If Hari Rai Kaur Khalsa ‘11 pulled an all-nighter last night trying to meet a deadline, it wasn’t to finish her IHUM or PWR papers: She was frantically finishing her novel.

Why the rush?

Each November, frenzied writers participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo; Web site at www.nanowrimo.org) and are declared winners if they complete a 50,000 word (approximately 175-page) novel between Nov. 1 and 30. With its emphasis on taking risks and producing quantity over quality, the challenge has taken off, gathering more than 100,000 participants from 70 countries in this, its ninth year.

“November’s honestly my favorite month of the year,” Khalsa said. “I love NaNoWriMo so much because I love writing so much and I love that NaNoWriMo is a month that I dedicate entirely to writing one story.”

Eavan Boland, director of Stanford’s Creative Writing Program, said she thought NaNoWriMo was a festive and interesting project.

“It must be a major distraction for almost everyone for the month of November!” she said. “Fifty-thousand words is a pretty big daily commitment. For writers who want to focus, who want the discipline and achievement of deadlines and want to get fit at writing, this is a really fun thing to do.”

Khalsa’s first taste of NaNoWriMo came two years ago as a senior in high school. Although the month was already half over by the time she found out about the challenge, she wrote 30,000 words by Nov. 30 and resolved to succeed the following year.

Having deferred her admission to Stanford, Khalsa was a NaNoWriMo winner in her year off and “had a blast,” planning and leading writing sessions for NaNoWriMo participants in the Santa Fe area.

On Monday, Khalsa was “way behind” with almost 30,000 words but still aiming for 50,000 by the deadline.

“Last year I crossed the finish line with an all-nighter, a 12,000 word night, so I figure if I can write 12,000 words in one day, I can do 20,000 in four,” she said. “It’s going to be rough, but I will stay up all night Thursday night if I have to and all through Friday.”

“Now I’m honestly taking every single spare minute of free time and using it,” she continued. “If I don’t get this story out of me right now in this month it will never be the same. At this point, what’s motivating me is not that I want to finish the month having done 50,000 — it’s that I feel I owe it to the story.”

Jane Goldsmith ‘11 participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time last year, reaching 12,000 words before realizing that her story wasn’t going anywhere. Five days before the deadline, she had another idea and started over.

“It took two all-nighters and I made myself ill,” she recalled. “I brought my laptop to school every day, wrote during every little break and submitted it half an hour before midnight on Nov. 30.”

Naturally, she felt moved to participate again this year.

“It was crazy and hectic, but periods of insane activity [are] when I have the most fun,” she said, adding that NaNoWriMo is one of her favorite times of the year.

This year, Goldsmith is teaming up with her best friend to write a joint novel, a story about a college in a fantasy world. The duo aims to write 100,000 words between them, and, as of Tuesday, they had just broken 33,000 words.

Former Daily columnist Darren Franich ‘07, already declared a NaNoWriMo 2007 winner, said he felt “a little bit of trepidation” as November began.

“At the beginning, I was like, there’s no way I can do this,” he said. “But once I got into a really good rhythm with it — crossing 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 — it became more tangible.”

Franich said he definitely could not have done NaNoWriMo successfully while at Stanford.

“My attention would have wandered too quickly,” he said. “Especially with the quarter system, it’s so easy to get caught up with everything else.”

Lyndsay Vogel ‘10 said she had a big idea — “something brilliant about a stoplight” — at the beginning of November, but after a slow start, she decided it was too much for her to take on this year.

“NaNoWriMo definitely seems like a better idea in October than it becomes in November,” she said, pointing out the huge time commitment that such an endeavor requires. “Think one reasonably sized essay per day — something most college students do in a couple days spaced over several hours.”

After succumbing to college applications halfway to the 50,000 goal last year, Emma Ziker ‘11 figured she would try it again this fall.

“I gave up after less than a week because being a freshman in college is a lot of work,” she said.

“Ultimately, I became much more interested in the novel than in doing homework,” agreed Emily Finley ‘10. “If I spent half the amount of time on homework that I did on [the novel] in the first five days, I would probably be the greatest student ever.”

Killeen Hanson ‘08 successfully did NaNoWriMo her senior year of high school and has attempted the feat each year since. As of Wednesday, her 2007 piece, a story of adventure on the high seas, had approximately 12,000 words.

Hanson agreed that NaNoWriMo was definitely harder to accomplish while at Stanford.

“People are torn every which way with a thousand student groups here, a thousand other commitments and classes,” she said, adding that the dorm environment can be a huge distraction.

Khalsa agreed that although writing her novel has been smooth, being at Stanford has been made this her most challenging year so far.

“I thought it was insane doing it with 12 college applications [my senior year of high school], but this is really insane. I’m trying to write a research paper for PWR and write an IHUM paper and do my astronomy homework and write a novel on top of that.”

With the advantage of living and working off-campus, Franich set daily word goals, mostly upping his word count in a local cafe. “Generally, I was just an unshaven writer over in the corner of the cafe sipping espressos one after another.”

Working on his novel, he said, meant sacrifices and a shift in priorities.

“Right when I really knew I was going to make the 50,000 words, I was out with some friends at a club,” he recounted. “I wasn’t really enjoying myself that much and I realized it was because I really wanted to work on my novel. This is like 11:30 p.m., my friend has paid for this table with lots of free, very expensive booze and I’m just like, ‘Hey guys, I’m going to go to my house, turn on some music and see if I can write a couple pages.’”

Franich hit 50,000 on Nov. 25, and his word count stood at 54,448 two days later.

How did he feel when he hit the magic number?

“Awesome. Amazing. I was just so completely excited that day that I allowed myself not to think about it or worry about it,” he said. “It really felt like a milestone. And then the very next day I started writing again. It felt like I’d moved on to the next level. But in video games, the next level’s always harder.”

For Goldsmith, the beginning of December is marked by sadness.

“I finish and then I feel like I’m looking for the meaning in my life again,” she said.

What’s next for these writers? They spoke unanimously: editing, with an eye towards possible publication and participation in NaNoWriMo 2008.

“Unless I break all my fingers and can’t type,” Goldsmith said, “I’m going to do it every year that I can.”