Intro: What even is NaNo?

My beloved father has been rather helpful in reading over this blog and giving me advice. And the thing he keeps coming back to is this. "Meghan, your blog is really for people who know what they're doing. You may want to give a little background if you can."

At first, I was like, "Duh, Dad, that's the point!". But thinking about it, it's not really. The point is to make a big ol' database of reviews for sites that help writers. I've centered it around National Novel Writing Month because my own personal (writing) life centers around National Novel Writing Month. But maybe some of you just use these sites for funsies. Maybe someone (and I pray to the gods this is true) stumbles onto my site from somewhere else on the internet knowing nothing of NaNoWriMo. As I just did a thesis paper on it, I would be a GREAT person to explain it to them, no?

First of all, go here. This is the official NaNo website, where a LOT of my information came from for my thesis (at least, the info about NaNoWriMo, as opposed to that abut writing techniques and communities of practice). The about pages on the site will give you a pretty thorough run down of what happens around the globe every November.

But, I'll give you a break down. NaNoWriMo has become a phenomenon that has swept the world into a writing frenzy. Hundreds of thousands of people get together every November to write novels (of 50,000 words in length), and send them in at the end of the month to get verified and win prizes. The "rules", which are "more like guidelines anyway", state that you must start from scratch on November 1st (meaning these are the first words of your manuscript, not that you can't plan anything) and write 1667 words a day until November 30th. You cannot have a co-author. You cannot write the same word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, etc. over and over until you reach your goal. You just chug along until the word count reaches 50,000.

Writers during NaNo find many things to help them work harder, better, faster, stronger and reach 50,000 sooner (if at all). These are the sites reviewed here. Some of them, like the generators, provide random information so you don't have to be creative mid-month. Some of them, like Write or Die, motivate you to reach your daily word count. Some of them, like fictionpress, are a place to post your work for critique and the occasional flame (read: rude and vicious review with minimal to no constructive criticism). Some of them are self-help or "how to write" articles. Some of them are just fun distractions. All the websites reviewed on this blog are used by "WriMos", the affectionate term for participants in this crazy scheme.

Hopefully this explains a little more about my project and the point of this blog. For those of you who read this BEFORE reading reviews, thou art very smart. Sorry this is blatant retcon.

-Meghan