rachel on 29/10/2010 at 20:13
Yep, it's that time of the year again. The (
http://www.nanowrimo.org/) National Novel Writing Month. Register 50k words by Nov. 30th midnight and you'll win... some internet recognition and the satisfaction of writing A FREAKIN NOVEL.
After three years without a crown, I'm dead set on winning that title once again this year or never. What about you? :)
Keyboards ready, gentlemen! :thumb:
doctorfrog on 30/10/2010 at 05:42
And it's another year that I won't be writing a novel :(
On the other hand, a friend and I are starting work on a sequel to the debut comic we just (self) published! And I'm thinking about building a model airplane.
Fingernail on 30/10/2010 at 15:50
I'm in! Who knows how long I'll last.
Fingernail on 1/11/2010 at 17:23
I'm already behind.
Enchantermon on 1/11/2010 at 17:37
This sounds intriguing, but I don't know if I'll have the time to write that much. Maybe next year, though.
june gloom on 2/11/2010 at 00:08
Quote Posted by doctorfrog
And it's another year that I won't be writing a novel :(
QFT
Fingernail on 2/11/2010 at 18:32
I doubt I'll catch up with the required daily average now, which is a pretty bad place to be on the second day. Finding it really hard not to edit/rewrite a passage before moving on but I don't have the time.
May as well expand. Further procrastination. My plan was thus:
The other day on my way home I encountered a couple of guys walking down the road who asked me and my flatmate if we knew where there was a massage parlour nearby. We couldn't help them much other than suggest a more central location for their search, and went our separate ways. So my novel was going to follow these two characters (kind of like an inversion of me and my friend) on their hunt for excitement on the nocturnal streets of London. This had several appealing points; to stage it geographically and roughly in "real time", in areas that I know very well and would also be familiar to those who know the city; provides a basic double-act dynamic (at some point I plan to separate them and see how each deals with this); the potential to meet various characters and situations naturally, and describe things as they are (rather, as I see them) in the city and this country at the present moment.
It's actually helped just writing that out as a kind of mission statement. I think I'm going to need some counterpoint to this main arc, but I wanted to try and not add legions of supporting cast and side plots just to swell the word count (although I figure that would probably be a lot easier).
Xorak on 3/11/2010 at 05:14
I'd give this a go, but I'm already working on two other novels. I write 750 words of one in the morning, and then at night I write 1000 words of the second one. This second one I've been working on for over a year-and-a-half and it's been through two major edits. I'm just finishing switching it from first-person to third-person. The other novel I started on August 4, and I'm up to about 100 pages which isn't too slow progress.
Even doing one novel, 50,000 words in a month is excessive if you've never done it before. You would think that if they're encouraging people (i.e. those who've never done it before) to participate they'd stick to realistic numbers. As you say, you're two days into it and already behind. Writing 2,000 words a day is pretty damn daunting, and 50,000 words isn't really a full length novel anyways. In my opinion, they should be encouraging a more realistic approach so that the person can carry the project successfully through over a couple months.
rachel on 3/11/2010 at 18:11
I don't think 50k is that far out. Hard? Oh yes. Unreachable? Not at all. It's a challenge to write a draft, not the next Nobel, and feel pretty damn good in the end with the satisfaction you could cough up enough material to get something that could possibly turn out pretty ok in the long run. Or maybe not, who knows. Make it too short and the challenge is that much of one... Everybody can climb a hill. Not everyone can climb a mountain. This isn't Mount Everest, but it's a pretty nice mountain to make your first steps.
All that being said, I'm also behind. Again. Dammit. :p
Fingernail on 3/11/2010 at 18:25
I'm not sure quality isn't a better goal than quantity, though, and quantity is sure what this promotes above anything else.
