Write Nonfiction in NOVEMBER!

Write Nonfiction in NOVEMBER! (WNFIN) is one nonfiction writer’s response to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a contest that has fiction writers writing 50,000 words in 30 days during November. It’s also a challenge to nonfiction writers to spend the month of November writing and completing a work of nonfiction. It is not a contest! WNFIN is also known as National Nonfiction Writing Month (NaNonFiWriMo).

Not only that, WNFIN is the sister blog to this blog, Write Nonfiction NOW! The blog provides an ongoing resource on nonfiction writing, publishing and promotion and provide a way each year for nonfiction writers to comment on their writing experiences during November. In November, it provides 30 guest blog posts on writing, publishig and promoting nonfiction.

In October 2007, a year after Nina Amir participated in NaNoWriMo, she asked herself, “What’s a nonfiction writer supposed to do during November?” Searching around in the NaNoWriMo forums, she discovered NaNoRebels. That might have been fine for some nonfiction writers, but not for her. Although Nina has a rebellious nature, she wanted to participate in a legitimate manner.

So, Nina gave birth to WNFIN and NaNonFiWriMo. Unlike its fiction counterpart, NaNonFiWriMo is not a contest and offers no word-counting mechanism to deem anyone a winner. It’s a personal challenge conducted on the honor system to start and finish a work of nonfiction in 30 days—any work of nonfiction. If you meet your goal, you get the personal satisfaction of knowing you did so—and a manuscript, or maybe several manuscripts, with which to pursue publication.

Also unlike NaNoWriMo, NaNonFiWriMo offers its participants a way to learn about writing, publishing and promoting nonfiction via a blog. The first year, Nina produced a huge brain dump of everything she knew on these topics, which resulted in 27 days of blog posts. When November rolled around the next year, she enlisted help—27 expert guest bloggers. She wrote the three remaining posts and an introduction to each post. Nina has done that every year since. As of 2009, Write Nonfiction NOW! took over the other 11 months of the year challenging nonfiction writers to continue writing nonfiction all year long. (This coming year, the WNFIN blog will “stay alive” with links to Write nonfiction NOW! posts.

To participate in the challenge, simply “sign in” if you want (you also can remain anonymous) describing your WNFIN project and goals. Then you go off and write for 30 days. Come back and report in if you like on the status updates page. You comment on the various blog posts or on the WNFIN Facebook page. The latter offers a great place to converse with other WNFIN participants. Come back at the end of the November and update your status. Let everyone know if you met the challenge and finished your project in 30 days.

That’s it. Unless you also want to share what you learned from the blog, but hopefully you’ve also done that during the course of the month by commenting on individual posts.

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