Quote Originally Posted by ladiestorm View Post
I have microsoft office 365 on my laptop... I got it specifically for my writing.

Do we just have to write 50,000 words? or do we have to complete the story? And would it be wrong, unfair, cheating to post something I've already started? This would give me an incentive to get back to a storyline that I started AGES ago, and sidelined when life got too busy and complicated. It's the prequel to another novel idea I already had, but haven't started yet...

I doubt I would be able to finish the whole novel in the month... but it would get me back into it, to the point that I MIGHT actually get it finished, so that I can start on the idea I originally planned!
Planning, with outlines, character backgrounds, and the like, is encouraged. And I fail to see any significant difference between coming in with a chapter-by-chapter outline and a coming in with a couple of chapters under your belt. The thing would be that you'd have to only count the words written in November to play fair. That's confirmed by looking at the rules statements in the forum by the administrator handling those topics. Some do a complete rewrite of a novel previously written for NaNoWriMo. Again, as long as it is a fresh text and not just editing the old, that's fine.

In any case, things are very flexible. Some folks don't even write a novel (instead writing non-fiction or such), they're the NaNoWriMo "rebels". I've thought about writing a role-playing game for NaNo, but given the amount of numbers and tables I'd end up throwing around, I don't know how to handle the word-count issue fairly, so I haven't gone for it yet. Honestly, there are no cash awards or anything, so it's basically honor system and either use your judgment or ask in the designated subforum if you seem to be coming up against an edge case to the rules.

There's some guidelines to take into account for actually validly claiming the NaNoWriMo winner badge, but participation is pretty flexible. On the issue of "can I finish what I already started", the answer is a clear "yes, but only words written in November count for completing your 50,000 words".