November is National Novel Writing Month, and participants throughout the world began writing at 12:01 a.m. Saturday in hopes of completing a 50,000-word novel by midnight on Nov. 30.
About 20 participants gathered at Library West between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to write and offer support to one another.
Forty people signed up to participate this year according to Christy Shorey, municipal liaison for Gainesville and NaNoWriMo, the event that inspired the writing challenge.
"It's a large leap," Shorey said. "We started off with only about seven people the first year in 2002."
NaNoWriMo is an international event that was started in 1999 by Chris Baty, a freelance writer in Oakland, Calif., with only 21 participants. Last year, more than 100,000 people participated and more than 15,000 succeeded in the challenge.
NaNoWriMo has no official rules, but participants are advised to write 1,667 words a day so they will finish by the deadline.
Laurel Ann Carvalho, UF anthropology senior, said she hopes to write 50,000 words this year despite her busy schedule as a student.
"I'm also getting married in three months, and my birthday's next week," Carvalho said. "But I'm going to get it done."
Participants can upload their manuscripts between Nov. 25 and Nov. 30 to the official Web site for word count verification. Winners get an official "Winner" Web-badge and a Winner's Certificate they can print out.
"There's no big prize," Shorey said. "But it's a big thrill to say, 'Look, I wrote a novel.'"
