Nicole Raymond has 20,000 words writ­ten and 30,000 more to go.

Raymond, a senior in the Technical Professional Communication pro­gram, is about half-way fin­ished writ­ing her novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

“It isn’t for class. I just love writ­ing,” said Raymond, who will be grad­u­at­ing in December.

Raymond said she has been strug­gling to find time to write her novel lately due to class assign­ments, work and main­tain­ing her blog on hor­ror movies, grue​somede​tails​.word​press​.com.

The month-long event, now in its tenth year, requires that par­tic­i­pants sub­mit a work of fic­tion total­ing a min­i­mum of 50,000 words (roughly 175 pages). There are no real prizes save for a cer­tifi­cate of com­ple­tion upon suc­cess­fully writ­ing and sub­mit­ting the needed quan­tity of words.

NaNoWriMo is a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion aim­ing to boost enthu­si­asm and cre­ativ­ity in the novel writ­ing process.

“The 50,000-word chal­lenge has a won­der­ful way of open­ing up your imag­i­na­tion and unleash­ing cre­ative poten­tial like noth­ing else,” says NaNoWriMo Founder and Program Director (and ten-time NaNoWriMo win­ner) Chris Baty. “When you write for quan­tity instead of qual­ity, you end up get­ting both.”

Typically about 18 per­cent of writ­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing actu­ally reach the 50,000 word minimum.

With around 120,000 indi­vid­u­als par­tic­i­pat­ing last year, the odds are against Raymond suc­cess­fully com­plet­ing her novel which she describes as a love story about what makes a per­son a person.

“I’m about half done and the month is about half over, so I’m doing all right,” said Raymond, who hopes to attend grad­u­ate school in Boston to study writ­ing and publishing.

For more infor­ma­tion on Nation Novel Writing Month, visit nanow​rimo​.org