You could do the contest and see what you get out of it. Then write a short story with what you’ve learned.
Bite me. So are you doing it? Are ya are ya are ya are ya huh huh huh???
I’ll have you know that I went to dictionary.com’s thesaurus to get those antonyms for “suck.” That’s effort!
I’m thinking about it. I have an old laptop w/ some sort of word-processing program on it. I have an opening line. I have a kernel of an idea that I’ve wanting to see on paper for a long time now. I have a main character who will make it extremely difficult to keep the story out of the gutter*. We’ll have to see.
What can I say? If I’m going to be imagining a character, it might as well be a woman. And if it’s a woman, she might as well be a dream girl. And you can imagine what happens when I spend extended periods thinking about dream girls… How about a story revolving around talking fruit instead?
So, how many people are just going to wing it and how many are outlining?
I’ve put it off the last few years, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll give it a crack this year.
…maybe.
Outlining?
Are you insane?
That ruins, just ruins, the thrill of " where in the hell am I going with this next chapter?" and " *What exactly is the point of all this? * " which is always followed up by, I need chocolate.
Who needs heroin or coke when there is writing? Can’t stay away, can’t stop yourself, Think about it all.the.time. More punishing than a triple bean burrito.
Gah! I loves writing.
I’m not a big fan of outlines. I have a reasonably coherent idea with a beginning, middle, and end, which is a hell of a lot more than I had last year. Any more planning than that would be overthinking it, at least for me.
I was just planning on expanding and novelizing an old term paper on Dutch Disease.
“I’m sorry Australia. You’re hemmoraging gold, which is a net gain to you; but, it has given you,” the doctor pauses for the dramatic music, “Dutch Disease.”
“Gasp! Doctor, what can I do?!”
“Use some of that gold to subsidize your other exporting industries, before they contract into nothing. Otherwise, when the gold runs out, you’ll have no exporting industries left.”
“Gollly, Doc, that’ll be tough legislation to get passed.”
“Every novel needs a plot, m’am. G’day.”
I know what you’re all thinking, and you’re right: It would make a much better play. Now I only have eleven days to come up with a new idea. Drats.
Bam! I’ve got it! It’s like Name of the Rose meets The Terminator. It’s movie gold, baby!
My “outline” is a page or so of "Sam, the main character, does this, which leads to her discovery of this but her mother tried to cover it up by doing this.
In the meantime, she’s attending classes, taking photographs, meets a boy, etc.
It’s nothing like:
A. blah blah blah
…a. blah blah blah blah
…I. blah!
…i. blech.
Okay, I signed up. And just doing so makes me all wiggly in the midsection. Last week, in a completely unrelated phenomenon, I sat down at my computer and wrote for the first time in roughly ten years. I gave up years ago because each new story seemed to aspire to a even higher level of suck, and I couldn’t bear myself anymore.
But, I’ll give it a shot. I’ve got two different stories that are at least vaguely outlined or have a couple scenes written already. I’ve got typical chick-lit on one hand, and an all-out supernatural bodice-ripper on the other (hey, I’ve got a dirty mind, I might as well write it all down). I’m fairly certain that none of this will ever be seen by any eyes but mine–and I signed up anyway. I am a glutton for punishment.
Suse, I’m sure I’ll see you in the “I Hate Myself And Want to Die” forum. 
Let’s see: 50,000 words (although I could have sworn that the definition of a novel was 40,000. Overachievers) in 30 days = 1,666 words per day, about three pages…
Good luck.
One thing that did help last year - when I was completely stuck sitting in front of a keyboard trying to think of words, I’d take a little tape recorder to bed with me and dictate pages and transcribe them later. It did help loosen me up at times, but I still didn’t finish.
Bam! It’s the sack of Jerusalem in the First Crusade crossed with time-traveling Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders with a Woody Guthrie feel to it!
I think I’m gonna write three or four of these.
My mom, sister and I are all giving it our best shot.
I was outlining a story, developing characters… then I lost the fun and motivation. Starting over, I grabbed personal incidents that I want to include in the new story, but I’m winging it from there. We’ll see how that turns out come the evening of Nov. 1st. 
This should definitely be shared.
I tried to sign up and found out that my name was already being used. The nerve. So I tried to sign up with a modified name and got told that someone had already signed up from my email address. :smack: I guess they don’t erase people from year to year. Once you’re in, you’re in.
I tried this in 2002 and only got a little past 4k words. Pity. I’d be interested to know how that turned out. But I started late. Yeah, that’s it, I started late and I had things come up and I had to leave town for Thanksgiving and interact with relatives. And I made the mistake of doing housework in November. No, no one is going to believe that. But I did start late.
This time I start at one past midnight on Halloween.
I signed up - and I’m scared.
I’ve never done creative writing. I always managed to get out of it in school (partially because my creative writing sucked) and so I’ve no clue how this works.
I have an idea, but no character names and well, only the main character, and only kind of…but she will probably have to interact with other people during the course of the story, right?
When people say ‘their characters decide what to do’ what does that mean? how does that happen?
If you know your characters, and you start typing, often, the characters will say things and do things you hadn’t planned, (the subconscious is a tricky little bugger) and the story goes in directions you hadn’t consciously planned.
I’m scared too, Amarinth. If there was another (legal) way to get the rush that comes when the words just fly off the fingertips onto the keyboard, I’d be doing it.
I just have this low-level dread of the slogging that comes before, and after.