When NaNoWrimo was shut down (and for good reason, I might add), it set hundreds of thousands of writers adrift. I was one of them for a while, before I joined a few good Discord server full of passionate authors. These communities were great, but it soon became clear to me that we still wanted an organised writing month where we had a word count target. At that point, I started looking at an alternative to NaNoWriMo.
Originally, I created a shared Google Sheet for members of my communities. This did the job, and combined with the server itself, we had a decent alternative to NaNoWrimo on our hands. But the spreadsheet was occasionally fiddly, and didn’t play well with mobile devices. That’s what inspired me to create Blot.
The Leagues section of Blot doesn’t replace your existing community, but works alongside it to offer a place where writers can track their word counts, race one another, and focus on meeting the month’s target. It also shows a leaderboard for each month, or even for a full year!
How To Get Started
Getting started on Blot is easy. If you’re a new user, head to the Sign-Up page to create an account. Already a member? Well, then it’s even easier. Head to the Leagues section to create your goals and leaderboards.
Create Your League
On your My Leagues page, click the ‘+ New League’ button in the top-right. You’ll see a popup like this:
Fill in this popup with your community’s details, including name, description, icon and link. This link will appear at the top of your league page, to send people back to your community in whatever form it takes — be that a Discord server, a forum, or anything else. This is particularly useful if you set your league to public, as that will allow writers to discover your community through the Blot platform!
On this popup, you’ll also set your monthly goal. A true alternative to NaNoWriMo would have this at 50,000, but you can set it at whatever number suits your community. Or, you can even allow members to set their own targets.
And that’s it, you have your league! Invite friends to join you, either by clicking the ‘Invite Friends’ button, or by simply copying and pasting the URL into your community.
But there are still a couple more ways to squeeze the most out of your new alternative to NaNoWriMo…
Review your leaderboards & goals
By default, the League page will show you the leaderboards for the current month. Change the month by using the dropdown, or switch to annual by clicking the toggle button. And if you want to see how each member is doing against their goal? Just click the ‘Show Goals’ button!
Join a team! (Optional)
And maybe you don’t just want to race alone. Maybe you want to race as a team. Join an existing team or create your own — these can be whatever you like! Maybe your community is divided into fantasy vs sci-fi writers. Perhaps it’s cat lovers vs dog lovers. Or maybe it’s even the Jets vs the Sharks. Whatever the deal, make the teams that suit you.
And with that, I wish you a happy WriMo!
I’m determined to make Blot as good an alternative to NaNoWriMo as I can. If you have any thoughts on how to improve it, please get in touch! You can find my contact details on (unsurprisingly) the Contact page.