Thread: NaNoWriMo

I've done Nanowrimo since... 2005. Won with 50k, won with 100k, won with 100k, won with 111k and a finished novel and well... we'll see how this year goes. No, I haven't had to dedicate all my time to it. In fact, it's not very difficult or time consuming at all... as long as you're a bit competitive, just join a regional group and let them kick you into gear. ^_^ Don't discount writing events... great way to rack up the word count. The easiest week is the first week and the last week... in the first week, WRITE MORE THAN NECESSARY. And I suggest never writing less than 1667 words a day.

I'd say it's all about the pacing, but for me, it's all about the mad crazy days where I write 16k...

But yeah.

It's not that hard. I remember the first year I heard about it. I said "that's impossible! Ridiculous! Why would you want to do THAT?" a few times over and then... well... I did it and it wasn't so bad, so I kept doing it. ^_^

Good luck to you guys... and to you guys going 'maybe next year'... no, no. Try this year. You won't win if you don't TRY. The thing with Nanowrimo is that it makes you stop putting off that zombie ninja romance thriller set in the ashes of a volcanic planet being terraformed by aliens that you've been thinking about for the last three years.

Hey, no one said it had to be a GOOD novel. It's all about churning out those ideas. I assure you, a month is plenty of time to write a first draft of a novel; I did it last year, I wrote THE END 111k words later. Yes... it was a challenge. But a worthy undertaking and not nearly so bad as you'd think when you first see the words FIFTY THOUSAND.

Good luck to anyone trying it!

You would be Tiana Calthye on NaNoWriMo?

Mind if I add you as a buddy so that your incredibly fast pace either spurs me on to greater things or depresses me and makes me give up the whole damn thing?

I can't even keep promises to myself... see my signature
It's so hard to write each day.

There is a Nanowrimo subgroup called 'rebels'. You are a rebel if your project falls outside of the traditional 'Novel'. I'm trying this year to write a game setting. The technical side of the website has a little app that counts the words in a text file and tracks your progress through the month - it looks like a cool thing.

So I am going to try to get my 50,000.

Wish me luck,,,


Sigurd

And if writing a novella doesn't sound like a fun month, apply the dictum "a picture is worth a thousand words". Does producing fifty maps sound better?

I tackled NaNoWriMo last year and failed, but kept working on my story sporadically. Its setting is of course the geofiction world I participate in (and map). Really, I wouldn't want to draw many maps rather than fewer good ones :-), but some of you may be quick enough to draw an atlas in a month. NaNoWriMo's slogan is "No plot? No problem!" What would the cartographic equivalent be?

Tried it three times, won the first time, failed the other two.
There is no question about it, it is hard work!
But I still remember winning it, it was fantastic =)

Won't do it this year, life being too busy and all.
Still wanting to continue on my map.. but even that is proving to be difficult.


Good luck to anybody trying the effort, it is something you just should do.
My tip is.. don't use a plot you've allready worked on, pick a (random) topic when you start writing. Nanowrimo isn't about quality, it is about quantity. And if you write 50k on the fly, it suddenly becomes a much more pleasant experience as you'll allow yourself to get away with a whole lot more.
PS: it also helps if you remove the backspace and delete buttons from your keyboard =P

Originally Posted by Ramah

You would be Tiana Calthye on NaNoWriMo?

Mind if I add you as a buddy so that your incredibly fast pace either spurs me on to greater things or depresses me and makes me give up the whole damn thing?

I am indeed. Buddy me away! I'm by no means the craziest member of my region though.

My pace is weird, actually. I usually do a burst of around 10k the first day, and something along the lines of 5k in the next couple days, then I taper out. Over the course of weeks two and three, I go through days where I write next to nothing--or heaven forbid--nothing at all. This is normal. Then either I wrap up in the last week, or I do an absurd amount of writing the last day, depending on how my novel's been going. So don't get depressed if I write 20k in a day or 0 words.

My tip is.. don't use a plot you've allready worked on, pick a (random) topic when you start writing. Nanowrimo isn't about quality, it is about quantity. And if you write 50k on the fly, it suddenly becomes a much more pleasant experience as you'll allow yourself to get away with a whole lot more.
PS: it also helps if you remove the backspace and delete buttons from your keyboard =P

Don't feel like you have to write something terrible. My final novels actually are quite readable. First drafts, but readable. The worst thing in my last year's novel was the introduction of a totally random plotline. Write something that interests you, not something random. It's about doing as much as you have to to keep moving forward... not about writing randomness just to get 50,000 words down. It's not a sin to spellcheck or even erase the odd thing.

My first year, I thought I had to write 'NaNo' style, which I thought meant writing an awful novel with no coherent plot just to get words down and... I wasn't happy with it. So the next year I wrote something I enjoyed writing about and I was satisfied at the end.

It isn't about quantity over quality. It's about writing that story. Would you be satisfied at the end of the month if you wrote fifty thousand words of nonsense? Where the main character was a block of cheese madly in love with a butcher knife who was promptly kidnapped by flies, murdered five times and rocks fell and everyone died at the end, and they all sang American Pie and a deaf person asked them to repeat it and there were no apostrophes EVER? If the answer is yes, then go nuts. For me the answer was no.

And if writing a novella doesn't sound like a fun month, apply the dictum "a picture is worth a thousand words". Does producing fifty maps sound better?

NaNoMango may be your thing.

It is generally easier to tell a story that to simply write random blather. If it starts making sense to you, that stimulates your creativity and your subconscious will keep mulling over "what happens next" while you are otherwise busy.

I'm "R. Dan Henry". I picked that configuration of my name as my "writing name" decades ago and basically made it my internet ID as well in the meantime. Last year, I tried without any NaNoWriMo buddies and failed. Maybe some co-NaNoWriMoers would bring me luck.

Also, I haven't decided what to write yet. Anybody got a map they'd like explored for 50,000 words or more? That might be just the thing to inspire me.

Added both of you.