NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program by Nia Madden

Most of you know about NaNoWriMo - but did you know that there's one for kids, too? It's called the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program. On NaNo YWP, all writers under the age of eighteen are provided with an awesome, moderated place to talk about writing, and are given the ability to adjust their word count goals to whatever they find challenging, yet achievable. And the fun doesn't stop when November ends!

A lot of members - often referred to as the year-rounders - stick around the forums, maintaining a great writing community all year long.

If you decide to join NaNo YWP (which I sincerely hope you do), here's some of the terminology you might find yourself using:

The Dead Season

This is what year-rounders fondly call the time between Novembers.

Siggies

The informal name for your signature on NaNo. Once you set your siggie, it will show up on the bottom of all of your forum posts.  Your siggie can have pictures in it, or it can just be words. Your choice.

The Forum Shops

Found in the Art Class forum, you can request anything from drawings of your characters to book covers to signatures from the various Forum Shops. (No actual money changes hands.)

RPs, RPers, and the act of RPing

RP is an abbreviation for Role Play. Role plays are basically threads where a group of people write a story together over a series of posts. There can be anywhere from two to ten people in one role play, although three to five members is the average in successful role plays.

The Great Wipe

Every October, all threads and posts are cleared from the website, giving room for the next November's flurry of posts. The removal of these posts is referred to as "The Great Wipe" and is widely respected.

Dragonchilde

Dragonchilde (or DC, as she is sometimes called) is the moderator of the NaNoWriMo YWP forums. She keeps our threads clean so that we all have a fun place to go insane.

Usernames

When you join NaNo, I suggest picking a username you like. It should say something about your personality, but not give hints to your identity in the outside world - for instance, don't put your full name, town, or anything else like that in your username.

Pen names

A lot of the authors on NaNo YWP have pen names. Pen names are like superhero names, giving you a way to share things outside the website without telling anyone your secret identity.

Nicknames

Having a nickname is inevitable if you hang out around the forums. In fact, you will probably have many nicknames from many different people. Aside from my pen name and my username, people have called me Yvette, Amphi, World, Georgie, WMW, Write, and Jeannie, among other things.

Avatars

Unless you want the blank picture on your NaNo profile page, you should get a cool avatar. I don't suggest using a picture of yourself for safety reasons - instead, I'd try making an avatar on a site like Face Your Manga.

I hope to see you around the forums!

 

NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program is run by the Office Of Letters and Light, as is the main NaNoWriMo website.