Well, November is a couple days away which means it’s time once more for NaNoWriMo. Anyone else planning on doing it? Last year was my third attempt (though, really, the first serious attempt) and I’m proud to say I made it. And to anyone who’s on the fence I’ll say: it’s totally worth it. It was frustrating and scary, but also completely rewarding.
This year I once again have no idea what I’m going to write. Last year I didn’t have much beyond a starting point and an impression of the mood I wanted to capture; this year I don’t even have that. But there are still a couple days to figure it out.
I’m likely to be too busy (November tends to be a busy month in my line of work), but the Ball of Bad Plotz will be available for consultation, as usual. If you get stuck–need a plotline, a MacGuffin, or just a name–hit me up.
Ball, Inc. is not responsible for any fainting, falling down, or other mishaps in connection with the use of its products. Please use Plotz responsibly.
I’m sort of going to do it. I have a 30,000-word fiction assignment for my freelance gig, so I’m going to use NaNoWriMo to jumpstart that. If I finish in November I’ll probably use the other 20K words to get going on the third book in my series.
I’ve never understood this concept. It’s sort of like saying speed and quantity are more important than quality. But I’ll admit I’ve never given it a shot. Has anyone ever produced a really good work this way?
It’s hard to be objective when talking about your own work, but I produced my first self-published novel (or at least a big chunk of it) during NaNo 2011, and I’m reasonably proud of it. I think the whole point of the exercise is to force you to get something down and not worry that much about editing. You can edit later, after it’s finished. Nobody’s expecting NaNos to produce a perfectly polished, ready to publish novel draft in a month.
ETA: I can’t remember the titles or authors right now, but I know that at least a couple of NaNo projects became commercially published (and decently selling) novels.
I’m an author, and it takes me too long to complete even a draft of a novel in thirty days. That said, I might try to write a new picture book during this month.
I did it for the first time last year and completed it. Now the editing part, ha! I’m on my third pass right no for editing but I fully intend to upload for Kindle Publishing.
I will give it a go again this November and I encourage anyone else interested in challenging themselves to go for it! It was terrifying and fun all at the same time!
There’s a truism that you have to write a million words of crap before you get something worthwhile. My understanding is that NaNoWriMo is an effort to get people who like to fart around with the idea of being a writer to start working on those million words. Get something down; it doesn’t have to be good and no one is going to make you try to shop it around or anything. It’s just an impetus to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak and because everyone is doing it together, you’ve got a readymade support/discussion group.
Yes, the point is to push you to move from talking about writing to actually writing, which is harder than anyone who isn’t actually writing would think. It also encourages those of us who almost compulsively edit what we write to turn that editor off for a while.
Doing it with a community makes it fun…or at least eases the pain.
I was going to, even to the point where I’ve got a fairly comprehensive outline written, a couple of character sketches, and a short story in the same setting.
Then the universe decided to drop a cosmic shitstorm on me over the past week and a half. If the last five days are any indication, I’ll barely have enough spare brainpower to play candy crush, much less organize thoughts in a coherent manner and write them down.
The point is the only way you get to be an actual writer (whether you define that as published or simply coherent and understandable) is by writing. You have to make mistakes and write purple prose (and maybe some purple verse), screw up your characters and misplot and murder grammar and spelling, run your sentences on for pages, write terrible dialogue, and otherwise pay your dues before you get there. Like so many other things success only comes with practice.
NaNoWriMo isn’t about writing a deathless classic, it’s about doing the practice work. There is no requirement to be successful in any sense other than successful at setting a goal to write a certain amount by the end of the month and following through. If the results are readable that’s a bonus! It’s rather like the people who take 10 hours to “run” their first marathon with many stretches of walking, or even resting, before he gets to the finish line. What’s important isn’t that he wins, that is, comes in first, the important thing is to finish the course. Subsequent attempts are for improving times/techniques/skills/etc.
Heck, even if you don’t finish or reach your number-of-words goal you are still likely to gain from the attempt.
I’ll go even farther than what the others have said: the point is not to write a really good work, or even a not-quite-polished work. It’s just to WRITE, fully aware that you’re what you’re going to write will mostly be terrible. It’s supposed to liberate you from the pressure of writing something good so that you just get in the habit and practice of doing it. Then, once you’ve written your terrible, absurd, sometimes-not-completely-terrible “novel,” you can take the habit of writing and the fully charged creative juices and slow down to write something more serious.
And all that said…sometimes decent things can come out of NaNoWriMo. I started last year with the bar set so low that I was willing to have the equivalent of the Monty Python foot come stomping down on my characters if need be, just to keep the story moving along, or get me out of a sticky situation. Turned out I never need it. I eventually let a number of people read it and it’s actually gotten good feedback. I’m under no illusion that it’s publishable, but in its way, it’s better than what I hoped for. (If anyone here wants to read it, just PM me! ;))
What everyone else said. According to Sturgeon’s Law, 90% of everything is crap, so if you can somehow squeeze 50,000 words out of yourself, you might get up to 5,000 words of non-crap. It’s scientific!
As for me, I’m tempted to write a fanfic for a change, after winning and losing several years with original fiction. I just don’t want to drop my real novel in progress for a new one and that happens almost every time I do this, so a fic it is. It’ll be a prequel/sequel to this dystopian post-invasion fic, by the way. I’d like to write a non-zombie dystopian YA novel someday, so hopefully this will be decent practice.
I’m going to give it a shot this year. I’ve only ever given it one serious effort before (and two or three non-serious efforts), and I think it’s time to give it another go. I’ve had the bones of an idea (really just a concept sentence) bopping around in my head for a few months.
