NaNoWriMo 2010 !!!

[peanutter]

Howdy ladies

Is anyone else planning on doing nanowrimo this year?

If you are, let me know, and we can encourage each other

If you have no idea what it is, let me know, and I will elaborate ...

Ciao!!!

[starangelk]

I was thinking of it.....but I can't work out how much time it will take. Do you have any idea Peanutter?

[briggsy's girl]

looks interesting
not a chance in hell i'd have the time between work and family and moving - will be interested to see how you go though

[peanutter]

50,000 words, you are *mine* !!!

so close ...

how are you other ladies going? you can do it!!!

tap tap tap

[peanutter]

what I did last time, was type any old crap for 10 minutes, and see how many words I got written, to see roughly how long it would take me to storm 50K words, without letting myself do ANY editing, rewriting, etc ...

to get the whole 50K done, you need to write 1667 words per day.

Or, 1K per weekday, 3.5K per weekend day.

Last time I did it, my grandmother died, and I didn't have a chance to keep up with writing, and ended up writing 17K words in the final 28 hours!! Sleep? who needs sleep ...

But generally speaking, I find you can write 2000 rough words, or 1000 polished words per hour.

If it was practical, I would do my writing on the train to and from work, but I might try to do it while expressing at work.

Otherwise, bubba goes to bed around 7-8pm these days, and so I can write over dinner. DH will support that, because he knows I haven't been able to dedicate any serious time to my writing since last nanowrimo!!!

In terms of time, it is a push, but the benefit I find is huge. Last time, I wrote about 40% of my novel, and have 3 other ideas for books (at the moment, I'm deciding which to do).

And then I'm planning on dedicating February to finishing them, and setting another month to editing.

My long term plan is to have the books polished and ready to send to a third party for opinion by the end of next year. Long way away, but achievable with a full time job, small child, recovering from birth complications and other committments!!

I love writing! I'm so excited

[peanutter]

ladies and gentlewriters of all shapes and sizes - nano is fast approaching.

but fear not! it is still t-5, so you have time my lovely possums to sharpen your pencils if not your wits, dust off your erasers, and calculate how much coffee and how many tim tams you will need to sustain you through your nanowrimo blitz!!

who's with me??

[AnyDream]

Ohhhh I've definitely had Nanowrimo on my radar for 2 years now. First Nov we were leading up to a *huge* interstate move & then I developed gallstone attacks...then last year I was in the lead up to having a mastectomy and still totally chemo-addled...not sure that I've got it in me this year, I still need extra rest & sleep. But then I think - there will always be some sort of excuse of why not to, sometimes you just need to commit to things.

Does it matter whether you go fiction or non-fiction?

ETA - and isn't the temptation to just pour forth 50K words of crappola just to get it done?

[Miss.September]

Can you elaborate for me Peanutter? Haven't heard of this before. Ta

[peanutter]

absolutely. save for typos which I correct as I go, I try not to fix up ANYTHING.

the other thing I do which I find really helps, is my self imposed "square brackets rule" which is that if I can't think of a specific word that I want, or I am on a red hot streak with one part of the story, I will summarie in square brackets what comes there, and keep going with the flow.

eg: [chapter 14 will be where Gabe realises that the girl he sold the car to is actually Ben's new fiance, and that he's going to be in *big* trouble ... Helen will come back on the radar at work, too]

or even [chapter 14 - Gabe]

and then I'll just keep running with whatever is going well.

Otherwise I'll spend 30 minutes pondering how to phrase the next bit of dialogue, the next scene entrance, where they are, what colour the grime on the dashboard is, etc ...

And I'm even worse with words - sometimes I'll have a mental blank and KNOW that I know the perfet word, but it just won't come to me, and I'll spend litterally 10+ minutes trying to push it out of my brain ... but I "square brackets" it, keep going, and just whevever the word hits me, I go back and insert it. Sometimes I use *** or ### so I can use control + f to jump right to it, so I don't have to trawl through pages looking for the blank...

[Kamarine]

absolutely. save for typos which I correct as I go, I try not to fix up ANYTHING.

the other thing I do which I find really helps, is my self imposed "square brackets rule" which is that if I can't think of a specific word that I want, or I am on a red hot streak with one part of the story, I will summarie in square brackets what comes there, and keep going with the flow.

eg: [chapter 14 will be where Gabe realises that the girl he sold the car to is actually Ben's new fiance, and that he's going to be in *big* trouble ... Helen will come back on the radar at work, too]

or even [chapter 14 - Gabe]

and then I'll just keep running with whatever is going well.

Otherwise I'll spend 30 minutes pondering how to phrase the next bit of dialogue, the next scene entrance, where they are, what colour the grime on the dashboard is, etc ...

And I'm even worse with words - sometimes I'll have a mental blank and KNOW that I know the perfet word, but it just won't come to me, and I'll spend litterally 10+ minutes trying to push it out of my brain ... but I "square brackets" it, keep going, and just whevever the word hits me, I go back and insert it. Sometimes I use *** or ### so I can use control + f to jump right to it, so I don't have to trawl through pages looking for the blank...

THat's some really good advice. I must admit I spend time dithering around with stuff like that. Or deleting and re-writing. I've managed to curb it a lot lately.

I'm officially at 40,000 words. How are you going?

[AnyDream]

Awesome work!!!! Keep going you can get this done!!!

Peanutter that is fantastic advice. I use a similar technique (esp when I'm casting about for words, which is all the time since chemotherapy LOL), I use XXX (easily searchable) and I have been known to highlight in a different colour and leave that there to come back to. I like your square brackets method.

Wanna know what I've been up to in Nov instead of Nanowrimo? It's a blog....definitely not 50K but it's involved the discipline of turning out something every day (well nearly), and has been worthwhile from that perspective.

[peanutter]

ah, marydean, what a few years! I don't know how you've had time or energy to do anything at all ...

I agree that there's always something, but hopefully any further roadblocks are positive, pleasurable, intended events!



Fiction or non-fiction is fine - just needs to be something new! I think the intention is that it's fiction, but I know plenty of people who've done a non fic

I'm deciding between writing the second short novel of a trillogy I've got in mind (it was supposed to be all one book, but 50,000 words in from last nano, I'm maybe 1/3 of the way there!) or something totally new ... or writing a travel book, based on my post-high-school trip ... decisions decisions!

And as far as the crappola goes - absolutely!! I know how many times I've had to write something tricky, and as soon as I've got something on the page, I can fix it! But getting on the page *at all* sometimes can only be done with a looming deadline (self set or otherwise) and a *huge* brain vomit to start.

and PacRakMG - the general premise of NaNoWriMo (national novel writer's month) is that in November, you write a new 50,000 word book. That's it. There's no prize other than the honour and glory (and you get an electronic certificate, ooh lah lah!) but it's a great kick up the bum to get cracking on your writing, if you've been lacking motivation to get writing lately

more info can be found on the nano website at www dot nanowrimo dot org

come and play!

[Miss.September]

Ahh, thanks Peanutter. I've been dabbling again in writing after years of being too busy and I'm enjoying it again because I'm putting no pressure on myself. Its weird because I used to work best under pressure. So maybe I'll skip this November one, finish what I've started, and then do the November one in '11.

[peanutter]

kamarine - awesome!! keep it up! I've cracked 59, and am now gunning for 60K

marydean - noice blog I hope oprah meets you

[AnyDream]

Peanutter - lawdy! Fantastic effort, are you sure you can't pull out another 10K before the end of the month (call it a round 70K)?

[Laranna]

peanutter, that's fantastic!!! And really great advice a few posts up re square brackets. I'll remember that one because I think that's where I got stuck. Sat down to write but couldn't get anything out but the idea was in my head. Needless to say my novel is still sitting at around 4000 words. Not going to make it I don't think but I've enjoyed what I have done

Marydean, I've been following your blog and love it! I hope you get to meet Oprah!

[AnyDream]

Eluned, that's just it, it's all about the process. Really it is. I think that's why writers write. Do any of us ever *really* enjoy reading what we've written (...there's *always* the cringe factor) - but you've got to keep doing it because that's what fuels you.

[peanutter]

I've been making excuses all year ... it's nano or bust for me this year!

I think the deadline will work well for me