That’s what I’ve always believed, that women and men are basically the same, just treated differently by society (with good and bad things for both) but it tends to elicit a strongly negative response for some reason. So I’ve stopped saying it and just let people get on with their weird stereotyping and assumptions about others.
Personally I prefer upbeat stories but yours does sound interesting!
It says you cannot write your novel on the site. So what the heck is the 50,000 word count?
How does this work? Do I write directly into NaNaWriMo or do I write in Scrivener and the copy/paste?
You write in whatever program you like and then if you want the official NaNo word count you can paste it in.
IIRC you can also just keep track of your word count yourself and enter that into NaNo. However, I think you do have to paste in the text at some point if you want the NaNo site to recognize you as a winner (if you manage to hit 50,000 words).
Write in whatever word processor you want. Manually update your word count daily. At the end of the 50k, it will ask you to copy/paste into its word count machine (they give instructions for encrypting the text if you’re worried about stealing) and it verifies that you entered 50k words and declares you a ‘‘winner.’’ That’s it!
P.S. Scrivener has a feature that allows you to set a daily writing word count target, if you want.
I’ll be doing it again this year, but as usual I’ll just be using it as a tool to help me get some serious wordage down on my current novel (book 9 in my series). It’s at 60,000 words right now and I anticipate it’ll be about 100-110 when it’s done, so I probably won’t hit the 50,000-word target. That’s okay, though–I love their little tracking widget, and it does a good job at keeping me on track. NaNoWriMo has helped me get over humps in several novels over the years.
I’m doing it.
I’m currently about 30,000 words into a novel I’ve been working on for a couple of months, which I know isn’t really in the spirit of this thing, but I want to finish it by the end of November, so I’m going with it.
I’ve given this a go a couple of times in the past and didn’t end up accomplishing anything, but this year I’m SERIOUS. For real.
In my novel, a naive sea nymph must embrace her power to stop Poseidon from turning the Earth into an ocean planet. I have zero ideas for a title at this point.
Is there a way to make a SDMB group over there? I’m having a little trouble finding people’s names. I’m “Renee.” Friend me.
The Little Mermaid
I joined a few years ago when I thought I was going to write a novel about a crime-solving vigilante meteorologist. Life intervened, and I didn’t get very far. In recent years I’ve always been too busy in November to even try it.
I think I may give it another shot this year. I have several ideas and I’m not sure which to go with. I’m still playing with the meteorologist story but I’m not sure it’s going anywhere. Just last night I had a dream that I think might make a good short novel. It’s about a teenage girl suspected of murdering her older brother, and the brother’s friend who finds out the truth. Trouble is I woke up too early and I never found out what the truth was.
I’d never heard of it until about a week ago. But I’m gonna do it! My career for the last 38 years has been generating verbiage on behalf of various causes. Surely I can generate some on behalf of myself, right?
The NaNo site has all kinds of tips, help, advice, etc. I also downloaded the $1.99 kindle book *No Plot? No Problem!*by one of the NaNo creators. Very helpful and hilarious. There are even tips on what snacks to stock up on. Whole chapter on how to find the time (Hint: it’s easier if you’re **really **busy). If you want to feel inspired to do this, I highly recommend this very short read.
I’m not doing any prep, except that I bought Scrivener (a very clever program!) and I’m going to find a place to put random grab-bag stuff that I might want to drag in. I have NO ideas at all going into this. Just going to dive in head first and devil take the hindmost!
I’m taking the advice of Ray Bradbury, “Your intuition knows what it wants to say. You just have to get out of its way.”
Have I told you all about our Lord and Savior, Scrivener?
I have an exciting opportunity that everyone’s talking about.
Seriously though, it changed my life. I’ve also been using it a long time, so if any of you have questions about how to do something, PM me before you sort through the 500 page instruction manual.
My current saving grace is a little program called Cold Turkey that allows you to set a schedule blocking stuff (internet sites, or all internet, or any computer app) and lock it so that it cannot be undone. Then there’s Cold Turkey Writer, which takes you to a full-screen writing app and doesn’t allow you to do anything but write until you’ve hit a time or word count goal. Seems perfect for NaNoWriMo.
I have yet to do any actual writing in Scrivener, but the control-freak inside me loves the organization of it. My problem is that I get so excited about organization that I never get around to the actual writing.
Still no earthly (or unearthly) idea what I’m going to do. I might just sit down on November first and see what comes out.
I’ve decided that I’m unlikely to ever write a first draft in Scrivener… especially not when I’m pantsing. It just doesn’t seem like a very pantsy way to write. But I love it as a revision framework!
I’m using Scrivener…or should I say, I’m writing in it, but I doubt I’ve tapped into even a tenth of its potential. Hell, I can’t even figure out how to set a default font.
Spending a little time with the Quick Start Tutorial would be a good idea.
You can just use the word processing part and ignore the extra features. But they’re there if you want to use them later.
Scrivener –> Preferences –> Formatting
You can customize everything in Scrivener including fonts and colors for every function (you can make the binder a different font and color than the editor, for example.)
[QUOTE=chrisk]
I’ve decided that I’m unlikely to ever write a first draft in Scrivener… especially not when I’m pantsing. It just doesn’t seem like a very pantsy way to write. But I love it as a revision framework!
[/QUOTE]
I pretty much always pants (and have accepted I’m probably gonna pants in November) and I will admit Scrivener blurs the line a lot between drafting and editing. I have a compulsive editing problem that seems to be exacerbated by this program.
However, there is that draft mode specifically for writing without the editing tools. You can make it full screen if you like. The only reason I don’t use it is that for some reason I end up obsessing over the background and font colors.
I’ve looked at Scrivener, but I’ve done so much work in Open Office I don’t feel like transferring it over. Besides I already have my notes arranged in various folders and I don’t want to have to make my brain work with someone else’s organizational system even if it is just a computer program. That’s why I love working on a computer so much: it’s all arranged the way my mind works and no one else’s. 
I will try to find out if we can make an SDMB group. Sounds like a good idea.
What is that? If it’s Facebook, I’m not on it.
On the NaNoWriMo site, I mean. I’ll try to set it up. Going to go poke around right this very second.
