Can we use these steps from a workbook on this site?

I checked out http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/workbooks for elementary. Although I'm an adult, I was wondering if the steps in that workbook also apply here for adult fiction?

I'm also wondering if there are contests here. Are there any?

The basic steps can be used for any fiction.

Nope no real contests, NaNo is a challenge rather than a contest.

Well, during the actual month, a lot of people do word wars with each other, where you try to write more than someone else in a given amount of time.

Hello, Hello Rebecca Gem! My name is Cylithria Dubois (eensybeensyspider here and on YWP They call me CD,) and I am the YWP Forums Moderator!

While all of our workbooks are designed for students, and they meet with the United States Federal Guidelines for Core Cirriculum, any Wrimo can glean excellent advice and help from them! You are most welcome to use the workbook personally, but we do ask you do not post any of it's content here on the nanowrimo.org website. :D YWP has their own site to host those workbooks on, so we try not to come to the nanowrimo.org website and "spam" it all up, if you know what I mean. :D

To answer your question about Contests, neither nanowrimo.org nor ywp.nanowrimo.org have any sort of writing contest. It is true that this is a personal challenge putting you against 50,000 words and a hard deadline, but you do not compete with anyone else but yourself, those words and that deadline!

The object is not to encourage contests and competition so much, as to get writers back into the habit of writing daily, and encouraging them to be open and free with what they write so the words flow into an epic first draft of a novel!

Hope that helps answer your questions Rebecca Gem! :D

~Epic w00t (As I say at YWP.nanowrimo.org)
Cylithria Dubois -"CD"/eensybeensyspider
YWP Forums Moderator
Camp NaNoWriMo Counselor & Moderator
NaNoWriMo Beta Test/Bugger Wrangler
Office of Letters and Light Staff Member