NaNoWriMo

A friend of mine (sort of accidentally) reminded me that National Novel Writing Month starts in twelve days. For the past, I don't know, five years or so, I've been saying "THIS is the year I'm going to do it!" But, um...I haven't. Yet.

This year, damn it, I WILL do it. I signed up a little bit ago, and I'm brainstorming story ideas now. I'm more than a little excited that Brandon Sanderson and Audrey Niffeneger are participating in the "pep talk" emails.

So, who else is going to participate? Do you have plot ideas yet? Have you done this before? Am I completely insane? Please discuss.

 

Cinn you will do great. You are extremely talented and intelligent enough to do this to completion. Just take a deep breath and go at it.

 

My stories live in my head. Writing them out is the difficult part.

 

Thanks, pan

Jove, I know the feeling. Also, my brain seems to be geared to write short stories, so writing a novel-length piece is going to be a huge challenge.

 

I've tried writing the stories in my head. What is clear as day in my head ends up a muddled mess on paper

Good luck CG!

 

Give it a go cinnamon - nothing to lose. Look at it this way, if you only get half way through by the deadline, you will have a good head start for next year (or is that a no no?). Most important - enjoy yourself whilst you are doing it.

 

If it doesn't have to be good, or make sense, maybe I'll write one.

 

A chapter is just a short story in the story of your life isnt it? Sometimes its good to see the end of one of lifes chapters, and the fresh promise of a new one. Does a collection of linked short stories scare you less?

 

chinese crested , thank you! And no, no pre-writing is allowed from the year before. It has to be a fresh start (although outlines & such are allowed beforehand.)

Cayvmann , the point is to write 50,000 words, but it doesn't have to be great at all. I can't find the exact quote, but I remember reading something on the site that said they're really going for quantity over quality.

I'm thinking of doing a cheesy romance novel-- definitely not literary genius, but easy to write. I don't know yet....

So, c'mon, I know at least a couple of other TFPers are going to take the plunge with me, or are at least considering it. Where are you guys hiding?

 

*right-click, save* That's awesome, baraka.

 

I had two great ideas for short stories last night.. but I was too lazy to get out of bed and start on them. The main points are still in my head and I may start on them sometime soon but I'm not sure I have enough patience to see it through.

They would fall well below the 500,000 word requirement so I guess it's not really relevant to this thread, but if I can blend the two together or have a sudden burst of literary creativity I may be willing to plunge into this with you CinnamonGirl . You should ask roachboy - I've been reading some stuff that he's been working on and this may be right up his alley.

 

Gah--- I got a little key-happy there. 50,000, not 500,000.

 

*merge*

That's kind of how I feel about it Baraka_Guru - while my writing here doesn't reflect anything close to genius or even jr. high level sentence structure, I am actually pretty good at the short story thing and have had several people that aren't friends or relatives make statements that I should consider it seriously. English professors have also said the same thing, but it's the patience part that destroys me and my perfectionist nature won't let me get too deep before I just delete the entire thing because I get disgusted.

So yeah, I think short stories and the development they can provide are the way to go to begin with, but we'll see if I actually want to follow through with this.

best of luck to everyone who does

well shit, 50k words isn't so bad.. hmm..

 

Glorys sun -if the children of your imagination are not quite perfect, thats no reason for infantacide! Put them away, maybe one day you will 'lift' a character or a scene, and find it fits in perfectly somewhere else. Do people still keep such things as writers journals? Maybe the pocket notebook is dead.
--- merged: Oct 20, 2011 4:32 PM ---
Cinnamon - was the extra zero added because you hope to be paid by word count?
Good luck all.

 

yikes...this is happening again already? thanks for the head's up, cinna. i likely woulda slept on it.

i did this last year and quickly found that the word count wasn't gonna happen for me.

then i was thinking that it really didn't mean anything, the word count...as it turned out i made 30 stories i think and published a bunch of them, which pleased me because it seemed to legitimate the idea of going for smaller word counts but making finished pieces. i also didn't have a plan--just a process and an idea of how to maybe make a series of stories because i'm still trying to figure out how to build a book-length piece made up of lots of little stories written consecutively across a period (the idea being that your thinking doesn't change that fast so you'll impose recurrences and variations of materials as a function of the duration).

i'd want to do things a bit differently if i do the nanowrimo thing again this year. but i have to think a bit about what that might mean.

 

Cinn, I'll give it a go with ya. We can trade chapters to proof read and edit every couple days.

I do agree with the many above, I have a great story in my head that I have been playing with for sometime and maybe instead of just trying to write it for fun where I can easily be distracted makes it harder to write than if I am actually writing for a purpose and someone to enjoy the story. (If that makes sense.)