You can still write the NaNoWriMo novel in 2026 with a few friends

It's late October. You type the old NaNoWriMo address, the one you opened every year when November meant 50,000 words. You are looking for the 2026 event. November 1 is a Sunday, about two weeks away. There is no official signup to join.

By Emily Galash · Published 2026-10-17

You can still write the NaNoWriMo novel in 2026 with a few friends. The nonprofit is gone. Ask two to four people who can see today's word count. That group can run the month without the old site.

The nonprofit closed on March 31, 2025

On March 31, 2025, NaNoWriMo emailed its community that the nonprofit was shutting down. Interim executive director Kilby Blades posted a video the same day. She said the organization was closing because of ongoing financial problems. They said the websites would stay up for as long as they could afford, so people could save what they wanted from their accounts. The email also said they did not believe people would stop writing 50,000 words in November. The Guardian reported the announcement two days later. That is why the old signup is not there when you go looking in October.

These groups are hosting November on their own sites

You can join a hosted challenge if you want workshops, a tracker, or a crowd. Each one lives on its own site. These are the rules on those pages as of mid-October 2026. Read the page before you move your draft there.

• ProWritingAid Novel November runs November 1 through November 30, 2026. It is free, the target is 50,000 words, and you log the count from the app you already write in, or by hand. It asks for a free ProWritingAid account.
• Reedsy Novel Sprint runs November 1 through November 30, 2026. The target is 50,000 new words written inside Reedsy Studio. Words pasted in from another app do not count. You can join up until November 30.
• World Anvil's NovelEmber is a November challenge: 50,000 words of prose, or a goal you set, on the honor system. On October 2, 2026, a reply on World Anvil's blog said NovelEmber is coming back this year.
• NaNo 2.0 is a volunteer project that includes NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty. Their FAQ says there is no longer an official NaNoWriMo organization. You set your own word goal, 50,000 is the default, and you write wherever you like. The tracker takes updates from November 1 through November 30. Accounts are for ages 16 and up.
• The Order of the Written Word posts a November challenge with three tracks. The novel track is 30,000 new words. The other tracks are 15 poems or 8 short stories, or a revision of a draft you already have. You join through their Discord. The page does not print a year, so confirm this November in the server.
• AutoCrit's Novel 90 started October 1, 2026. It is a free 90-day challenge, and November is the drafting month. It is built around finishing a novel of 50,000 words or more, tracked in AutoCrit.

You do not have to join one to have a November. If you do join, keep the friend group below. The forum will not send tonight's word count to the people you already text.

Pick 50,000, 30,000, or a number you can say out loud

Write the target down before Sunday. The classic is 50,000 words. November has 30 days. 50,000 divided by 30 is 1,666.67, so the daily target people use is 1,667 words. 1,667 times 30 is 50,010. ProWritingAid uses that 1,667 figure for Novel November.

30,000 words is 1,000 a day. That matches the novel track from the Order of the Written Word, and it is a workable month if you also have a job.

Or set your own number. November 2026 has 21 weekdays, Monday through Friday. At 600 words on each of those days, you finish with 12,600 words. That is a real chunk of a draft. Missing 50,000 is fine if 12,600 was the number you chose on purpose.

Leave the number alone when you have a big day, and leave it alone when you have a zero. Your friends have the number you told them. Don't swap it on day 4 because you are ahead, or because you are behind.

Ask two to four friends to see the count

Before November 1, start a group text with two, three, or four people you already talk to. Tell them the word count. Tell them the rule. Every day in November you send one line: the date, and how many words you wrote that day. That line is the check-in.

They do not have to write a novel. They do not have to remind you. You are not handing them the job of nagging. They can reply, or they can read the number and leave it. If one of them is writing too, they send their line in the same thread.

Two people is enough. Stop at four. A bigger thread gets easier to skip, because the daily line starts to feel like a post.

On a zero-word day, send the zero

If you write nothing, the line is still the date and 0. You send it anyway. The words from the other days stay in the draft. The next day you write again, toward the same total.

If you forget until morning, send two lines: yesterday's count, then whatever you write today. A late message does not delete yesterday's words.

Do not turn one empty day into a new start in December. The month you already started is the month. One zero is one day out of 30.

How this looks in Motivus

Invite those friends onto a November journey for the draft. The task is the daily word count you wrote down. They can see whether today's words got done, including a zero, and they can cheer when you write again. No nagging.

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