“No one is saying that you should finish your 50,000 words and rush it to the publisher.” The goal right now is quantity over quality, Dogra says. You have to just let go and write,” says Rao. “But people forget that when you’re writing a novel for the first time, it is just the first draft. Some are critical of the claim that one can write a novel in a month. What made her commit to the goal this year was a brainwave about her novel in late October, inspiring her to pursue it quickly. You have a rough draft out by the end of the month and then you fix it,” says Susan, whose debut book The Women Who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories was well received. The overall approach to writing is one that I really like where you just write and don’t think too much about the quality or if there are plot holes. “I have a lot of work to do this month which is annoying and painful. Malayka Shirazi's goal is to develop a regular writing practice For others like Nisha Susan, who already has a published book under her belt, it is an opportunity to complete a project that has been rattling around in her brain. That’s when you spend October preparing yourself, writing an outline, researching the characters and figuring out chapters,” she says. “The other thing that has been helpful is preptober. These are short intervals where people get together to write as much as they can, often with the help of prompts and nudges. Dogra points out that one of the things that has been helping her maintain her considerable output is the sprints the India group organises. Once you submit a project, you are declared a winner if you get to 50,000 words and get a certificate. To be able to guide writers towards their goals has been very gratifying,” she says. “The joy that I got when I wrote my first two novels through NaNoWriMo was not as satisfying as being an ML. Wrimos, as participants are called, congregate online on a Facebook group with almost 3,000 members as well as a Telegram channel, newly created for the Facebook-averse in the mix. Rao, a writer who found the challenge back in 2009 and has been participating ever since, says it gives writers - established and aspiring alike - a much-needed creative push, aided by the sense of community that exists. Participants range from teens to those in their seventies, are from big cities and small villages, and have written in languages including Hindi and Marathi. When she started out as an ML, (she jokes it could stand for ‘motivating leader’ too), there were about 2,000 Indian participants. In India, 5,000 people have signed up this year, according to Sonia Rao, who has played the role of municipal liaison (ML) for the country for the last 11 years. What began as 21 participants the year of its inception has turned into almost 800,000 active novelists, according to the non-profit’s website. Sonia Dogra is working on a historical fiction novel NaNoWriMo began in the United States in 1999, but its popularity has persisted beyond the often short shelf life that many such ‘early Internet’ projects have.

November writing challenge