Diving head first into NaNoWriMo for the first time, this year!! I've always wanted to write a book, but kept giving myself excuses as to why I wasn't ready yet. So I am forcing myself to try it out. I bought a NaNoWriMo water bottle on the site so I can tell myself "You have to do this, you put money into it!". xD
I hope your first experience will be a good one! Use this thread as much as you need to as we are all here to support each other Also, never beat yourself up if you don't manage to complete the 50,000 word challenge as not everyone does manage to ... this is perhaps my 3rd or 4th attempt at this challenge and I still haven't managed to beat it but every bit of progress is still progress and just as valid as anything else. I've been wanting to buy stuff from their shop/site for so long but with their shipping costs to UK it makes it hard for me to afford to
I met up with a fellow WriMo-er on Wednesday afternoon for a few hours and finally made some real progress. I had a decent overview of part 1 (up to and including the first plot point) already and once I got that into chapters (10), I knew roughly how many chapters I need for part 2 and 3 (around 30). Once I knew that, I just started writing what I want to happen in each chapter, each either building towards our flowing away from the main plot points and after a few hours work, I finally had a rough outline. I still have the story of two minor characters to outline and then I can start breaking each chapter into scenes. I might actually have the outline I want for Nov 1st! That's a relief.
I'm seriously thinking of doing it, as a shock tactic to get me back into writing, after over a year spent on editing and book production. It'll be a challenge, as I have an author-publishers' conference to attend the first of the month and several days of out of town travel at Thanksgiving. But I need to get the next book written, and NaNo would be a great incentive to start.
Just checked the NaNoWriMo site and wow, I'm not sure. There seems to be a lot of prep work people do, I guess so they can hit their 50K words and "win" . . . But for me, that's the kind of stuff that actually keeps me from writing. "Gotta do this first, and this, and this, and this," and nothing actually goes onto the page. I've had the book in question in my head the past couple of years; I came up with a decent synopsis for it over a year ago; I've even experimented with a chapter or two. Oh yeah, and I've done some research on the characters. Well, one character; another character I've just started a thread on this site over in Research to figure out whether he's Military Intelligence or something else. But good grief, all the outlining and character studies and---! Do you have to do all that? I mean, for me, the purpose of doing NaNo would be to get me to loosen up and not be so perfectionistic about the first draft. 50,000 words written by November 30th or not, I wouldn't have a finished novel as I'm headed for 100K. My idea would be to establish some momentum. And gah! I can't do that with too much prep.
Another question: Do people here take the WP group as their region, instead of someplace geographical? I can tell you right now that reporting in to more than one group online would be a disaster. Too easy to get distracted. I've checked, though, and my county doesn't have a group. The next two counties over do, and the nearest big city. Then there's an "Elsewhere" group for my state. Which one do I choose, oh, which one do I choose? Well, never mind. I can look at that tomorrow. For now, I've signed up. My username is Jayhawker1854.
I haven't done anywhere near that amount of in-depth prep as suggestsuggested on the Nano site. The novel I intend to write, wil, be a sequel to my WIP and the one I wrote before that, so I don't need to do much in the way of character research. I prep and research as I need to, but otherwise, I take their suggestions with a grain of salt. Hmm. . . Well, I'm quite introverted, so I don't really have any intention of doing any meet-ups. but my nearest group, I think is half an hour away,
Mine, too, though it's only sequel No. 1. Actually, one of the things I love best about writing fiction is how I discover connections and new possibilities as I write my characters going about being themselves. Having to settle all that ahead of time . . . not so much. I decided to pick the nearest big city as my region. That means that any meet-ups would be 45 minutes to an hour away, and I don't see myself going to any. Don't have the time, and the idea of having to write in a group with all those other psyches jangling up the atmosphere gives me the horrors.
The site right now is in prep mode. A planners paradise, don`t worry there`s a lot of pantster to they even coined that term for people with less planning. I get it`s overwhelming I just stay out of the forums till the first. Don`t worry you don`t have to do all the prep it`s personal preference and personal goals. I have my region set as the city I live near but never go to so I just ignore it mostly. I`m never going to a meet up. Can you change the region? Idk but, I`ve never used it much.
I'll leave my region as is. And work with the site only to update my word count. At least, that seems the best approach now. I'm a semi-planner. I have to know the outcome of the story before I start to write, and I need to know the high points of the plot. But it gets filled in and fleshed out as I go.
There are basically three types of NaNoWriMoers; the planner – dominating the NaNo forum right now as @Kinzvile pointed out–, the pantser – the person who sits down on November 1st and just starts writing with basically no plot whatsoever – and the plantser – the person who has a vague idea, maybe a couple of characters, maybe a beginning and an ending, but not much more planned than that. You've already had this story in your head for the past couple of years. Chances are you're going to be able to write a lot just based on that. And it's not like it's not possible to do any outlining or planning in November. Start writing and as soon as you need it, take an afternoon or two to plot, outline, create characters, have a cup of tea or whatever else you need, and then get back to writing. 50K is the goal for the majority and it's the minimum number of words you need to write in November to "win", but what constitutes a win is entirely up to you, in my honest opinion. I, for instance, couldn't care less about the 50K this year. I don't consider this year's NaNo a "win" unless I complete a first draft, and based on my outline, I think it may be a LOT longer than 50K. My first draft doesn't even have to be complete by November 30th – and if it isn't, I'll keep writing in December and January if necessary – but that's my goal. The reason I'm doing this in November is because it gives me a deadline and deadlines motivate me. I probably wouldn't even have started working on the outline if it wasn't for the November 1st "deadline". And I probably wouldn't get anything written in November if it wasn't for NaNo. I haven't really written anything in a while (because of lots of reasons), but decided to do NaNo this year and just knowing that I'm gonna do it, has gotten me excited about writing again. That's a small "win" as well, isn't it? You don't have to "report in" to anyone or any region. I'm not sure what you mean by "reporting in". If it's the word count you're thinking about, you don't have to upload anything until November 30 if you don't want to. Many people just keep track of their word count on their own and then upload it on the final day. You don't have to join any regions either, or go to any meet-ups. Most regions (or so I would assume at least) have a chat channel (Discord or the likes) where people can meet and chat if they want. It can be distracting, but it can also be a great source of motivation. The ones I've been part of usually run a lot of word wars/sprints (write as many words as possible in a certain amount of time and then post your result) which helps actually writing even when you don't feel like it and make a lot of progress on the word count. Plus, my experience is that reporting to a chat room with lots of people excited about writing can sometimes be motivation to open Scrivener or Word or whatever you write in and write some yourself, even when you hadn't planned to do so or don't feel like it. And if you get stuck, usually there are some people there who are willing to help you out. I haven't been very active in my own region for years – so it's definitely not a requirement – but I also have a lot of writing buddies I've met through NaNo. Some I don't know too well and we just help each other out a little with the prepping or we keep in touch during November to encourage each other and so on, but others I've gotten to know really well and I talk to them about a lot of things besides NaNo as well. And except for one or two, none of them are even in my country. So, again, make NaNo what you want it to be. There are basically no other rules than WRITE. So, I would encourage you to 1) Set your own goals for NaNo; 2) Find a buddy or two if you don't like your home region (or just want more people to talk to); 3) Use NaNo to get back to writing. Feel free to add me as a buddy as well if you'd like. There's NaNoMail to keep in touch but I also use Discord a lot. If it can help you get back to writing than I think NaNo has been worth it Edit: Had to edit because I somehow managed to press the exact combination of keys on my keyboard, completely by accident, to post the message while I was only halfway through it...
Discord is a downloadable chat client. It can be used for voice, and text chat rooms or "servers". I`ve flirted with it before by no hard core experience with it. It started as a gaming thing mostly I think then got picked up by all sorts of online communities. Youtube, Nano, Nationstates, and etc. Think of it as ether a giant downloable chat room, or skype for geeeks.
Alright.... set up my first book for Nov... Let's do this... It's going to be Fanficition-Fantasy. It follows someone who has been with me for a very long time, someone who has allowed me to experience and interact with fantastic worlds that I could only dream of. His sole purpose is to be an avatar, his setting the worlds of the imagination. His name is Maxwell Hunter.
I've got two stories going, and a lot of latency. So if I'm about a third into either, can I choose any starting point in a story or is it only from the very beginning. One is a massively overwritten 200+kw. The other a choppy 100 sparse pages of notes and vignettes of dialog. I'm unschooled, writing by feel, after 45+ years of hatred for the pen (all blabby evidence to the contrary). Now, I can't let it go. Who knew?
Some people thrive in nanowrimo. You’re committing to writing so much per day to reach the mark in the alotted time frame. For some people that deadline hanging over their heads gets them in the mind they need, some people its just the more structured program than the B.I.C. Method of writing. Who knows, maybe you’ll finish off the two you’ve been working on and get into that third. The only way to not fail is to not even try.
Sure you can, but you know the old saying: bravery isn’t the absence of fear, but charging on in spite of it.
1) You reminded me that nano is coming! 2) Usually, you start fresh but with Camp Nano I generally don't start fresh. 3) I completely forgot about camp!
Well, well. Aparently FireFox and Google tripped over each other's dicks, and broke the one thing that lets me create my account. SO, not to be discouraged, I abandoned PC and went to my moody tablet. Works fine! Yay! I'm in as SomeGuy(SG) (you have been warned)
With NaNo starting tomorrow, I see I have to do some prep work at least. That is, I need to transfer my notes, synopsis, research references, previously-attempted chapters, and dummy cover into my new laptop. I'd hoped to create a Novel template in my word processing program so it'd be all clean for converting to HTML, but it ain't gonna happen before tomorrow. Friday I head for Philadelphia for the Independent Authors' Conference (Joanna Penn is keynoting--- so excited!), and I may have to turn down work during the day just to get the basic stuff done for the trip. (You know, like vacuum out the back of my PT Cruiser so I can put the back seats back in so I can have a trunk where I can keep my luggage out of sight.) It'll be interesting seeing how much writing I get done during the conference. And over Thanksgiving. I'm telling myself that stuff like that comes up all the time, and forming the habit of working through and around it will be good for me.
