Chris Baty

Chris Baty is a writer best known for creating NaNoWriMo (or "National Novel Writing Month"), in 1999, wherein participants aim to write an entire novel during the thirty days of November. Participants who complete 50,000 words during this time are deemed to be "winners" in this non-competitive group endeavor, where quality of writing takes a distant second place to quantity.

Baty has written at least 50,000 words during NaNoWriMo each year since 1999, when 21 people participated. It has since grown to include over forty thousand participants in 2004, and getting bigger each year. In 2005 fifty-nine thousand people participated and more than ten thousand succeeded. Apart from a series of "deeply mediocre" manuscripts, he has written a NaNoWriMo handbook, entitled "No Plot? No Problem!", a guide aimed at high-speed novelists.

In addition to founding NaNoWriMo, Baty has written music reviews and journalism for SF Weekly and the East Bay Express. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley and the University of Chicago, he lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

External links

* [http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue18/Interview.htm Interview with Chris Baty]
* [http://writerunboxed.com/2007/10/19/interview-nanos-chris-baty-part-1/ (2007) Three-Part, In-Depth Interview at WRITER UNBOXED]