National Novel Writing Month

(Technically I'm already a novelist, because I've written books before, the longest of which was almost 200,000 words.)

This will be my first NaNoWriMo, and I'm really looking forward to it. I've managed to get two of my IRC friends involved, so we can write together.

I'll be posting the better stuff on my profile (linked in my signature). Buddy me if you want, and I'll return the favor!

Argh, I can't WAIT!

Hey FekketCantenel, glad to hear you'll be doing NaNoWriMo for the first time this year. I completed my novel "Extrapolating" last year on November 30th and it felt great! Last year, two of my students participated and won, with another writing 30,000 words--still not too shabby. This year there are at least seven students participating, which is exciting for me since I teach at a very small school.

I have one question about your goal: is there any particular reason you've chosen 2,000 words rather than 1,667 (which is the bare minimum to reach 50k in 30 days)? I'm sticking with the lower number because just finding time to write that much each day is tricky enough, and I don't want to set myself up to not succeed, but I'm interested to know how you chose 2,000.

Best of luck to you!

is there any particular reason you've chosen 2,000 words rather than 1,667 (which is the bare minimum to reach 50k in 30 days)?

-"PlatoFunFactory"

Three reasons, actually:

1) I suck horrifically at math, and always choose nice, round numbers when I can. 2,000 is very easy to divide, after all.

2) I'm bound to miss a few days this month, so I figure if I write more on the days I do write, I'll have a wider margin of error.

3) By my calculations, the first draft is going to be around 150,000 words, so I don't care if I go over during November. I hope I can keep going with it on into December and January, and get it finished sometime before March '08.

I decided to start writing at midnight. It's now 1:30 AM, and I've written ~2600 words (the entire prologue, except for a part I need to go back and add). A pretty healthy start, I think. Of course, I'm sort of cheating because I have a general outline already. But I'm typing the actual scenes as I imagine them.

Where's your NaNoWriMo profile, anyway? I'd really like to buddy you.

Thanks for the info. I'm game and have several that I've been rattling around in my head. Hopefully, you won't mind some questions along the way.

You assume we're qualified to answer questions. Oh well, we'll still try.

Also, I remembered a bonus fourth answer to PlatoFunFactory's question: 4) I can actually write a LOT in a very small amount of time. It's one of the few activities in which I can consistently enter a state of flow.

Since I already wrote my day's quota and more, I'm doing some research by reading "Buying the Dragon's Teeth", a free ebook about China. It's extremely interesting, and is really firing me up to write about this volume's pseudo-villain.

I wrote 1811 words today. Now to go and post that to my NaNo account.
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Welcome, Annie, and congratulations on deciding to become a novelist! We'll certainly do our best to answer any questions you have about writing a novel in a month. You should also check out the NaNoWriMo forums for all kinds of information from other nutjobs doing the same thing as us.

Fekket, you can find my profile here. Just be warned, once we're friends, I'll be watching your word count. Muwahahah!

Friday= 0 words
Saturday= 0 words
Sunday= 5,231 words. I'm caught up, and my wrist is sore. Remember ergonomics, kids.

I've written a steady 2000 words a day since the first. As I noted to my friends yesterday, I follow a very predictable pattern each day:

Before writing: "Ah, man, I should get to writing and fill my quota for the day, but I just don't feel like it."
Once I start writing: "Okay, this is fine. Just going with the flow. No big deal."
After I hit my quota and force myself to stop: "MAN, I want to keep writing!"

A friend asked me why I stop at the end of each chapter, rather than keep going. The answer is threefold:

1) I adhere to the philosophy that you should never stop when you hit a problem spot (because you won't want to come back to writing later), but only when you're on a roll and now what's about to happen in the story.

2) I'm pacing myself. I don't want to burn out in the first week, so I'm only doing 2000 words a day (which, as Plato said, is still above the 1666 minimum).

3) I actually have other things I'm supposed to do, too, like revise my first book, translate manga, and keep the house clean, so I can't spend all day writing.

I'm also participating. Unfortunately, the first 2 days I was dealing with a cold but I'm all better now. I have some catching up to do but I'm confident I can do it.

I write regularly but this is my first time tackling Nanowrimo. It's quite a challenge considering all that I have on my plate at the moment but sometimes the only way to do it, is to simply just do it.

Welcome, CapMarvel, to the madness.

You're exactly right that you can catch up and also that the only way to do it is just to do it. I definitely don't have time to write a novel right now. I'm just doing it.

Speaking of which:
Monday: 0 words
Today: 2004 words

I'm with you Fekket; once I get started, I actually really enjoy it. In fact, my average word count for days that I've written anything is over 3,000. Now I just need to be sure that I don't skip days.

Remember ergonomics!

I'm writing all the time and often quite fast, yet NaNo just puts a rocket under me! I did it the first time last year and hit 50k on the 19th and finished the story at 62k on the 25th, which was faster than I'd ever written before.

This year I'm even faster, already to 20k! :shock: Possibly because I've got a pretty detailed outline this time, more detailed than last year, so I don't have to think what's going to happen next, just how I'm going to make it happen (like that's easy. :roll: )

I know for sure this story will be longer than 50k, and I'm estimating at least 80k, so I'm likely to be treating December as NaNoFiMo (where Fi is finishing! There's even a website for that.)

Despite this nice total I am trying to pace myself too, as I can do one day of crazed writing and get 6 or 7k or something, but if I do that two or three days in a row I burn out and can't write for a few days. So I'm trying not to go too beserk on weekends for example. I'm getting to the really fun meaty part of the story now, so I should have no trouble motivation myself to write! :P

Way to go junkfoodmonkey, first for your amazing pace and second for knowing what on earth you're writing about. I'm still in the "No plot? No problem!" category and hoping to remedy it before I hit 15k. Speaking of which...

Do any of you have suggestions regarding how to create a plot? Should I simply introduce conflict? Make two characters have desires that are at odds with one another? What if the State is my antagonist? Do I really want to get my protagonist embroiled in something that big? So much to decide, but who cares...

I wrote 1,777 words today, meaning I'm only 870 words behind. Easy-breezy.

Remember, everyone, coffee is your friend no matter what Leo says. :shock:

Way to go junkfoodmonkey, first for your amazing pace and second for knowing what on earth you're writing about. I'm still in the "No plot? No problem!" category and hoping to remedy it before I hit 15k. Speaking of which...

Do any of you have suggestions regarding how to create a plot? Should I simply introduce conflict? Make two characters have desires that are at odds with one another? What if the State is my antagonist? Do I really want to get my protagonist embroiled in something that big? So much to decide, but who cares...

I wrote 1,777 words today, meaning I'm only 870 words behind. Easy-breezy.

Remember, everyone, coffee is your friend no matter what Leo says. :shock:

-"PlatoFunFactory"

Man against society is a valid and classic conflict, so "the state" as the antagonist is fine. Though it would be good to put some faces to that, some people working on behalf of the the state to put your characters down. Conflict is the key. What does the protaganist want? Who and what is stopping them getting it? How far will each side go to achieve their goals?

Actually creating the plot out of the story idea: I find as long as I have some events or scenes I can start working around them. Notecards can be a fun way of getting them in order. Write down all the events and scenes you have so far in your mind (and getting each of them written on a card usually means you'll find you had far more than you expected!) Now lay them out and start arranging and rearranging them. As you start working out an order you start to see what events you need in between to get from one point to the next.

You can go a step further if you want, take an "event" and break down the scenes you'll need to make it happen. What has to lead up to it? What scenes are needed for the event itself? What will the consequences be? I had a one line event "antagonist reveals the protaganist's secret identity." and that broke down into about ten scenes! (Yes my protaganist has a secret identity. No, she's not Batman.) Don't avoid trouble, if some attempt to fix things isn't quite going to work, make sure it doesn't work with extreme prejudice! Have it make things ten times worse. Milk everything. The hero's marriage is under strain because of this struggle he's involved in? Forget 'strain'. Have his wife walk out. At the worst possible moment for him.

Choices are great too, for internal conflict. Make both outcomes bad. Someone's going to get hurt whatever the character chooses to do.

Right, enough wittering. Once I start... :roll:

When the main character is fighting against the system (as mine is in this book), it's always great when the system's biggest weakness comes from the inside...

I hit ~17,000 last night. Wrote a bunch of rambling useless stuff for chapter 6; I figure I'll cut out most of it in revision, so I didn't even count that bit towards my daily 2000 words.

It's time to tackle chapter 8, in which our heroine decides, in a fit of depressed irrationality, to bike 75 miles across the desert by herself.

Hey guys,

Thanks for the updates and the great tips. Junkfoodmonkey, you are clearly way more serious about this 'writing' thing than I am, but the idea is brilliant. I use a similar technique when structuring philosophy papers--it hadn't really occurred to me to do something similar with fiction. Now I just need to figure out where the heck this whole thing is going...

Anyway, just about 2,500 words so far today, taking me to 13,862 words total. I'm still behind, but by a very do-able amount. Hooray for weekends!

I'm serious about it on a serious hobby kind of way, but it's not my job or anything (I wish!) Maybe one day I'll write something and think "wow, somebody might actually pay for this!" But until that happens its just serious fun! :D

Keep on going, yep those weekends are the times to really go for it.

I'll start with my update. I wrote nothing on Sunday, for which I have a good excuse (but then, when don't I?), but then got in a little under 2k today. I'm almost 5 thousand words behind right now, which is not really all that bad, but it is frustrating to have so many days where I'm not meeting my goal. This brings me to the main point of this post.

My October challenge was to exercise 5 days a week. I did really well with that, and have continued to into November. NaNoWriMo is proving more challenging and I thought I'd look at why that might be. Here are some thoughts:

1) It takes more time. Exercising is always done in an hour, noveling isn't.
2) I'm still exercising. So that's 30-50 minutes most days that's already gone, and now I'm going to throw in an hour and a half of writing?
3) I'm not treating it as a habit. What's this site called again? Zen...somethingorother. Seriously. though, I got into a pretty good habit of exercising as soon as I got home from work in the afternoons. Getting home and changing out of my work clothes acted as a trigger for me to work out. I don't have that with noveling. Right now I'm squeezing it in where I can. In part, I'd like to do all my writing at once, but getting an hour and a half uninterrupted is no easy task. Does anybody have any suggestions about how to make writing a habit instead of something I'm having to use my conscious mind to force myself to do? (One caveat: don't say "get up early and do it." Ain't gonna' happen. Besides, one habit per month, right?)

Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions you may have.

I've managed to write at least 1200 words every day so far, but lately it's gotten harder, because I don't have this part of the book 'timelined' (the scenes as movies in my head) yet. I keep meaning to between writing sessions (usually while going to sleep/lying in bed in the morning) but lately I've had more interesting timelines to work on.

I noticed the same thing, Plato: that the writing November Challenge isn't meant to form a habit, but to help us through NaNoWriMo. I'm not really sure I want to develop a writing habit, anyway, since I have so much else going on in my life. I can wrestle it out for this month, but beyond that, people are going to start demanding I pay attention to them instead of writing.

Then again, all the greats (Stephen King comes to mind first) say to write something every day. So maybe I should treat this as habit-forming. At least after November, I won't have to write 1667 words a day if I don't want to. I could probably set a goal of 500 a day.

To me, the absolutely essential part of habit-forming is the trigger. Getting out of bed is my trigger to pray. Eating breakfast is my trigger to get out my regiment and take my vitamins. With the NaNoWriMo writing, my trigger is feeling sleepy, usually at about nine at night. It's utterly essential to me to report at least the minimum 1667 words to the NaNoWriMo website before midnight, or else my little chart widget looks weird (I already screwed up once).

Of course, this only works during November, when I can report wordcounts on the website. I guess when November is over, I'll have to write them in a text file or on my (someday resurrected) blog.

It's a good point that NaNoWriMo doesn't have to be the start of a new habit. Some people write only during NaNoWriMo, as a pure creative outlet to make up for the rest of the year when they are too busy putting the bread on the table to think about that stuff.

Other write all year round and use NaNo to raise their game word count wise, or try something different than normal. Or just find the extra motivation of the deadline useful (that last one would be me. :wink: )

If you want to develop the habit of doing some writing every day, but may not have a novel to work on just now, or a couple of hours a day to set aside, or you're editing maybe rather than writing a new draft, then a journal or blog is a great way for "inbetween stories" writing. A blog best of all I think, as it's public, so if your friends see you haven't updated for a few days they can poke you. :)

Give yourself a word count for the blog too, even if it's only 250 words or something you can knock off in 15 or 20 minutes. And every day write about something, anything. Could be about your life, or a current news story, or a review of a book or movie you saw, or a bit of brainstorming of a new story idea. Rants are good, about something that has ticked you off. Amazing how many words you can get in a rant about some trivial annoyance that proves the world is going to hell in a handbasket. If you've done some actual fiction writing that day, then that of course meets your goal too. Put it on the blog locked as private, or just "report" on the blog that you've done it if you don't want it posted publically.

Good luck with the novels. We're still in the tricky week 2 stage, wait for week 3 when it starts to fly! :lol: