NaNoWriMo

Thursday*

I see that in previous years people on boards have done NaNoWriMo. I'm thinking I'll take the plunge this year.

Anyone else doing it? Or have tips from experience?

If you don't know what I'm talking about, www.nanowrimo.com is the website.

Tingo

You should definitely do it! When I did it last year, I had a great time and wrote a lot. Still haven't got around to editing yet, but some day I will!

Tips? Um, not really. There's a book out by the guy who invented Nanowrimo which is supposed to be good. It's full of hints and tips and how to increase your word count. I can't think of it's name at the moment though.

I didn't learn this from NaNoWriMo, but I'll say it anyway because it's related. Save obsessively. E-mail your novel to yourself, put it on a memory stick, or whatever, because if it happens to vanish, well, it sucks a whole lot more than you think it would.

I'm not sure if I'm going to attempt it this year. Apparently the second year is tough, and I'm not sure I want to fail miserably. November feels like it's years away still.

Sarky

Thread stickied for the rest of the month.

willy wonka

Yes I'm doing this this year - looking forward to it.
If you breakdown the 10,000 word quota - it works out at 333 words a day which is very achievable. Hopefully I will have the bare bones of a novel by the end of it. What an exciting prospect!

OOps it is 50,000 words - thats 1667 words a day. Sorry about that

Lexus1976

Never did this before.... when your writing to you write on line on on a word document... how do you submitt this at the end?

Whats stopping people from submitting work they've already wrote ?

Thanks

Dave3x

There's nothing stopping cheating. There are no prizes, there is no 1st place. Just the acheivement and the practice. I'm doing it this year for the first time in the hope that the sheer level of output will improve my writing. All that practice has to...

whitetrash

Looking forward to trying it for the first time myself. Although I have no idea what I'm going to write about...

Thursday*

I did it! I won!

tba

Well done, got a link?

Thursday*

www.nanowrimo.org should do it. Though I could have gotten that horribly wrong.

tba

I was actually asking for a link to your extract..

Thursday*

I haven't actually got one I'm afraid. My Nano is definitely not fit for public consumption. But I have every intention of brushing it up and when I do this I may post an extract on boards.

Thanks for being interested!

Tom

Just finished reading the first part of No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty (Amazon Link) and this sounds really interesting. I'm not sure I can wait until November might have to start in May.

Tom

lilmissprincess

Anyone doing it this year? I think I may try again, having failed the last two years, ya never know, i want a distraction from studying this year, so I'll probably complete it!

highlydebased

I'm gonna give it a shot

In TY this year so dont have any homework to do etc in the evenings.....plus I will have a fair few days off also so time will be on my side...

luckat

Tip: always end the day's work on a cliffhanger.

highlydebased

luckat wrote: »

Tip: always end the day's work on a cliffhanger.

Nice idea. Thanks.


Starts in just over 3 hours :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Wish me luck. I have a good plan as to what I am doing.

Antilles

I'm doing it this year, and its going well so far. I've managed to write 5,000 words, which is exactly where I should be at this stage. The nanowrimo site is up and down and terrible amount. I encourage myself by updating the "words so far" bit on the site ever time I hit a milestone (every few hundred), but it has been down all day and my stats page is going to look like I just didn't write for a whole day

funky penguin

Just signed up. Odd that I should stumble across this two days after I decide to write a book I've had in my head for three years now....

Still. I'm shelving that particular idea. The plot and characters are chaotically sorted out in my head already, and I feel that defeats the purpose of this exercise!

This feels like something that could really help my writing skills. Writing for the pure joy of it! I can't wait!

Now.....what to write?

highlydebased

The nanowrimo site has been terribly anal as of late, indeed. Saturday night I wrote tonnes, and I am now 2 days ahead of schedule, with around 9300 words.......gives me some time to anaylise what I have wrote

luckat

Analyse schmanalyse. Keep writing, kid.

highlydebased

luckat wrote: »

Analyse schmanalyse. Keep writing, kid.

lol

Update on my word count.... 10,001 words

funky penguin

While I agree to the whole concept of NaNoWriMo, I just can't help but edit it.....

My reasoning is that it will be helpful whether I win or not. Still, nothing beats just ploughing through a whole load of pages in one sit, stopping, taking a breath and saying: "Holy ****".

Skinfull

I'm doin it this year too and on the first day I knocked out 2300 words which I was thrilled about but here we are now on the 6th of November and I'm stuck somewhere around 3200!
So I've gone into stream of consciousness writing again and it seems to be working.

No plot no problem! No grammatic punctuation? No problem? No idea where this story is taking me?! Class! Loving it!

highlydebased

Just after passing 11,000. Would be something to celebrate if the novel was anyway good....

http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/216770 click on the "Novel Excerpt" tab for 2 excerpts from my "novel"

lemon_sherbert

I'm attempting my first Nanowrimo at the moment, loving it so far, though the writing's horrifically bad, and I'll probably fail my college exams. I've just passed 18,400. It's inconsistent at best, but I think I'll treat it as a glorified summary and see what December does to it.
It's funny, because I've never really written before, but I find myself thinking about what I'll write all day, and then writing far longer than I mean to.

Antilles

Posting to this thread because today is the last day of NaNoWriMo 2007, and I just passed 50,000 words!

Look forward to seeing it on bookshelves soon!

funky penguin

Well done! Quite the feat!

I only managed 20,000 or so. Stupid college. Ah, but it fulfilled its purpose! Lots of new ideas and descriptors for my actual novel. The characters got a good fleshing out too.

I'll continue it anyway, me thinks.

Lainabaina

so, has anyone actually gone about editing or doing anything with their NaNoNovel? I've printed mine out this weekend and I'm gonna take to it with a red pen as soon as I get time

Antilles

Lainabaina wrote: »

so, has anyone actually gone about editing or doing anything with their NaNoNovel? I've printed mine out this weekend and I'm gonna take to it with a red pen as soon as I get time

Ugh Its embarrassing, but I tried to begin the editing process on my NaNoWriMo and the writing was so appalling that I had to stop. The overall quality (!) of the first draft was too low, I think, to even merit a full editing so I decided to put it aside for now and work on keeping my quality higher throughout the writing next time I do it.

MsFifers

I'm thinking of doing a NaNoWriMo this month. I said I would give myself this week to make notes and start properly on Friday.

But now I'm wondering if it is worth the effort as no one here seems to have managed to salvage anything out of their efforts?

Maybe I should just take a conventional approach?

KingLoser

I've started my novel this month...

So in November, I'm gonna crunch out a 50,000 word version of it. The entire thing will be wrote in November, every single word... does that count as cheating?

Phototoxin

Ugh Its embarrassing, but I tried to begin the editing process on my NaNoWriMo and the writing was so appalling that I had to stop. The overall quality (!) of the first draft was too low, I think, to even merit a full editing so I decided to put it aside for now and work on keeping my quality higher throughout the writing next time I do it.

balls dude, you're not writing a novel per se, you're writing a draught which will BECOME a novel ! Hang in there.

Also I am on it too.

luckat

First drafts are meant to be sucky. They're where you get to know your characters and their stories and their neuroses and hangups and virtues and heroism, and where a good solid scenario and a place where it happens appear.

If it's too bad to edit, sit down and write a second draft from what you've got in your head from the first. Then a third. Then a fourth. Writing the same novel each time.

You'll find that you're in more control of your material each time.

Antilles

Alright, well I didn't manage to salvage much of my last attempt, but it was the first time I'd tried anything of the sort.I'm giving it another go this year, and have taken tomorrow and the day after off work so I'll have a nice five day stretch with the bank holiday to work on my outline and character bio's.Planning on getting my entire plot down by Tuesday, which should improve the quality a bit (fingers' crossed).

I'm also going to break away from the 1,667 words a day thing. This year, I'm planning on two days of 2,500 words each, and then one day of revision and review, which should also help the quality.

Blush_01

I've had an idea in my head for a short story for almost a year now. I think I could flesh it out to the full 50,000 and it might encourage me to beat the nasty case of writer's block I've been having.

God loves a trier, and I just want to be loved!

Wish me luck.

marie_85

Signed up today for the first time. Really just need to get into the habit of writing every day and learning how to express my ideas. I don't expect anything salvageable to come out of what I write, but then again, maybe I'll surprise myself!

Matt Holck

It will be a unwanted christmas present
again

lemon_sherbert

I did it last year, and since October began, I've been itching to start. Last year's 50,000 words made the bulk of the plot of what I hope will eventually be my first novel, (far, far in the future) but I've shelved it for a bit to think on it and revise. This year's effort is going to be different, but I loved the experience of last year. My quality improved as I went, and I lost all the self consciousness of writing.

Plus all the winners from last year got an offer to get a printed, binded manuscript for free from createspace.com, so I might even design a cover and get a mock up done for the laugh!

jw297

I've just signed up to this for the first time, not sure what Ive let myself in for....
I really want to get writing, and this seems like a good way to kick-start things, but just wondering what other people feel they have got out of it in previous years, apart from 50,000 words?

luckat

Got out of it? Red eyes and a sense of permanent crazed exhaustion.

Look on the site - Dublin or Ireland-elsewhere in the regional boards - for meetings every Saturday.

Spyral

Not many meetings though in the other regions

el_tiddlero

i'm scared.. what if i don't make it??

luckat

Pop over to Paris. There, they have writeathons in Starbucks three days a week during Nanowrimo.

The Mad Hatter

luckat wrote: »

Got out of it? Red eyes and a sense of permanent crazed exhaustion.

Look on the site - Dublin or Ireland-elsewhere in the regional boards - for meetings every Saturday.

Damnit, I work every Saturday!

I've signed up. Not sure if anything's gonna come of it, as I'm usually extremely busy anyway, but we'll see.

If anything, it's a good excuse to write the book that's been playing bits in my head for the last while.

Edit: site keeps crashing, though...

Antilles

The site is unbearably slow this year. I keep getting timeouts. I have only been able to update my word count once since November 1st

Matt Holck

I will try to get the will to write tonight

Spyral

the site is WAAAAAAAAAAAAY slow and makes it painful but its good because it stops you procrastinating on it (procrasitnating on boardsie is always a kicker though..)

luckat

They need new servers - that's why they're asking people to donate $10. I've donated - it's a great site.

This week's pep talks for writers - which come as emails - are from Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials books), and Jonathan Stroud (author of the Bartamaeus Trilogy).

Phototoxin

I'm only on 11K words

luckat

Phototoxin wrote: »

I'm only on 11K words

*Only*? Are you out of your mind? That's fantastic! That's 11,000 words more than you'd written a fortnight ago. You have characters, a story, funny and tragic and disastrous things happening to them, a world you've created.

Very well done! Keep writing.