NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program

1. Sign up for an educator account.

Credentialed teachers, librarians, and homeschool parents are welcome to sign up for educator accounts. The purpose of this account type is to provide educators with a mechanism for managing curriculum, tracking student progress, reviewing student work, and/or communicating with an entire class.

Please note that, in 2024, we changed our policy around educator accounts. In order to maintain community safety, account holders will be asked to provide licensure information or other professional credentials. New accounts will be activated, and existing accounts will be reactivated, only after educator, librarian, or homeschool parent status is verified.

We have also created a new process for credentialed teachers with students under the age of 13 to sign our Parent Proxy Agreement. Thank you for your patience as we implement these changes for the first time.

2. Create your profile keeping safety and signaling in mind.

Developing an educator profile is not only important to setting the tone for your writing challenge and kicking off a fun project for your students—it's an opportunity to model responsible online behavior and to encourage your students to be safe. The advice we give young writers in setting up their profiles is as follows:

We absolutely want you to express yourself. Doing so safely online means being careful about what you share. Personal or identifying information, such as your full name, address, phone number, location, or personal email address should never be shared on your publicly visible profile. Should you wish to upload a profile picture, we recommend choosing a fun image that represents your personality in lieu of using a photorealistic image of yourself.

We recognize that, as an educator, you may need to refer to yourself as your students refer to you, and that including certain identifying information may make sense. Our ask is simply that you be cognizant of your safety signaling. In order to establish your profile, please go to Profile & Settings.

3. Use our Educator Resources.

We’ve got student workbooks, Common Core-aligned lesson plans, and a free classroom kit to help you inspire your kids before, during, and after November. Feel free to browse these resources as you are planning your curriculum.

4. Create your virtual classroom(s).

Our online classroom spaces allow educators to hold class discussions, monitor students’ novel progress, read and edit students' novels, and set class-wide writing challenges that are separate from official NaNo events.

Click “Create my classroom” on your dashboard to get started. You can create as many classrooms as you need (for instance, for multiple sections or grades), and manage them all from the Dashboard view (scroll to the middle of the page to view your classrooms)..

5. Enroll students in your class with a unique classroom code.

Students can join your classroom by inputting your classroom's unique access code when they sign up for Young Writer accounts. Please instruct them to click the "Join a classroom" link on their dashboard and inputting your classroom's access code if they missed the prompt. Your classroom's access code is found in the Classroom Admin area of each class's page.

Use our YWP Website Permission Form if your district requires you to seek consent from your students' families. Again, please review our Terms & Conditions and Parent Proxy Agreement for teachers of children under 13 before you ask students to establish accounts.

6. Help students create their novels.

If you plan to have your students participate in an official NaNoWriMo challenge (the main NaNoWriMo event happens in November; Camp NaNoWriMo is held in April and July), look for the "Take the Challenge" box that will appear on your dashboard the month before the official event. You can also create your own challenge that is unique to your classroom using any timing you wish.

Prior to notifying your students that you have created a challenge, think through how you will ask them to set up their projects within that challenge. For example, will you require the same word count goal for all students in your class? Do you want them to write inside the NaNoWriMo interface, or would you like them to compose their work elsewhere? Understanding where and how you expect them to be productive and to submit their work for your review will help you provide appropriate project setup instructions.

Once you have created a group challenge within a given classroom, students will be able to create projects as part of that challenge. They will fill in details about their projects, such as the project's title, cover art for the project, and their own own personal word-count goals. Detailed instructions for students creating their first project can be found here.

7. When the challenge begins, students start writing!

Posting features within your classroom will allow you and your students to write support messages throughout the duration of your challenge. Remind them that their stories matter. And that for 30 crazy, exciting, surprising days, they get to lock away their inner editors, let their imaginations take over, and just create.

8. Track student progress.

When students use our writing interface, their word count will register automatically and our app will award them badges for days-in-a-row and percentage completed. When students write outside of our interface, they will need to update their word count manually in order to show you their progress and to receive their badges. Especially if they are writing outside of our interface, please remind them to update regularly.

The Classroom Admin area, which is visible only to those with educator accounts, will allow you to see how students are doing, and even click through to read their novels.

Admin area

9. Keep your students motivated.

Be sure to provide space and support for their creative efforts. For small bursts of inspiration, try out the Dare Machine or Writing Sprints, found to the left of the writing space or from the novel box on the Dashboard.

10. Encourage students to stick with it until the very end.

If they reach their word-count goals by 11:59:59 PM on the final day of the challenge, they’ll be declared NaNoWriMo winners and will receive a few goodies to celebrate.

Be sure to celebrate this amazing month of noveling—no matter where students end up in their word counts!

After a Challenge Ends

Encourage students to back up and print out their work as soon as the challenge is over. We have found over the years that some students lose access to the email accounts they created their projects under (such as school-provided email accounts). If a Wrimo loses access to the email account they created the account under, there is nothing we can do to recover it if they want access down the road.

Some writers who finish a book with NaNoWriMo want to hold that book in their hand. Consider printing a hard copy with a print-on-demand service like our self-publishing partner, Blurb. If you wrote within our interface, you can use our PDF download feature (which you will find in the writing space). If you wrote using an outside app, don't worry, you can download from there. To get started, read our how-to suggestions, or publish your novel now.
Is your novel not-quite finished? You can continue writing and editing beyond the final date of your writing challenge! If you participated in November, we offer tools and resources to support you in your process through January and February, our “Now What?” Months.
Do you want to write another? You can create new projects and goals throughout the year, with personal challenges or site-wide events like Camp NaNoWriMo in April and July.