On November 1, hundreds of thousands of creative writers all over the world opened a computer, stared at a blank document, pressed their fingers to the keyboard, and wrote the first sentence of a 50,000 word novel.

In 1999, Chris Baty founded a club called National Novel Writing Month. It was small at first, but after sixteen years, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has expanded on an international level, welcoming over 300,000 participants each year.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. After registering for the website, emails with encouraging words from successful writers are sent to participants to make the writing process slightly less stressful. NaNoWriMo liaisons organize gatherings for writers living in the same area, as well as virtual gatherings for writers. After 20 days of writing, participants are able to officially validate their word count by submitting their novel to the website and, if they reached the goal of 50,000, be declared a winner.

However, NaNoWriMo has not always been this way. The very first year, there were only 21 participants, and it took place in the month of July instead of November. And although it is now regularly scheduled in November, NaNoWriMo has also created an organization called Camp NaNoWriMo, which takes place in April and July.

Camp NaNoWriMo encourages writers to create their own word goal. Also, Camp NaNoWriMo encourages all forms of writing, from novels to poetry to screenplays.

Although it is often considered stressful to write 50,000 words in 30 days, many successful authors got their start this way, and many well known novels were first written during NaNoWriMo, such as Cinder by Marissa Meyers, Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell and Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.

It is never too late to join the writers of NaNoWriMo or Camp NaNoWriMo. However, it is only one of many ways for writers to find their creativity and make a masterpiece. National Novel Writing Month began as nothing more than an experiment among 21 friends, but it has grown to much more than that and has been the start for many authors today.