Grimer Girl here, I'm Mignon Fogarty, and today I have an interview with Grant Faulkner,

the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month, also known as NANO-RIMO.

And although NANO-RIMO is in November, the organization also has lots of other events,

including one that starts in April, which is why I'm talking with him today.

I want you to know about Camp NANO-RIMO because it's not too late to participate.

Thanks for being here with me today, Grant.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Mignon.

You bet. So before you tell me about Camp NANO-RIMO, why don't you assume my listeners know nothing

about your organization and its history and why don't you just tell us a little bit about

what you do and how you got started?

Yeah, it's kind of a big story. You know, Chris Beatty, the founder of NANO-RIMO in 1999.

He literally kind of woke up one day and decided that he wanted, as a lover of reading novels,

he wanted to write a novel. And he hadn't taken writing workshops, he hadn't written a lot of

how to write books, but he figured out very correctly that the best way to learn to write a novel

was to write one. And so he looked over his bookshelf and kind of took out some of the slimmer volumes

and did a rough word count estimate and came up with 50,000 words. And so he figured you can do

he did some little bit of math and figured you can write 50,000 words in a month if you really

dedicate yourself to it and commit yourself. And he invited 20 of his friends and they met

after work in coffee shops and wrote together and did all sorts of kind of writing games, writing

challenges. And that year, the next year, those 20 people, they thought it was a worthwhile thing to

do and Chris thought it was a worthwhile thing to do and they invited a friend and 150 people

joined them the next year. And then they set up a very rudimentary website the following year

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