FAQ

What is NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) is a free, worldwide writing challenge that takes place every November.

Many participants tackle the classic NaNoWriMo challenge of drafting a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, but the event welcomes all sizes and styles of projects.

Whatever you’re working on, you’ll find a friendly community offering lots of encouragement along your writing journey.

What is NaNo 2.0?

NaNo 2.0 is a small group of long-time NaNoWriMo champions and enthusiasts, including NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty. We came together after the official nonprofit closed in 2025 to support people taking part in the challenge.

Are you the official NaNoWriMo organization?

Nope! We’re just one of many groups helping writers explore their imaginations in November.

What can I write?

Anything you want! Novels, short stories, memoirs, scripts, fanfic, poems, Ph.D. dissertations, and more are all great. You can even use NaNoWriMo to make progress on that novel-revision you’ve been procrastinating on for years.

Where do I register on your site? How do I post a writing goal and track my words?

We’re keeping things very simple this first year, so we don’t have any sign-ups or profiles. Instead, we encourage you to broadcast your November writing goal on social media, use a tracker of your choice, and explore one of the many writing communities that are joining us in supporting NaNoWriMo authors this fall.

Wherever you’re writing, we’ll be with you every step of the way. We’ll be sending out pep talks, posting week-by-week advice on our blog, offering support and creative mayhem on Instagram and Bluesky, and hosting open writing sessions on our word sprints account. We’ll also be handing out highly collectable winner’s badges and certificates in late November to everyone who meets their writing goals. The value of a single NaNo 2.0 winner’s certificate was recently appraised at over $3,000,0000 by Sotheby’s auction house, so you definitely don’t want to miss these.

How do I win NaNoWriMo? Are there prizes?

To win, just pick a writing goal and then reach it by November 30th. If you’d like one of our suitable-for-framing winner’s certificates and badges, be sure to validate your victory using the NaNo 2.0 Validator. You can use it on the honor system or have the Validator count your words. Either way, none of your data or novel text is shared with us—it all stays in your browser and remains totally private to you.

Can you tell me more about the magical NaNo 2.0 Validator?

The Validator is a browser-operated page that dispenses milestone badges to participants and a special set of winner goodies to people who have met their NaNoWriMo writing goal. It works for both writing and revision projects.

If you’d like to check your official word count, you can paste your novel into the Validator for counting. Nothing you type or paste is sent anywhere—it all stays in your browser and remains private to you. We then use javascript functions to do the word counting and generate the customized winner’s certificate for you to download.

Can I edit instead of write for NaNo?

Yes! Traditionally, NaNo began as a way to motivate writers to complete a 50,000+ word novel in 30 days, but it is certainly possible for writers who have a novel draft to use NaNo to motivate themselves to edit their novel. Many people measure their editing (for NaNo) in terms of hours spent editing. Some people who would like to convert their editing effort to an equivalent word count might use a “rule of thumb” of an hour of editing being roughly equivalent to 1000 words. Your own translation metric may vary.

Has anyone ever published their NaNoWriMo novel?

Yes! You can absolutely use the deadline and community to help you revise an existing manuscript. Some editors try to revise a certain number of chapters in November, and others aim to log a specific number of hours. Others convert their editing efforts to an equivalent word count, estimating, for example, that an hour of editing is roughly equivalent to 1000 words.

What happened to the old NaNoWriMo nonprofit and websites?

The nonprofit ran out of money and closed its doors in 2025. None of the NaNo 2.0 crew were working or volunteering for NaNoWriMo at that point, but our outsider’s take is that it was partly due to a tough fundraising landscape and partly due to a series of unpopular decisions by management.

We saw a few key issues that diminished community trust…

Lack of forums moderators. The message boards on NaNoWriMo.org were vast, and there weren’t enough well-trained moderators to oversee everything. The moderation issues came to a head in 2023 when a moderator was accused of posting an inappropriate link in a teen forum. She was reportedly fired, but communication around what happened and what was being done about it wasn’t clear, leaving people feeling like online safety wasn’t being prioritized.
Loss of longtime staff and volunteers. A new leadership team took over in January 2024, and a mass exodus of long-serving staff followed. The new leaders also sidelined the amazing 1000-person volunteer network of Municipal Liaisons, many of whom had been serving as local ambassadors for decades.
An odd defense of AI. The new team also added a note to the NaNoWriMo FAQ warning people that concerns about AI could be seen as classist and ableist. The statement drew understandable backlash from the writing community and caused many authors on the advisory board to leave.

What is your AI stance?

NaNoWriMo is, and has always been, a wild joyride through the human imagination. We hope you’ll give yourself the gift of creating without technical intervention in November. All the words and images on this site were created by humans (except for the ones you don’t like, which were made by Chris’ cats).

Can you help me retrieve something from the old NaNoWriMo site?

We wish. We had stuff in there too. But we’re unaffiliated with the old organization, and we don’t have access to any of the data.

How can you guarantee the safety of minors who use this site?

NaNo 2.0 is committed to the safety of all participants, especially its younger members. Our site has no accounts, no forums, and no private messages. We clearly mark external links, and you can report any content concerns through our contact form.

Are there plans to create a more robust event site with more functionality down the line?

Our goal is to keep things simple and just provide links, pep, and other writing resources. We’re heartened to see that there are a lot of fully fledged NaNoWriMo-related sites springing up that already do a bunch of things the old site did. We’ll be profiling some of them this fall on our blog.

Are you taking donations?

Our team has all the project costs covered. Thank you for asking!

How do I find other participants?

There are a bunch of sites, communities, and classes where NaNoWriMo participants will be writing together in the fall. We’ve profiled some on our blog, and you can find links to regional groups on this resource site run by former NaNoWriMo volunteers.

On social media, it’s easy to find your people by searching the #nanowrimo hashtag. Most social platforms also have fun, timed writing sessions called “word sprints" happening in November. We’ll be hosting some on our Bluesky word sprints account. We hope you’ll join us for one!

Did I hear you’re selling writer swag?

No—sorry for the confusion. “Writer swag” is the term we use for our free, downloadable badges and certificates.