A NaNoWriMo alternative for nonfiction: run November as a first-draft month

What NaNoWriMo was

National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo for short, was a challenge to write a novel in November. Euronews describes it as a US nonprofit that encouraged people to try to write a 50,000-word novel every November. It started in 1999, and according to TechCrunch it began as a Yahoo! mailing list before growing into a writing challenge with a very large community over more than two decades.

In the spring of 2025 the nonprofit announced that it was shutting down. TechCrunch reported the news on April 1, 2025, and wrote that the organization pointed to longstanding financial issues that had made it difficult to operate.

Whatever your view of the organization, the idea at its center was a good one, and it helped a great many people start writing: pick a month, write every day, and do it alongside other people who are doing the same. That idea did not close. The question for a nonfiction author is how to use it well.

Why a 50,000-word month fits novels better than nonfiction

A novelist in November can sit down with a character and a situation and discover the story by writing it. Messy discovery is part of the method. A nonfiction book works differently, for four reasons.

• The plan comes first. A useful nonfiction book makes an argument in a sensible order. Writing 50,000 words before you know your chapters usually produces pages you cannot use.
• Your stories have to be found, not invented. The client cases, mistakes and turning points that prove your points come from your own work. Gathering them takes time that a word count does not reward.
• You need a reader and a promise. Every chapter should help one specific reader do something they cannot do yet. Deciding who that reader is and what you promise them is thinking work, and it makes every later page faster.
• Most nonfiction authors have a full-time job. The founders, consultants, coaches and executives who write nonfiction usually cannot clear their calendars for a month.

That last point is a matter of simple arithmetic. The Scribe Method, Scribe Media's free book on writing, uses about 250 words an hour as a planning pace. At that pace, 50,000 words in 30 days would take more than six and a half hours of writing every day. Some people write faster than that, but very few working professionals can keep that up for a month, and a goal you keep missing teaches you to stop.

The same chapter recommends writing at least an hour a day, or 30 minutes if an hour is not possible, and says consistency matters more than the length of each session. That is the right shape for a nonfiction November: every day, at a size you can keep.

How to run November as a nonfiction first-draft month

The First Draft Challenge is 30 days of daily prompts written for nonfiction, with a tracker that keeps your progress in your browser and needs no account. November has 30 days, so the two line up exactly. Here is the setup.

1. Set November 1 as your start date

   Open the tracker before November starts, enter November 1 as your start date and choose your daily word goal. Challenge day 1 is then November 1 and day 30 is November 30.

2. Choose a daily goal you can keep

   Pick the number of minutes you can protect every day, including your busiest normal day, and turn it into words at your pace. If you have not measured your pace yet, use the planning pace above and correct it after day 1. You can change the goal in the tracker at any time, and each day's target scales to match.

3. Add the calendar file

   In the tracker, pick a writing time and download the calendar file. It holds 30 one-hour writing sessions, one a day from your start date, each with that day's prompt. The file is made in your browser; open it and your calendar app will ask whether to add the events. Move any session that clashes with a fixed commitment now, not on the day.

4. Write first, then log it

   Each day, open the tracker, read the prompt, write, then log your words. The tracker shows your days written, your total and your streak. Nobody else sees them.

5. Plan for missed days before they happen

   If you miss a day, write the next day's prompt the next day and do not double up. Catching up is what usually ends a challenge, not the missed day. Decide now which November days, if any, are planned days off. Our guide to restarting after a missed day covers longer breaks.

A simple November plan

Each week of the challenge has one job. With a November 1 start, the weeks fall on these dates:

Be honest with yourself about what this month produces. You will not have a finished book on November 30, and nobody should promise you one. You will have a real start on the draft, a daily habit that has survived a month, your measured pace, and a plan built from what you actually did. For most nonfiction authors, that is worth more than a word count.

Finding company without a big event

Part of what made a shared November work was the feeling that other people were writing too. You can build that on a small scale, and it often works better because the people involved know you.

Find one writing partner

Ask a colleague, a friend or someone in your professional network who has been talking about a book to start on November 1 with you. You do not need to read each other's pages. Agree on one thing: a short message each evening saying whether you wrote. Two people who expect to hear from each other are hard to let down.

Keep a fixed daily time

Company helps, but the time slot does most of the work. Write at the same time every day, in the same place, and treat it like a meeting with your most important client. If you and your partner can write at the same hour, even in different cities, the session feels shared. Our guide to building a writing routine around a full-time job covers choosing the slot.

Tell one person

If a partner is not available, tell one person you trust that you are writing every day in November, and send them a one-line update each Friday: days written and how it went. It takes a minute and it changes how the following Monday feels.

Other ways to make November a writing month

The challenge is one option, not the only one. Plenty of writers find what they need closer to home: a local writing group that meets weekly, a program at their public library, a write-in organized by a few friends, or an accountability partner they check in with by phone. Some people prefer a group setting, and some prefer working privately. Choose the one you will still be using on November 20, when the first-week enthusiasm has worn off.

Whatever you pick, the core does not change for a nonfiction book: plan the book before you draft it, write every day at a size you can keep, and track it somewhere you will see it.