NaNoWriMo

[SSH]

Ooops, sorry. Yeah, I meant 50k. I have a page, only 79 left! 

Just use ctrl-A, ctrl-C and ctrl-V and repeat 79 times!

That would give you 2^79 pages, surely

[Stupot]

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.

[LGM]

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!

[Sparky]

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!

[Stupot]

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...

[Tuomas]

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.

[rubywaves]

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.

[Baron]

... 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

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

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

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.

[Pelican]

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. 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.  (check out the 'Meanest thing you did to your characters thread', its hilarious).

13,481/50,000 btw.

[Baron]

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 

Baron

[voh]

Severe edits will be necessary before I show the manuscript to anybody

And for that we have NaNoEdMo

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.

[Grundislav]

I've written all of 4 chapters.  I think it's going to end up being a short story rather than a novel.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Roughly 26,000 words.  I shouldn't have spent most of the week playing The Witcher ;|

[Pelican]

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), 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!

[Akatosh]

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. 

[rubywaves]

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.

[Stupot]

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), 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 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.

[Pelican]

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.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Win.