Happy First of October, readers, writers, and shark fans!

Many of you following us are familiar with National Novel Writing Month (often referred to as NaNoWriMo), the organization that promoted the concept of writing an entire novel (first draft) during the month of November. Our Editor-in-Chief, McKenzie, participated in NaNoWriMo every year starting in 2008 and “won” more often than not. She believed in this premise of getting together with a group of people, striving for a massive goal during a time of year that is often so busy, hectic, and often so about other people and consumerism, that it’s easy to put ourselves and our dreams on the back burner; participating in the challenge gave space to still prioritize something that meant a lot to us while we continued to rush through the holidays.

This premise is still a beautiful idea, and it’s one that we don’t want to let go of—but Lit Shark cannot support the controversies now surrounding the original organization. McKenzie realized that she either needed to abandon the concept of writing a novel in a month entirely, or she needed to invent something new.

Enter: Lit Shark’s 30-Day Novel Challenge.

We don’t want to be copycats of NaNoWriMo, so we’re going to repurpose some of what we thought was really effective, and then we’re going to invent something new.

Here’s what we know so far: 

1. We will offer prompts throughout the month of October (“Preptober”) to complete our 30-Day Novel in November.

2. We will write throughout the month of November. Projects of all lengths and genres are welcome!

3. We will offer tips in December for how to edit those first drafts, as well as advice on finding beta readers and beginning the journey to either self-publish or query.

4. We’re also going to leave our platform open year-round. While we only do this full challenge in the months of October, November, and December, writers who wish to complete a 30-day novel challenge are welcome to do so in the other 9 months of the year, as well! We will leave our writing prompts from October and our tips from December up for writers to use year-round, as well.

5. We will also open a forum area for writers to share their work and receive feedback. This area will be broken up into different genres so poets can talk to other poets, fantasy writers can talk to other fantasy writers, etc.

6. Finally, there will also be a “private” section where writers can receive personalized feedback from our Editor-in-Chief. They can receive feedback on their work, editing services, advice on where to submit, feedback on query letters, and more. This section will open in January 2025. 

7. We also are open to suggestions (genuinely!). We want to hear what features you’re most interested in seeing and what would be the most helpful to you on this journey.

You can now find Lit Shark’s forum page, the 30-Day Novel, live on our site now! To participate, please set up an account (it takes less than a minute) so that you can comment and interact with the forum. Once you have an account, you’ll be able to respond in our suggestions section, and our “Preptober” section will be live starting tomorrow, October 2nd. 

If you don’t want to wait until tomorrow (us, either!), here’s an introductory prompt!

“Write about one thing you DREAM of happening for you this October. One of those too-good-to-be-possible dreams. We’ll incorporate that into your character’s story later!”

Happy Writing, readers, writers, and shark fans! Thank you for going on this journey with us!

Please tell your NaNoWriMo friends about us! We want to see how good this can get!