NaNoWriMo - Day 1

Day 1 - 5th November 2025

It begins. Today is the first day of my National Novel Writing Month Challenge. This blog will document my attempt to write a 50 000 word story in 30 days, though technically it's more like 25 days at this point. That means I have to write approximately 2000 words per day, 83 words per hour, or 1.3 words per minute. When you break it down like that it almost seems doable!

I've always wanted to try this, but never been able to gather the motivation. However, when I saw Toastmasters International had a project for writing a blog, I knew the only subject I could talk about with any degree of authority was creative writing. I'm hoping that it will be a great way to challenge myself and motivate my efforts.

So the only question is, where do I start?

I know the story I want to write, which I will begin outlining in my next blog entry. I can tell you that it will be a fictional story, that it will be a fantasy story, and that it will be a story of an empire in ruins. For now I wanted to briefly explain just what I will be including in this blog.

• Everyday I will provide an update detailing my progress, including my word count, time spent on the project, and a basic summary of what I have written.
• Dialogue and excerpts from the novel will be posted here when appropriate.
• I will explain the thought process behind what I have written, including inspiration, stylistic choices, and the importance of characters and events to the overall narrative. 
• Details of what resources, including websites, articles and tools, that I have found useful.

I also wanted to share some interesting discoveries I have made today while preparing for this project.

Apparently the National Novel Writing Month isn't just something people on the Internet made up some day. It was a nonprofit organisation that was founded on the 1st July 1999 to help promote creative writing around the globe. It started with just 21 participants in its first year, but by 2022 it had 413,295 participants. An impressive number to be sure!

However, even more interesting is how the organisation closed down earlier this year. Apparently there were several controversies that led to this decision. Some moderators on the community forums were accused of child grooming, which is not a good look when you are trying to present yourselves as a friend and ally of young aspiring writers. 

But the real death blow came last year in August 2024, when the organisation released a statement regarding the use of A.I in the NaNoWriMo challenge. It read as follows.

"We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege."

It's understandable that a community of writers and editors would look down on an organisation's attempt to justify the use of a tool which operates by stealing the copyrighted work of other writers and editors. Suddenly being sponsored by ProWritingAid, a generative AI-driven editing and writing assistant tool, was just the nail in the coffin.

So yeah, I finally decide to attempt this challenge only to find out the charity responsible for creating and organising it has been disbanded. Crazy, huh?

Still, there's no doubt in my mind that something else will replace it eventually. It's just too good of an idea to die so easily. What made it unique was the thousands of writers and volunteers coming together to create something special. It will survive a little bit of misplaced ethics and capitalism. 

Writathon is just one such example. But there will be others. 

So anyway, cheers to my crazy attempt at writing a novel. I think we can all agree that this will be a most glorious disaster!