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What Agents Say About National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

What Agents Say About National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

What Agents Say About National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

For years I have heard about National Novel Writing Month and thought it might be something I would enjoy, but this is the first year I have researched the event. As I began considering participating, a million questions drilled into my brain seemingly all at once, so immediately I went to the National Novel Writing Month website for answers.

There I found great information about how NaNoWriMo started and the spirit of the event. Whether you have never written a novel before or have published works in the past, you are invited to be a part of the contest. The idea is that the event motivates you to write a novel (first draft anyway). You have to reach 50,000 words to be considered a winner.

Here is the breakdown of the rules directly taken from the How NaNoWriMo works page on their website:

Occasionally, participants write in to ask about the rules of the event. We don’t have many! But because we’ve found that creativity is often heightened by constraints (and communities bolstered by shared goals) we have evolved a handful of rules over the years. The rules state that, to be an official NaNoWriMo winner, you must…
  • Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
  • Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people’s works).
  • Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you’re writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
  • Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.
  • Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.
  • Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.

What agents say about National Novel Writing Month:

Having gained the above understanding along with plenty of other good information on the NaNoWriMo website, I decided this could be a really great contest for me. Despite my excitement, I wondered if this event should simply be for fun, or if it would be something advantageous to my writing goals of publication. If after writing the novel for NaNoWriMo I were to decide I really like it and want to send it out to agents, would they want to know it was involved in NaNoWriMo? Fortunately, I follow a fantastic blog run by New Leaf Literary & Media, Inc., where the very generous agents answer writer’s questions of all kinds. Naturally, I took my quandaries to them.

So if you have found yourself in the same frame of thinking and would like to know exactly what agents think about NaNoWriMo, here is your answer:

My Questions:
I’ve been considering starting my next novel during NaNoWriMo and participating in the event. I realize the book would need more words than 50,000 and further editing after November . I’ve seen blogs mention agent’s dreading NaNoWriMo, but I’ve seen other sites suggesting NaNoWriMo isn’t a bad thing to have under a writer’s belt. So, what do you say about this? Even if I do it for fun, is it worth mentioning to an agent when the novel is polished or using the certificate on my author site?
 
Agent’s Answer:
NaNoWriMo is great. There’s a great support group and doing it with other writers can be great motivation, and if you really want to get out a first draft, that’s awesome.
 
Agents say they dread NaNo because there are people out there who write their 50K word draft and then query it immediately. As long as you’re revising and incorporating feedback from crit partners and then polishing up you have nothing to fear.
 
However, thousands of people do NaNo, it’s not necessarily something to put in your query. (You can however, totally put their certificate on your site).
A huge thank you to the agents of New Leaf Literary for their time and helpful answer.
Well, I hope this post has been helpful for others. I know it is a relief for me to have a good grasp on how agent’s feel about the contest.

If you are interested in participating, I do recommend you sign up as soon as possible and begin planning your project. If you are looking for a buddy during the event, add me 🙂 This is my username: emilyanng

Here are a couple more fun and helpful resources I’ve come across for NaNoWriMo preparation and participation:
HOW TO PREPARE FOR NANOWRIMO: TO OUTLINE OR NOT TO OUTLINE
NaNoWriMo tips from Veterans
How to plot for NaNoWriMo
Top ten list of things I learned participating in NaNoWriMo

My questions for you:
Do you plan to participate in NaNoWriMo and are you a first-timer like me? If you’re a veteran of the event, what memories, tips and resources can you share?

Keep Imagining Friends,
Emilyann

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Emilyann Allen (pseudonyms include Emilyann Phoenix and Emilyann Girdner) is an American author, artist, and business innovator. In the literary world, she is best known as the creator of the Coloring Novels™ book format and the author of Amazon Best-Seller, Dante Rossetti Award Finalist and Reader’s Favorite 5 Star rated young adult fantasy novel, The Labyrinth Wall (Obsidian Series).

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