It's that time of year again.
Is anybody going to be attempting it this year?
For anybody who doesn't know NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month and is held from November 1st - 30th and the idea is for participants to try to write a novel (well 50,000 words) in that space of time.
I'm going to have a go... although I don't think I even reached 2000 last year.. hahaha.
It's a great creative exercise though and I reckon we should all have a go and talk about it in this thread.
What-say-you?
http://www.nanowrimo.org (http://www.nanowrimo.org)
I've tried to do it before. I reached about 10,000ish, maybe more. I know Phil Reed does it every year, but he's in the middle of a few projects already, so he might not. I thought about doing it again this year, but classes keep me busy.
Maybe there should be a AGS Novel thing to keep people motivated.
Quote from: Evil on Sat 20/10/2007 04:33:03
Maybe there should be a AGS Novel thing to keep people motivated.
That's a pretty darn good idea, but I think that may fall by the wayside as well. One of those, "Eh, screw it" things. Heh.
This whole thing kinda sounds fun. I think I might give it a try... I haven't clicked the link yet, but I think I could do it.
I've participated in NaNoWriMo three times now and have yet to be a winner. Each time I got somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 words when I lost my steam and stopped. That was when I was unemployed and single. Now I have a full time job and a wife. Does that increase or decrease my chances?
How many pages usually are 20,000 words? I might join... Does if matter if I do it in Spanish?
THe goal is 50.000 and you can write in whatever language you want. The main point about NaNoWriMo is that it isn't a contest, so it's all up to you.
Got to 13.000 last year. Going to try and breach 20k this year :)
Quote from: Nacho on Sat 20/10/2007 09:10:06
How many pages usually are 20,000 words? I might join... Does if matter if I do it in Spanish?
I guess you mean 50,000 words, in which case it's about 80 pages of normal 11pt text.
Ooops, sorry. Yeah, I meant 50k. I have a page, only 79 left! :D
Quote from: Nacho on Sat 20/10/2007 12:11:57
Ooops, sorry. Yeah, I meant 50k. I have a page, only 79 left! :D
Just use ctrl-A, ctrl-C and ctrl-V and repeat 79 times!
Quote from: Nacho on Sat 20/10/2007 12:11:57
Ooops, sorry. Yeah, I meant 50k. I have a page, only 79 left! :D
You're not supposed to start on it until Nov 1st, but I guess no-one will find out if you have a head start... ;)
...Unless, of course someone casually stumbles across this thread on this forum and busts you, CHEATER!
Dependant on how my different Drown-In-Work-And-Still-Manage-To-Slack-Around schemes work out, I might take a look at it. Because, after all, what matters is quantity, not quality, and if there's one thing I'm good at, it's long, tedious, over-stuffed sentences. :=
I'm going to have a go, but I'm not the sort of person who can just write... I'm someone who edits as I go... some people say that's a bad habit, but I just say it makes the rewrite easier. Unfortunately this makes me a slow writer, so hitting 50,000 words in 30 days is night on impossible.
Thats 1666 words a day... considering I've been given 3 weeks to write a 1000-word short story that seems like a hell of a target. But target's are there to be aimed at, so I'll definitely start it.
I made 20,000 words last year, but I don't have the time to participate this year.
I might enter this competition (I missed it last year) since I have a few novelle-sized ideas swimming around and have already written a few full-length novels. Vampire Umpires in Space!
That's around 1800 words a day... 12700 a week. I think it's possible. with this average, and the time I have for planning, I think I might just try achieving this. All I need now is a plot. The most annoying thing is, that the Finnish language uses less words than most.
Quote from: Stupot on Sun 21/10/2007 03:08:02
I'm someone who edits as I go... some people say that's a bad habit, but I just say it makes the rewrite easier. Unfortunately this makes me a slow writer, so hitting 50,000 words in 30 days is night on impossible.
Same here, but I'm slowly weaning myself off the backspace key when I'm writing the first draft of anything. The result is crap, but it's better than being stuck on the first draft for months at a time.
I find that it's better to write an outline (and then revise the hell out of it) before even writing the first draft, but I miss those days of making up the plot as I went along. I think I'll give this a shot.
49,966 words to go, people! :P (http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a23/FAMILIAR_QUEST/cover.png)
/EDIT: Please tell me it doesn't actually say 'prouldy'. Bah, damn it.
What part of "National Novel Writing Month" don't people get? :P
The point is to write from November 1st until the 30th, not before, and not after :=
Two days before the starting pistol fires a mysterious -nay, baronial! - figure tosses his hat -er, helmet into the ring. If only he could stop using dashes -his -prose -might -be -legible! Of course since legibility has taken a back seat to word-quantity this is the perfect contest for him! "See you at 50 000!" he taunts his fellow protagonists, before floating away in a zeppelin made entirely out of dreams and half-finished manuscripts. He's mad, you see -MAD!!!!!
Only five and a half hours to go.
I'm not optimistic about how dedicated I'm going to be, but I'll only regret it if I don't at least start it.
So as soon as it turns 12 I'm gonna try and bash out 1667 words without thinking about it, and then read it back in the morning and realise how crap it was.
[Edit]
I have a bad habit of ignoring the existence of time zones... Of course for some people it already is Nov 1st.
Apologies if you live outside the GMT timezone.
[Edit 2]
Woah... did anyone see that?
The AGS blue turned to turquoise... I wonder if this is the beginning of a new colour scheme ('color' for our American friends).
Yes we saw that like a month ago. And hmm, I'll have to start thinking of a tubject to write upon and quickly, 33 minutes of my time is already wasted. Oh well, I'll see to it on sunday then! Good luck everyone! :D
I'm going to enter and it's going to be the best homoerotic robotic love story ever.
Quote from: Obi on Wed 31/10/2007 23:35:23
I'm going to enter and it's going to be the best homoerotic robotic love story ever.
Mine has an Indian guy who's pick-up line is "Do you wanna see my robot?"
He's based on a real guy I met in Japan... He was such a man-whore, but he was so naive about it, it was sickening... he didn't seem to realise that most normal guys get shy.
I'm starting now :)
I'm only 100 words in, and already I want to edit the whole thing.
Must ignore mental editor who criticizes my every word... editing is for after the piece is written... every first draft sucks, it's a fact...
[A few minutes later...]
Hey, I just created a surprise beginning for my story. I think I'll just forge ahead and ignore all mistakes until December.
Yeh I'm gonna try and do that... My brain tells me to to change something but it's best to ignore it for this exercise otherwise we'll be forever tweaking and won't get anywhere near the target.
1722 words so far. Wonder how long I'll keep that up? ;)
Hopefully long, since that's not quite enough yet :) Though it's 1722 more than what I have :D
I hired Stephen King to write mine for me. Hoping to have my winning novel back soon. :)
I wish i could write a novel...I might be able to come up with one page on my own and that is about it.
I used to write short stories in my teen days, but i don't think i can do that any more, even though i have a great imagination.
Good Luck to everyone.
Only 49846 words to go! Unfortunately, I seem to have hit a bit of a mental block :P Stupid no-alcohol for a year....
...............
Alright, back to the manuscript.
Well, I wrote the first chapter. I have no title and no idea how to flesh out the story, but I feel confident that it'll all come together somehow.
1,092 down, 48,908 to go!
It's weird to write something based on word count.
If you have a good story, number of words used should have nothing to do with it.
Isn't writing creative process? This one here sounds like Soviet 5-year plan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plan_%28USSR%29), where specified amount of potatoes had to be planted or machine parts produced.
Strange.
I have entered as of today (Nov 2), and 3 hours later I have 3,018 words of fantasy-style action-adventure!
I'm at 2015, all written yesterday. I'm working on a minimum of 1667 words a day, so I'm on schedule so far :)
Quote from: InCreator on Fri 02/11/2007 02:55:47
It's weird to write something based on word count.
If you have a good story, number of words used should have nothing to do with it.
Isn't writing creative process? This one here sounds like Soviet 5-year plan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plan_%28USSR%29), where specified amount of potatoes had to be planted or machine parts produced.
Strange.
You see what it's good for. People write. If they reach the 50,000 or if they don't ... who cares? I always found it to be an accelerator for my creativity, if I have some kind of goal to reach.
To me, nanowrimo is a way of forcing creativity. Even if I end up with only 20.000 words worth of utter crap, I've still honed my skill somewhat. One thing which has already been mentioned is the endless thoughts concerning editing.
Nanowrimo isn't about writing something good. It's simple about writing at all.
And for that I'm thankful, because last year's nanowrimo gave me some good ideas for stories.
It's like 24 hour comics. The point is not to create a comic which is awesome, but to create 24 pages within 24 hours.
It's good practice :)
I'm also partaking this year. Last year I only got to about 8,000 words but alot of them were good words. This year I'm only at about 1,500 so far but I feel like I can at least get half-way if I stick my mind to it. It doesn't help that I have about three papers to write by the 16th, but whatever. I shall perservere.
Anyone interested can watch my site for updates. I will be posting what I write each day in full, so if you're interested in the writing process, or just how badly I write, then check it out: http://www.aedmark.com/nano
2105 and counting!
PDFs of my uninterrupted flow of consciousness available soon :P
10,130 in just over one day (from 12 am yesterday to 1:30 am today). Yeehaw, it's russlin' time at the word ranch!
Quote from: Andail on Sat 20/10/2007 12:32:19
Quote from: Nacho on Sat 20/10/2007 12:11:57
Ooops, sorry. Yeah, I meant 50k. I have a page, only 79 left! :D
Just use ctrl-A, ctrl-C and ctrl-V and repeat 79 times!
That would give you 2^79 pages, surely ;)
Waahh! 10,000... are you sponsored by Microsoft Word or something?
I'm still on less than 2,000. Got other things to do this weekend including a short story for English and a not-quite-an-essay for History... but I should have those done in the next couple of days, then I'll have a big NaNo session.
[lgm] I love your website, man. It's the kind of thing I want only I'm not creative or funny enough, hehe. I watched your movie, too. Really good.
Thanks Stupot! It's cool to hear from people who decided to watch my movie ;) Haha. Glad you liked it. Good luck with your novel!
NaNoWriMo looks like a lot of fun. I'm always tempted by it, but have yet to enter. Good luck to all the participants! Go team!
It's gone quiet... does that mean people are slipping already?
I am... been trying to fit coursework around my busy antisocial life and just haven't had the time to keep on top of things... now I can't be arsed.
ps... Could I use this cheeky opportunity to bring to attention my query about 'Trance-Pacific' in the Hints and Tips thread, which nobody has replied to?... Cheers... ;)
Nay, it aint quiet, people are just consentrating on their books. I started last night after updating to OpenOffice 2.3. And then wrote 666 words in 2 hours. Though I started disliking my story, however I'm going to force myself through it now that I've started it. It's a comedy about people in a block of flats that one morning is filled with awful smell. This leads to people going around and getting to know each other while trying to find out the source of it. :P
My mind hasn't been quiet. ;) I have to say that this NaNoWriMo idea is inventive; I'd been talking about this novel of mine for a few months now, and all I had written for it were notes and character sketches. I was sick of talking about my stories but not actually writing them, so I chose this would-be novel for my NaNo. And it's been worth the frustration and hassle.
I just typed, letting whatever crap my mind conjured fall onto the page. The first part of the story is pure crap, by the way. I didn't bother writing full descriptions of the scenery or characters. Eighteen pages in, and just now the real plot is beginning to show (and I can write full descriptions now).
I imagine that I'll be scrapping a lot of scenes (including the sex scene that I threw in there just to keep myself interested) and writing an extensive outline for the rewrite... but damn, it feels good to just write.
Quote from: rubywaves on Wed 07/11/2007 15:35:23
... but damn, it feels good to just write.
I hear you! This NaNo thing has been great for my motivation. I like randomly checking people's profiles on the forums over there to see how many words they have so far. Whenever I find someone with a kick-ass excerpt and more words than me it really gets me fired up. I can't say I'm on pace to make the 50,000, but I started doing 800-1000 words a day and now I'm averaging 1400-1500. Severe edits will be necessary before I show the manuscript to anybody, but the core of the story is emerging -it's all very exciting.
Baron
QuoteI imagine that I'll be scrapping a lot of scenes (including the sex scene that I threw in there just to keep myself interested) and writing an extensive outline for the rewrite
Interesting. Danielle Steele has made a living off of 90% sexual intrigue, so don't discount the power of an exposed breast or oily male torso to attract attention!
When I hit a lull in a story I try and remind myself if there's going to be a payoff worth having people suffer through it, and if not, I scrap the scene. Sometimes this can cost you a few pages or a whole chapter, but it's usually for the best.
I'm absolutely loving it! I had fallen into the same trap of trying to get everything planned out in meticulous detail before beginning to write, and that's usually why I never end up doing anything. :P So with a vague idea in my mind I sat down to write whatever crap came into my head, and it has been a hoot! A lot is crap, and I know I'll be editing heavily in December, but there's some bits I love, and I'm just enjoying the feeling of letting the story run away with me. I'm not bothered if I don't come out of this with a coherent novel, because I know that while 99% of it is probably crap, there's a few gems in there that I can do something with. Plus the community is such a delightful bunch of nutters. ;D (check out the 'Meanest thing you did to your characters thread', its hilarious).
13,481/50,000 btw. ;)
So NaNoWriMo is a little bit more than half over. How's everybody holding up? I'm still enthusiastic, but busy, meaning I'm not exactly on schedule (the story of my life....). I'm not saying that I'm writing the greatest novel that will never be, but it's definitely going to take longer than the rest of the month to finish. Maybe I should be looking for a NaNoWriYe or even a NaNoWriDe. I'm optimistic, however, that a NaNoWriCe will not be necessary :P
Baron
Quote from: BaRoN on Wed 07/11/2007 17:07:21
Severe edits will be necessary before I show the manuscript to anybody
And for that we have NaNoEdMo (http://www.nanoedmo.net/xoops/) :D
I'm far from being on track to 50.000 but I'm a realistic sort. My primary goal is to write as much and often as possible (which turns out to produce about 5000-7000 words a week, 20.000-28.000 by the time I'm done AND if I can keep this up) and beat last year's result. Since last year's result was somewhere around 2700, i've already beaten it by reaching 10.000 a few days ago :)
So yeah.
I've written all of 4 chapters. I think it's going to end up being a short story rather than a novel.
Roughly 26,000 words. I shouldn't have spent most of the week playing The Witcher ;|
Just past the 28k mark, and wondering how the hell I got this far! It's more a collection of short stories than a novel (think Illustrated Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illustrated_Man)), but its been fun to let my muse run riot, and I've already got a few short stories from it that I think I can do something with. 50k, here I come!
I started out with something promising, but it kind of crashed and deleted everything past the first 2,000 words. So no NaNoWriMo entry from me. Bleargh. :P
I'm past 34,000, which puts me about two days ahead of schedule. Not too bad, considering that I missed a few days (two in the second week, two last week).
Considering that my novel is not publishing material (probably not even skimming material) at this point, I might give NaNoEdMo a try.
Quote from: Pelican on Sun 18/11/2007 00:53:36
Just past the 28k mark, and wondering how the hell I got this far! It's more a collection of short stories than a novel (think Illustrated Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illustrated_Man)), but its been fun to let my muse run riot, and I've already got a few short stories from it that I think I can do something with. 50k, here I come!
I'd like to write a novel that has its own over-arcing plot, but where each chapter is a short story in it's own right. I thought, with that link to "The Illustrated man" that this is what he had done, but I gather the stories themselves are not linked by plot, only by theme. In my book the stories would themselves create a wider novel.
Has this been done before (probably, it's a bit of an obvious idea)? If so, does anybody know of any examples?
Cloud Atlas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Atlas) by David Mitchell was brilliant. That was a series of stories, and each one was in a different style, a different genre infact. There was the thriller, the sci-fi, diaries, letters, you name it. But again, they were only tenuously linked to each other and didn't really form a story when all put together.
I don't know if anyone else remembers it, but I got a book of short stories with my copy of Elite 2 for the atari. Each story's main character was a secondary character in the last one. So for example, a man is telling his tale in the bar, the next story might be about the guy who had sat listening to him. It was pretty neat, especially for an extra with a game. :)
Win.
And congratulations to you, ProgZmax.
Congrats, ProgZmax. I join you in the winners circle.
Somewhat OT, but if anyone is interesting in improving their writing, try your hand at flash fiction. Writing a story in 500 words or less is a big challenge, but it's amazing how much detail you can pack into such a short piece. Read this (http://"http://www.smokelong.com/flash/6415.asp"), for example (not written by me, btw).
Me too. ;D
*sits smugly with winner's icon in sig*
Everyone's a winner, baby, that's no lie (yes, no lie)
But seriously, well done to Rubywaves and Pelican and ProgZmax (again).
I got up to 1200 words sometime ago but don't even remember why I quit. But I did realise, that that same text translated into English was appr. 3000 words, so I got kinda frustrated, Finnish has a way of reducing words :)