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Novel Writing Month in 2026, Who's Running It, and When

Published September 8, 2026 · Last updated October 19, 2026

For close to two decades, one nonprofit organization ran the best-known version of this: write fifty thousand words of a novel in November, together, on a shared clock, with a public tracker to mark progress and a community built around the same deadline.

Regional forums, a shared tracker, a sense that the whole month belonged to one event: that was the shape of it for most of the writers who took part.

That organization announced its closure on March 31, 2025, citing longstanding financial trouble and six years of falling participation; it said the controversies over AI and over the moderation of its forums, open to minors, were not the direct cause (TechCrunch, April 1, 2025; Publishers Weekly, April 2025).

What it left behind wasn't silence. It was six different groups, none of them the obvious single successor, each running some version of the same month on its own schedule.

What's actually running this year

Each of these is real and dated. Five let you write in whatever tool you like; Reedsy's Novel Sprint asks for 50,000 words written in Reedsy Studio, with pasting from another word processor ruled out, and Novel90 is for writers 18 and over.

Most of them aim at a novel, which is the tradition, though several accept short stories, poems or a revision of an existing manuscript. The shape underneath — a fixed window, a daily number, a finish line everyone reaches on the same date — is what actually does the work, and it fits a novel, an essay, a screenplay or a run of articles equally well.

Plenty of people quietly use the month for one of the other three.

What these six have in common

Underneath six different names, the same two ingredients show up in every one of them: a fixed window of dates, and some way to mark the days as they pass, whether that's a public tracker, a community feed, or simply a shared sense that everyone doing this is doing it during the same thirty days. The goal is where they part: some leave it to you, others set a threshold, 50,000 words at Reedsy, 30,000 words, 15 poems or 8 short stories at the Order of The Written Word.

Only one of them, the Novel Sprint, ties the month to a specific piece of software; the other five let you write in whatever you like. For them, the commitment is the calendar, not the tool.

Where they differ is scale and structure. Novel November and Novel90 both stretch preparation and revision around the drafting month itself, one contained mostly in October and December, the other running ninety days from October 1 in one continuous stretch.

NaNo 2.0 and Order of The Written Word are the two run by individuals rather than companies: a free sign-up, a goal, a word tracker of their own (a site tracker for NaNo 2.0, a bot for the Order) and a community to show up to.

Reedsy's Novel Sprint sits inside a company that already runs a much older weekly contest for short fiction, so the November sprint borrows an existing audience rather than starting from nothing.

World Anvil's NovelEmber is the only one of the six built around a specific kind of writing, one that treats the world a novel is set in as its own project alongside the manuscript.

The original organization offered some of that range itself: Camp NaNoWriMo, in April and July, let a writer choose her own goal, and its forums were regional, with local gatherings. This year the choice runs between six organizers rather than within one: the amount of scaffolding around the same thirty days is itself a choice.

Why there isn't one answer

These six aren't a direct continuation of the original in any formal sense, and the split began before the closure. In 2024 the organization took a position in favor of generative AI, and two authors left its board; Order of The Written Word emerged in response to that stance, and several of this year's six, among them Reedsy's Novel Sprint, Novel90 and the Order's challenge, do not allow AI-generated text. One writer who took part in the original event notes that dozens of events have taken other names to keep their distance from NaNoWriMo, and welcomes NaNo 2.0, which keeps the name, in the hope that it draws the community back together (ettagraceauthor.com, October 17, 2025).

One outlet has singled out ProWritingAid's version as the closest thing to a designated successor (Round Table at Beloit College, October 1, 2025), but that reading isn't shared everywhere, and the other five initiatives are drawing real, separate participation of their own.

What ties all six together is simpler than any one organization's history: a shared clock, a shared goal, and a habit that outlasted the group that first popularized it.

Camp NaNoWriMo, the smaller, off-season version of the same idea, did not run this year: no organization held a Camp session in April or July 2026. Writers who wanted a July month did it on Discord servers and third-party trackers.

What the split actually changes

The practical difference for a writer showing up this November isn't the absence of a big organization behind the month. It's the absence of a single default choice. Before, joining meant one organization: one website, regional forums and local gatherings, one tracker, one badge at the end.

Now it means picking, deliberately, which version of the same commitment matches how much structure feels useful: a defined word count and daily sprints, a free sign-up and a tracker with no judges and no prizes, or a community organized around a specific kind of story.

That's more choosing than the tradition used to require, and also more room to pick something that actually fits, rather than inheriting whatever the one available option happened to look like.

Picking one, or none

Joining five of these six doesn't require a particular app; the Novel Sprint is the exception, written in Reedsy Studio. Some ask for a sign-up; some ask for nothing beyond showing up in November and writing.

Choosing one is mostly a question of which shared clock, and which small community around it, feels worth showing up for: a heavily structured month with daily sprints and a defined word count, a sign-up and a tracker with no judges and no prizes, or something built specifically around building the world a story lives in.

It's also fine to treat this list as reference rather than a decision to make right now. Preptober, in October, is largely the same regardless of which November community a writer eventually joins, or whether she joins one at all: a premise, a cast, a rough shape, an opening scene.

The choice of which clock to write against can wait until closer to November 1, once it's clearer which kind of company suits the specific book underway this year.

Every one of the six is a reasonable choice, and picking one is optional. Plenty of writers do November without joining any of them at all, on their own calendar, which is its own long-standing version of the same tradition.

Questions

Is there still a novel writing month in 2026? Yes. The nonprofit that ran the best-known version closed in April 2025, and six separate groups now run their own version of the same month, each on its own schedule. None of them is the obvious single successor.

When does novel writing month start and end in 2026? Most of the six run from November 1 to November 30. Two stretch further: one adds a preparation month in October and an editing stage in December, and another runs for ninety days from October 1, through the end of December.

Do I still have to write 50,000 words? Fifty thousand words is the tradition. Reedsy's Novel Sprint requires it, and Novel November builds its month around that goal with daily sprints; the Order of The Written Word sets minimums of 30,000 words, 15 poems or 8 short stories; NaNo 2.0 and NovelEmber leave the goal to you. What all six share is a fixed window of dates and some way to mark the days as they pass.

Do I need to join one of these groups, or use a particular app? Not necessarily. Some ask for a sign-up, some ask for nothing beyond showing up in November and writing, and only Reedsy's Novel Sprint requires a specific piece of software, Reedsy Studio. Plenty of writers do the month on their own calendar without joining any of them.

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