In 1999, one man set out with an idea to create a non-profit dedicated to helping writers write. This man was Chris Baty. He was a teacher and an author with a passion for taking an idea and throwing a story together with just his mind and a page. With all of this in mind, he set out to create a challenge for National Novel Writing Month, which is in November. He shortened it down to NaNoWriMo, as it is now known, and started a website.
In the beginning, the website was small and had minimal features, focusing more on the writers who used the non-profit rather than finances and other things happening behind the scenes. The idea for NaNoWriMo was simple: writers challenge themselves to write 50,000 words in their manuscript within the month of November. It emphasized the importance of a first draft, allowing writers to feel free and messy without the fear of imperfection. During that first year only 21 people joined, but authors at the time had their own novel challenges in November that they often did.
Over the years, NaNoWriMo grew. In January of 2012, Chris Baty stepped down, so the owner and CEO titles were passed down. After that, they passed around a few more times. The CEOs started making changes and add-ons, ensuring the website’s usability, adding volunteer activities in areas all around the world, and even adding youth programs for schools and aspiring writers. If NaNoWriMo was a story itself, this would be leading up to the climax.
Then Covid hit—there was a big boom in both the use of the challenge itself and the website. Many were joining the program through social media, including BookTok and BookTube; many turned to writing to start telling their own stories. NaNoWriMo expanded, beginning to do events. These events were run by volunteers who took on leadership roles for their town or county. When everything went online these volunteers were asked to do online activities with people in their areas to keep them excited for NaNoWriMo. Once Covid was over, these volunteers were asked to keep up online activities while adding back the in-person ones, all while having their own jobs and writing their own novels. The overwhelming effort necessary to keep up with these demands led to the challenge’s crumble.
The one drawback of the website, even up until its end, was its exclusion of writing platforms. Before it shut down, it wasn’t compatible with many other programs aside from Scrivener. In the end, the downfall of NaNoWriMo and its website was a mix of financial and personal scandals which included child safety, volunteer overworking, and their stance on AI. As 2024 began to come to an end, the non-profit lost many workers and volunteers. Over the years, people’s trust had eroded from the lack of transparency until, finally, April 2025 came. The website was shut down, and the original NaNoWriMo challenge was ended for good.
NaNoWriMo itself has been used to help create and produce many popular books, such as Cinder by Marissa Meyer and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Meyer herself is an advocate for this challenge on her website where she discusses her books and how she creates her stories. Writing is a craft, there is skill to it, and often many strive for a perfection that their self-critique never approves of. Thus, this writing challenge would often help people put aside their own scrutiny and just write.
Now, don’t feel discouraged if you want to join NaNoWriMo; many websites are doing their own versions of this challenge, such as Reedsy’s Novel Sprint and ProWritingAid’s Novel November, and likely more. If this has put you off from joining a website’s challenge, many people do their own version of NaNoWriMo, like booktuber @SAVY WRITES BOOKS. What matters is your passion and a drive to write, no matter how you may do it. There is no “proper” or official way to do NaNoWriMo―and there never has been. It’s always just been a dream, a mindset, and a website. So, if you are up to the challenge, open up a new document, get your writing journal ready with ideas, and join us on November 1st to begin this momentous sprint.
Zero Frederick, Pine Reads Review Social Media Manager