Most people know it as a time to get together with family. But for students in the literary scene, November poses a new challenge.

Every Friday morning, Writers’ Guild gets together in room C140 to discuss the literature of the week. Student-written poetry and short prose are often the focus of the meetings.

But this month, a new topic of discussion came up: a fifty thousand word novel, due November 30.

“Ayala and I, the co-founders,” senior Andrew Dornieden said. “We’re each doing something for nanowrimo, but not everybody is.”

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a program that challenges students to write a complete novel over thirty days.

The Writers’ Guild co-founders considered making it part of club curriculum, but ultimately, they decided to leave the decision to the guild members.

“Half of us are doing in november and a lot of us will be trying to do it in December,” co-founder Ayala Bendavid said. “And mostly, it’s just for fun.”

“If more people showed up to the meetings, we’d probably do some group thing for nanowrimo,” Dornieden said. “But right now, it’s just individual stuff.”

As students write for na-no-wri-mo, novel excerpts will be read aloud and even discussed during meetings, among other writings.

“We’ll be discussing the progress of our novels during the meetings,” Dornieden said. “We try to encourage each other a lot.”

So while NaNoWriMo isn’t an official part of the writers’ guild curriculum, student writers are still involved in this national event.