NaNoWriMo Inspiration: Wordnik Words of the Day

Stretch those typing muscles and get out your word counters because it’s that time of year again. That’s right: NaNoWriMo.

In case you didn’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Every November participants from around the world strive to write at least 50,000 words of a novel (or any book-length work) in 30 days, which by our calculations is about 1,667 words a day. Not a word count to sneeze at.

Wordnik is here to help. Every day for the month of November, we’ll be selecting words of the day from classic novels (such as Villette and Jane Eyre) to spark your imaginations. Not only that, if you use a word of the day in your novel and tweet the sentence to us, you might get selected to appear in our weekly roundup, in which you case you’ll also get stickers!

wordnikstickers

(For those in the know, think WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge, only NaNoWriMo-ier.)

How might you keep up with all the WotDs? You can follow us on Twitter (which you’ll want to do anyway for all things word-nerdy), like us on Facebook, and subscribe to the Words of the Day by email.

Keep your eye out for the first official NaNoWriMo WotD on November 1. Good luck!

WotD Perfect Tweets Roundup

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from this week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh.  Here are our favorites from this week.

Thanks to everyone for playing! You’ll have a chance next week to perfect your word of the day perfect tweets again. To get the word of the day, just follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

The WotD Perfect Tweet

Today we’ll be launching a new weekly challenge for our Twitter followers.

Use any word of the day (WotD) from this week in a sentence that best demonstrates its meaning in context. However, your sentence must be no longer than 140 characters – in other words, a perfect tweet!  Send us the link to your tweet via Twitter, and at the end of the week, we’ll pick our favorites and feature them on our blog.

What do we mean by “meaning in context”?  We mean show the word in action instead of simply repeating the definition.  For example, the definition for today’s WotD, lorette, is:

a name for a woman who is supported by her lovers, and devotes herself to idleness, show, and pleasure; — so called from the church of Notre Dame de Lorette, in Paris, near which many of them resided.

A sentence demonstrating its meaning is:

Aurore’s mother seems to us, du reste, the perfect type of a Parisian lorette, the sort of woman so keenly attractive with the bloom of youth and the eloquence of passion, — but when these have passed their day, the most detestable of mistresses, the most undesirable of companions.

Of course this sentence is far too long for a tweet. 🙂

How can you keep up with all the Words of the Day?  Follow us on Twitter or subscribe by email.  (Or both!)

The rules again:

  • Use any Word of the Day from this week in a sentence
  • @ us the link to your tweet (presuming you don’t want “@wordnik” taking up your 140 character limit)
  • We’ll feature our favorites on our blog on Friday the following Monday
  • No hash tag necessary

We look forward to seeing your perfect WotD tweets!