In case we have any (other) aspiring writers in FF-land, I wanted to let people know about National Novel Writing Month (every November).
Basically, NaNoWriMo challenges people to write a 50,000 word “novel” (really more of a novella, or the start of a novel, or something) in the 30 days of November.
I attempted this last year, but thanks to final exams, Thanksgiving, illness, projects, and general lack of motivation/writer’s block, I quit fairly early on. This year, though, I want to at least try and write every day, even if I don’t actually “win” by completing 50,000 words.
Anyway…anyone want to join me in the insanity of writing a novel in a month?
Edit: changed “page” to “word”…a rather vital difference
I had tough enough time writing 500 word for the contest in two weeks, LOL. :roll: I think I’ll pass on this one. But good luck, hope you do very well.
I’ve always wanted to do that. Unfortunately, I always vow that I’m going to ‘write every day, no matter what!’ and I’ll do really well for like a day and then I get busy or distracted or something else. NaNoWriMo is a really good excuse to buckle down and write something every day, though, even if you don’t hit 50,000 words.
I think the whole point is to have you write a bunch of raw material all at once, so you can edit it all down later. I know that probably part of the reason I get distracted so easily is that I’m really anal about everything being ‘right’ and detailed and perfect of the bat…even when every English teacher I had has told me that writing is mostly just writing various drafts and editing/pruning them so they don’t suck as much. Dangit, I should just go ahad and do it this time.
Oh my god, same with me…I get really frusterated if I don’t keep telling myself that I will go back and fix things. Lol. It takes too much energy to keep reminding myself though.
Heh heh heh…I just remember my freshman year and some Englsh course I had…Intro To Compostion or something like that. The professor made us all write this essay about this topic that none of us really cared about in the first place…and then we had to edit…and edit…and edit it…I think it was the main reason I didn’t take English as a major. Writing is fun, but I can’t imagine being brilliant enough to actually make a living at it, if that’s really the process you have to go through every time.
I’m willing to give it a shot. Who knows if I’ll stay motivated that long, but well, Nov will probably be my last month to have a fun hobby before I start messing with Writtens around Christmas time. So not looking forward to that.
I’m willing to try it, I love writing but who knows when I’ll get writers block. Sometimes I think that I’ve been writing for ages on end,yet only a few minutes have went by. What’s bad is sometimes I start writing and then I get so caught up in what’s going to happen next that I sort of stop writing the story. ops:
One of these days I will participate and last more than a week. Sadly, college is not conducive to writing, when I have papers to write instead. Good luck Shanthi!
Have about 1,700 words, and I seem to have come to a writers block already! Ack!.. I really don’t like the last two paragraphs I wrote… should I keep going or “edit” it and change it… lol…
Depending on who you ask, it’s legit to just “blank out” (i.e. italicize, change font color to white, whatever) crappy stuff you write and then write whatever you would change it to, and count both towards your word totals. It’s actually part of Chris Baty’s book “No Plot? No Problem!” so I think it’s pretty legit. You are, after all, writing more, and the goal is to WRITE, not to write WELL.
I knew as I was writing today that most of it sounded totally blah, and sometimes I actually “cheated” and wrote stuff extra-blah just because extra-blah involved a few more words than blah. Anything’s fair game during NaNo, I think.
If those 2 paragraphs just wrote you into your writer’s block, then I’d say go ahead and change 'em, or do what Shanthi suggested and just mark them so you knwo their crap and rewrite the “new” version. Then if you decide later that you liked them after all, they’re still there and you can work from that point.
NaNoWriMo is a really good excuse to buckle down and write something every day, though, even if you don’t hit 50,000 words.
ops: