Life After NaNoWriMo: How to Run Your Own November Writing Challenge (Solo or with Friends)
📍 If you're looking for the writing tools side of this conversation, start with Scrivener vs. Modern Writing Tools or our guide to writing every day.
In April 2025, NaNoWriMo — the nonprofit that had run National Novel Writing Month for over two decades — announced it was shutting down. Twenty-five years of November traditions, 50,000-word challenges, and "you can do it!" forum threads went dark. For hundreds of thousands of writers worldwide, it was more than a website closing. It was the end of the ritual that got them through a first draft.
If you're reading this, you probably already know the story. You're here because it's almost November again, you can feel that familiar itch, and you don't know what to do with it.
Good news: the ritual wasn't the website.
The ritual was the shape — an ambitious deadline, a visible word count, the knowledge that somewhere out there, other people were writing too. All of that is still available. It just takes a little more intentionality now.
Here's how to run your own November — or really, your own writing challenge in any month — with or without a community. Plus a look at what replaced NaNo and whether those alternatives are worth your time.
First, let's acknowledge what NaNoWriMo actually gave us
Before you try to rebuild it, it's worth naming what worked about the original. This helps you pick the right replacement — or design your own from scratch.
NaNoWriMo worked because it combined four things most writers can't generate alone:
A specific, stupid-simple goal. 50,000 words in 30 days. No ambiguity. You either hit it or you didn't.
A hard deadline. November ends on the 30th. You can't negotiate with the calendar.
A visible tracker. Daily word counts charted publicly. Shame and pride in equal measure.
Parallel play. Knowing thousands of other people were writing at the same time — even strangers — made solitary work feel communal.
Any replacement that skips one of these is going to feel hollow. The best alternative is one that gives you all four.
The current alternatives: a quick, honest look
Several organizations launched challenges to fill the void. Here's where the landscape sits right now:
Novel November (ProWritingAid + partners). The closest direct replacement. 50,000 words in November, hosted by ProWritingAid with former NaNo supporters as sponsors. Daily virtual cowriting sessions, author mentorship from bestsellers, badge dashboard. If you want the most NaNo-like experience, this is it.
Reedsy Novel Sprint. Reedsy's take on the November challenge. Similar 50K target, with prizes and agent introductions for top participants. Leans more "industry-adjacent" — good if you're eyeing querying down the line.
Order of the Written Word (O2W). Founded by a former Montreal NaNo municipal liaison specifically in response to NaNoWriMo's earlier stance allowing AI-generated work. O2W is explicitly AI-free. If you're a writer who wants a community that draws a hard line on generative AI, this is the one.
NovelEmber (World Anvil). More flexible. Honor-system goal setting, "REBEL" mode for non-traditional projects, works well for fantasy/sci-fi writers deep in worldbuilding.
AutoCrit Novel 90. Not a November challenge — a 90-day one (October 1 to December 3, typically). If you find 50K in 30 days too punishing, this gives you breathing room.
Shut Up & Write! Not a challenge exactly. More like a community of 100,000+ writers running weekly online and in-person writing sessions year-round. Great if what you miss about NaNo was the company, not the deadline.
All of these are legitimate. None of them will be as big as NaNoWriMo was at its peak. That's actually fine — the best writing communities are usually smaller than you'd think.
But here's the thing: you might not need any of them
The dominant view in the writing community right now is that we need to find a replacement. A new platform, a new 501(c)(3), a new forum.
The quieter argument — one we find more persuasive — is that NaNoWriMo's collapse exposed something we should have noticed earlier: the ritual always lived in the writers, not the organization.
You don't actually need a website to tell you to write 50,000 words in November. You need:
A goal you've committed to out loud to at least one other person
A way to track your progress daily
Some version of external stakes
That's it. The rest was scaffolding. It helped — we're not dismissing it — but it was never the load-bearing part.
How to design your own challenge (that actually works)
If you're inclined to build your own November, here's a framework that works. We've seen variations of this succeed when platforms don't:
Step 1: Set a goal that's uncomfortable but not impossible. 50,000 words isn't magic — it's just the number NaNo picked because 1,667 words a day is roughly round. If you're a slow drafter, pick 30,000. If you write poetry, pick 15,000. If you've never finished a short story, pick "finish one short story this month." The point is a number you'd be slightly embarrassed to miss.
Step 2: Write it down where you'll see it. Sticky note on your monitor, lock screen wallpaper, pinned post on your own social. Externalize the commitment so you can't quietly renegotiate it at 11pm on day 14.
Step 3: Find at least one witness. This is the part most solo writers skip and regret. Tell one person — a writing friend, a partner, a Discord server, your mom — what you're doing and when you'll report back. Not for applause. For the tiny social contract that makes you open the document on hard days.
Step 4: Track visibly. A simple spreadsheet with dates down the left, target and actual wordcount across the top. Fill it in every day, even zeros. The visual record of a streak — or a broken one — is what your brain needs. Most writing tools, including Novela, have built-in word counters that make this nearly automatic.
Step 5: Build in recovery mechanics. This is where NaNoWriMo actually failed a lot of people. The "1,667 every day" target has no room for sick days, family crises, or just plain bad days. Build yours with slack: pick a weekly target instead of a daily one, or allow yourself two "skip days" a month. The challenge is harder to quit when it can absorb a bad week.
Step 6: Decide what "winning" means before you start. Is it hitting the word count? Finishing a draft? Writing every day for 20 of 30 days? Define this on day 1. Otherwise you'll redefine it on day 28 to protect your ego, and the whole thing will feel hollow when you cross the line.
Tools that help (without you needing to join anything)
You don't need a NaNo replacement account to do this. Here's a minimalist stack:
A writing tool with word count and progress tracking. Novela has both built into every project — daily and total counts are visible without leaving the draft, so the tracking doesn't pull you out of the writing.
A spreadsheet or note for daily logs. Even a Notes app entry works.
A shared doc or group chat with one writing friend. This is the witness.
A calendar reminder. "Did you write today?" at 9pm, every day of November.
That's the entire infrastructure. Nothing else is required.
If you want the community piece without joining a platform, pick a hashtag (writers have been using variations like #WritingNovember, #NovelNovember, and others on Bluesky, X, and Instagram) and post your daily progress. You'll find others doing the same thing. Follow them. Cheer for them. That is the community. It always was.
Whether to use AI in your challenge (the unavoidable question)
NaNoWriMo's position on generative AI is part of what fractured the community. Reasonable writers disagree. Here's the framework we find most honest:
If you're in a challenge to hit a word count, AI-generated words undercut the whole point. The challenge is a habit-building exercise. Outsourcing the habit defeats it.
If you're in a challenge to finish a draft, AI used as a thinking partner — for brainstorming, outlining, getting unstuck on a scene — is a different thing. You're still doing the writing. The draft is still yours.
Know which challenge you're actually running before you decide what's allowed. And if you join someone else's challenge, read their rules. O2W is AI-free for a reason; Novel November is more permissive for its own reasons. Both are legitimate. Neither is for everyone.
For more on where to draw your own line, see our guide Where's the Line? A Working Framework for Writers Thinking About AI.
A quieter kind of November
The NaNoWriMo era had one real cost: it made a lot of writers feel like writing a novel was supposed to look like a sprint. Fireworks, chaos, caffeine, 11:59pm pushes on November 30th.
For some writers, that works. For most, it burned them out and convinced them they weren't "real" writers when they missed the target.
The more interesting thing about NaNoWriMo's collapse is that it's given writers permission to ask: what kind of November works for me? Maybe it's 50,000 words. Maybe it's 500 words a day for 30 days. Maybe it's finishing the novel you abandoned in 2019.
The ritual is whatever you say it is. The calendar doesn't care. The word count tracker doesn't care. The only thing that matters is that on December 1st, you wrote more than you would have otherwise — and you know what you're going to do next.
That was always what NaNoWriMo was really for. The website just held the space.
You can hold the space yourself now. A lot of writers are already finding out they were holding it all along.
If you're designing your own challenge this November, start a free Novela account — word count tracking, auto-sync across every device, and a clean editor built for long drafting sessions are all included.
