Once upon a time, a man named Chris Baty was born . . .
Okay, that may be going a little too far back.
"NaNoWriMo was founded in 1999 in a moment of literary inspiration; a thirty-day solution to a problem that I had been trying to figure out for decades. Namely: how can we leverage the power of the internet to democratize novel-writing, and bring the empowering, hands-on joys of artistic creation to everyday lives around the world?"
Chris Baty, Founder of NaNoWriMo
Oh, if only.
Actually, the real story goes like this: Chris thought it would be pretty great to write a novel in a month. And it would be even cooler if he could get a bunch of friends to write novels too. So they did it.
The first year there were 21 people noveling; the second there were 140. By 2004, 42,000 writers had signed up for NaNoWriMo, and in response to the countless teachers who wrote in wanting to bring noveling to the classroom, the Young Writers Program was created.
The Young Writers Program
Ellen Martin launched the YWP website with Chris and the rest of the gang in 2005. Through laugher and tears, missing log-ins and forgotten passwords, an acronym-heavy forum board, and evolving lesson plans, the YWP site made possible a unique meeting place for younger novelists to hang out, work on novels with personal word count goals, and learn from their peers and teachers about the process and accomplishment accompanying the completion a novel.
In 2006, 15,000 young writers joined the 79,000 adult participants in writing a novel in one month. In 2007, that number grew to 18,000 young writers and 100,000 adults madly writing away.
This is the short version.
If you would like to read the long version visit the main site's History page!