Welcome back to Book Break! I am here today to tell you that if you are thinking about
doing NaNoWriMo you absolutely should. You can do it! It has been done before. So NaNoWriMo,
just in case you didn't know, is an annual challenge every November. It's National Novel
Writing Month. The aim, if you take part in the official organized NaNoWriMo event,
is to write every day and aim to write 50,000 words by the end of November. If you manage that,
you have got yourself a full novel draft. And in this video I want to tell you about some amazing
books that probably are sitting on your shelf, books you definitely would have heard of
that you may not know were written in NaNoWriMo. I'm also going to tell you
about a few other books that weren't written specifically in NaNoWriMo, but were written
just as fast so you know you can do this. It is possible to write a novel in a month! So possibly
the most famous book to come out of NaNoWriMo is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. That book
was actually written across three NaNoWriMos. It is a hefty book, it's got a pretty big page count.
So the author Erin Morgenstern started that book in NaNoWriMo 2005 and then returned to it each of
the following Novembers. And that is how that beloved magical book was born. So just think:
whatever you start working on this NaNoWriMo could end up being your debut bestseller.
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen started as a NaNoWriMo project during a particularly tough
month. Sara Gruen had a broken foot and several ill pets to look after, so she decided just to
focus on writing something fun. And I've actually got some really good words here from Sara Gruen
herself. This is from her NaNoWriMo pep talk which you can find on the website. “We can do
this. However far behind you are, take comfort in knowing that there is somebody else out there in
the same boat. And look for that next fun scene. And then the next. And if that doesn't work,
set someone on fire. In your book of course.” Great words of advice. Another really really
famous one is Fangirl. So Rainbow Rowell was already a successful published writer when she
decided to give NaNoWriMo a go. And she was pretty skeptical about it, but then she produced Fangirl,
one of BookTube's favourites. She actually wrote 50 000 words during NaNoWriMo and then doubled it
when she kept working on it afterwards, but during revisions she said that the majority of the words
she wrote during NaNoWriMo actually made it to the final version. The Wedding Date by Jasmine
Guillory is a romance book that was a NaNoWriMo project. And again I've got some great words of
encouragement from the author. “Stop thinking about those days you only eked out a few hundred
words. Stop being mad at yourself for the days when you chose sleep or seeing friends or just
scrolling through Twitter over writing. It's okay to rest sometimes. Being mad at yourself for that
doesn't help you. Instead celebrate yourself for how far you've come.” So that's really important,
don't give up just because you have a few days off, or a few days that don't work as planned
during NaNoWriMo. Another great success story is With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevado. So she
started this book in NaNoWriMo 2013 and admits that she didn't really have much hope for it,
she was really just doing it as a way to practice her writing, which by the way is a totally worthy
goal for NaNoWriMo. You do not have to end up with a published book for your NaNoWriMo to have been
a massive success. But this is just a really nice anecdote to show you never know what might happen
when you give something a go. Possibly the most impressive NaNoWriMo feat is that Marissa Meyer
wrote three books in the Lunar chronicles during NaNoWriMo. She wrote Cinder, Scarlet and Cress
all in the same NaNoWriMo, all in one month. If Marissa Meyer can write three books in NaNoWriMo,
there is hope for all of us to write one. And then I've just got a few last examples of books that
weren't written in NaNoWriMo specifically, but were written incredibly fast. So it should still
give you some motivation. The first is Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan. So Kevin Kwan was
approached by an agent who said that they loved his unfinished manuscript, and asked if he could
have the rest finished within a month. And Kevin Kwan confidently said yes, not admitting that he
was only halfway through. So he ended up having to write 50 000 words in a month, which is the exact
same goal that NaNoWriMo gives you, and he smashed it. It's now a best-selling novel and a hit film.
On the Road by Jack Karouac was written in just three weeks. So Jack Karouac would type
very very fast and he hated being interrupted, even just to change the paper in his typewriter,
so before he started writing he used to tape together continuous sheets of paper
to make a roll about 120 feet long. And you can actually still see that original manuscript,
it's preserved at the University of Indiana. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert
Louis Stevenson was written in just three days according to the legend. So legend has it that
Stevenson was desperately ill with tuberculosis and very heavily drugged with medicinal cocaine,
and sat at his desk in a fever, and just would not stop writing for three days straight. Allegedly
his wife then read the finished manuscript, which was of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and thought it was
rubbish so she threw it in the fire. Which meant that Stevenson then had to write the whole thing
again in another three feverish days. Luckily this one didn't end up in the fire. And then
the fastest book writing story I have heard so far while researching this is that it only took John
Boyne two and a half days to write The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. He did do quite a lot of planning
beforehand, but once he started writing, it only took him two and a half days to get the words
on paper, barely stopping to eat or sleep. So I would love to know if you've heard any other
amazing book writing stories like that one, and I'm also really interested to know how many of you
are going to be attempting NaNoWriMo this month. Do leave us a comment below and let us know what
your plans are, in the meantime I will link to a playlist here of all of our most popular videos,
so you can click through and have a browse of what to watch next. See you next time!