore. I’m hoping my humble (VERY humble) screencast will be, if not a complete guide, at least a raw introduction to the abundant universe of NaNoWriMo.