If you are a person that experiences enjoyment from writing fiction or creative non-fiction, or if there’s a person like that with which you are familiar, there’s likely some talk about November’s famed novel writing challenge.

National Novel Writing Month has writers in a fit of motivational action right now, engaging in fruitful competition for the 50,000-word novel they’d always wanted to finish and release. Some people aren’t necessarily trying to reach a word count that high in order to deem their book ‘finished.’ Some wordsmiths end up at 20,000 words, for instance. Others very well may choose to end a story at a count closer to 15,000 or even 9,000.

There’s no particular framework or rulebook that bars you from calling a story that contains a four-digit or ––maybe–– three-digit number for a word count “not a novel." I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing the work ethic of a full-time working lady that wrote about 60,000 words of prose in thirty days.

I’ve worked with a couple of really nice library techs at my alma mater a few years ago that engaged in a similar writing challenge with me and we all wrote to a count somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 words. Let’s take a look at some lower numbers, though.

I’m currently writing a science fiction story that contains spurts of high-caliber action and a flurry of mysterious worlds, but it’s only 500 words so far. What if, in a few minutes from now, I decide, “Hey...I think I’ll end the story here. I’m done.”?

I know that someone would need to read the story in order to feel whether a story is filled-out or just simply lacking, but if you were focused solely on the word count for some reason, would you call my 500 words (that I pray you enjoy) a ‘novel’? What about 100 words? Let’s get lower, everyone. How does ‘25 words’ sound?

I ended up coming across a unique competition announcement earlier this year while I was preparing for NaNoWriMo. Bath Spa University, a public university in England, has a Creative Writing program that celebrated its 25th anniversary this year of pruning and inspiring student wordsmiths.

The celebratory time came with the announcement of the ‘Novel in 25 Words’ creative writing competition, with the incentive of getting published within the new A Place in Words anthology. Upon learning the details about this call to somehow create an intriguing, complete piece of prose of only 25 words, I said “What?”

My initial confusedness did fleet pretty quickly, though, as I became more interested in this type of challenge and I searched my little scribophile mind for strategies. I thought to myself, “This is a really cool way to not only get your words out to a large audience but strengthen your writing skills.”

I imagined myself back at my alma mater, choosing to focus on a creative writing educational track (instead of the major I chose first). I imagined being presented with such an interesting concept, to break up the intense semester, accepting the task and arranging that number of words in a graceful way. Can you imagine taking that on? What would you choose to write? This year’s winner of the Novel in 25 Words, actress Kelly Doran, had this to say about undertaking such a challenge:

“...I’m so pleased I stumbled across it; I had so much fun thinking of funny things I could say and I love the word pineapple, so it was a no-brainer for me to write a comical story about such a wonderful fruit!” - Kelly Doran (from Bath Spa U. news article, "Winning Wordsmith: Bath Spa University's 'Novel in 25 Words' Winner Announced")

Doran’s words made me realize that I was probably thinking this whole thing too hard.

So, wordsmith(s), if you’d want to take advantage of a 25-word writing challenge like this, you should literally just start anywhere. To begin is the key!