Just another November.

A sad one, maybe, but not a silent one.

If you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve seen it at least once (not to say multiple times). That November buzz when writers everywhere sit down at midnight on November 1st and decide to chase 50,000 words in thirty days. Or 1,667 a day, if you like the maths.

Who checked the work? Nobody. That was the beauty of it. You wrote, and at the end, you said whether you’d made it. The prize was simple. A badge or two to show your achievement to the world. More importantly, you had words on a page. Maybe rough, maybe half-finished, maybe a mess. Still better than a blank screen. You can’t edit nothing.

NaNoWriMo shaped a generation of writers. Me included. I won a few times. The first was in 2004, when I finally finished an original novel. I was over the moon. I edited it many, many times, then sent the first three chapters and a synopsis to a national children’s book competition run by Waterstone’s. I placed somewhere in the top couple of hundred. No publication, no trophy, but for me it was huge. I did it again in other years. Same rush. Same thrill. Same community feeling. Same sense of achievement at the end.

Then the cracks. Safeguarding failures (ah, the understatement!). Arguments. Money trouble. In April 2025, NaNoWriMo announced it was shutting down as an organisation, keeping the site up for a while so people could save their data. For the first time in more than twenty years, there is no official banner over November.

That hurts. On so many levels.

The good news is the habit lives on. It is 2025, and other groups have stepped in. A few that look solid:

Reedsy Novel Sprint 2025.
Write your 50k in Reedsy Studio during November, unlock three months of Studio premium add-ons if you hit the mark, and enter a judged contest at the end. Prizes are real: $5,000 for first, $2,500 for second, and $1,000 for third, plus a short agent intro for each winner. Important rule: you MUST write in their online editor, Studio. No pasting from Word or Scrivener, and no AI text for the challenge (obviously!). Full info: https://reedsy.com/studio/challenges/reedsy-novel-sprint-2025.

ProWritingAid Novel November (NovNov).
Free, community-first, and tool-agnostic. Prep workshops in October, daily sprints and milestone badges in November, and editing resources in December. You can write in Word, Scrivener, Google Docs, or Reedsy Studio… wherever you like, and track progress through their dashboard. Details: prowritingaid.com/novel-november.

Sisters in Crime: SinC 50K Toolkit.
If you write (like me, ha!) crime, mystery, or thrillers, Sisters in Crime runs its own 50k-in-November push with resources and community support, plenty of write-in sessionsfor accountability and community spirit and software with discounted membership to use. Toolkit here: https://www.sistersincrime.org/general/custom.asp?page=sinc50ktoolkit

There are other options floating about, too. If you find a good one, drop it in the comments so others (and me!) can join.

So yes, it is a sad November. But it is not silent. Despite everything. Pick your lane. Set the daily goal. Get the words down.

And if you have done NaNo before, tell me your story! Did you ever win? Did that draft grow into a book, or is it still winking at you from a drawer?

Thanks for reading.

Before you go
• If you want more behind-the-scenes notes and writing updates, subscribe to my Substack. It is free.

• Fancy a Halloween bite-sized read? My flash story “Sketched in Blood” is in the anthology A Bouquet of Secrets. You can preorder here: https://mybook.to/bouquetofsecrets Please, please, please! 🙏🏻
• If cosy crime is your thing, my story “The Time Befana Saved Christmas” appears in A Right Cozy Christmas Crime. Buy it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Right-Cozy-Christmas-Crime-ebook/dp/B0DKG4TP9Q Keep it on your winter reading list and let me know what you think.