Think you could write a novel in 30 days? Then take the NaNoWriMo challenge

What better way to forget about death, recession and swab tests than attempting to write the next Lord of the Rings or Bridget Jones?

Could you write a bestseller like Bridget Jones in 30 days? (Universal Pictures)

It’s four days before November begins. While many people will be thinking about Halloween the day before, there is an entire group who will be thinking of something totally different. Thousands of writers around the world will be dusting off their notebooks or firing up their word processing software in a bid to take on the most formidable of challenges – to complete NaNoWriMo. And you should too.  

What is NaNoWriMo, you ask? National Novel Writing Month is an internet challenge in which aspiring (or even established) authors must write a 50,000 word novel between 1 and 30 November. It can be any genre or any story, the only rule is that it must be wholly written during the month. What began as a challenge between 21 friends in 1999 has morphed into a global literary craze, with nearly half a million people expected to take part.  

Writing such a substantial amount of words is daunting at the best of times, let alone while trying to deal with a pandemic. Which is exactly why you should do it. When the current state of the world is stranger than anything found in fiction, what better way to take your mind off things than churning out an entire novel? What better way to forget about death, recession and swab tests than attempting to write the next Lord of the Rings or Bridget Jones?

While daunting, the challenge has the potential to be extremely rewarding. No more meticulously planning every detail, only to never actually write a single word. No more procrastinating or making excuses. If one is to complete NaNoWriMo, the average daily word count is around 1,667. An hour or two a day could mean the difference between nothing and an entire novel in just 30 days. You have a goal – now work for it.

Lockdown is an incredibly stressful time and doing something creative has been proven to be beneficial to our mental health. Research by mental health charity Mind found that more than half of adults (60 per cent) and over two-thirds of young people (68 per cent) have said their mental health got worse during lockdown. As many regions edge their way towards stricter measures yet again, finding ways of dealing with this terrifying time is paramount.  

The other side of this coin is also loneliness. According to the Mental Health Foundation, 24 per cent of adults and 44 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 have experienced some form of loneliness. While no means a cure, taking part in NaNoWriMo could help deal with it. That’s because there is a community to be found by taking part in this challenge: the unofficial Reddit thread has 30,000 members while the NaNoWriMo website has thousands of users tracking and encouraging people to make progress.  

The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that you can create anything – a true masterpiece, your magnum opus if you will. It could be a garbled mess of words, akin to something a genius/movie villain writes in a psychological thriller. It doesn’t matter what you come up with – just get those words down!