Viewpoint by Tristian Evans/reporter

This month, thousands of aspiring authors are hard at work on novels they’re trying to finish by Nov. 30 as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

The event started in 1999 when Chris Baty, a freelance journalist living in the San Francisco Bay Area, challenged a group of writers to each write a 50,000-word novel in a month.

The next year, Baty decided to expand the event and had more than 400 writers sign up. In 2010, more than 200,000 people took part in the event.

To create a sense of community, Baty set up a website where participants could keep track of their word count and seek advice and encouragement from other participants.

Those who live in the same area often gather at local coffee shops and libraries to write together.

Some NaNoWriMo participants start November with a detailed outline of their novel. Others start with a vague idea. It doesn’t matter either way. 

The idea behind NaNoWriMo is to give writers the freedom to let their imaginations run wild and turn off their inner perfectionist.

As any writer will tell you, the story is never perfect the first time around.

It is better to have a crappy first draft then spend years perfecting the first three chapters.

Many people spend years wanting to write a novel, but for whatever reason, never do.

Natalie Goldberg says in her novel Writing Down the Bones, “If you have ever known fear, love or loss, you have something to write about.”

This event is meant to be an incentive for aspiring novelists to stop procrastinating and start putting words on the page.

For all you aspiring novelists out there who are reading this article and finding yourselves interested, find a computer, open a Word document and start writing that story.

You’ve got some catching up to do.