I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve “competed” and won three or four times, I think, and had at least one manuscript die on the page on me partway through that I wasn’t able to cross the finish line with. I haven’t officially tried in a couple of years now.
I love the concept of NaNo, guys. I think it’s amazing, and had I not won it for the first time in 2006 with Click I’m convinced that my life would be very different now, even though Click will never see the light of day. Skylights was originally a NaNoWriMo project, too, although the final draft of the project ends up close to twice the suggested NaNo length. I suggested that I had “outgrown” NaNoWriMo in a post a couple of weeks ago, an assertion that encountered a bit of pushback and was probably not the best imaginable phrasing. What I was getting at was this: I think a big part of NaNo is for people who are not first-time novelists to become first-time novelists, and the event’s damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead emphasis is a big part of that. I am not only not a first-time novelist any longer, but I’ve proven to myself that I can write without the pressure of NaNo hanging over my head– which means that I don’t “need” it to help me any more. Is that the only reason to do it? Of course not– but I have my own little community of writerfolk here, too, so I don’t need the breakneck pace any longer.
I am going to do this, though, in the spirit of the thing:
I’ll blog every day in November, which… let’s be honest, I was gonna do that anyway. Although I’m going to be in Nashville at a conference for most of next week, so the last part of the week may be late-evening and photo-post heavy.- I’m gonna work on Benevolence Archives 8 every day, too, at least a little bit, with the goal being having the first draft done by the end of the month. This should be less challenging than it sounds, because I don’t think the first draft has much more than 10-15,000 words or so left in it. This gives me December to not look at it at all while beta readers look at it and gives me a good shot at an early Spring release date.
So I’m not doing NaNo, but I’m still going to be pushing myself a bit more than usual this month. Plus I’m growing my beard back in, but that’s a winter thing, and not a No-Shave-November thing. 🙂 What are you doing with yourself this month?
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National Blog Posting Month! I figure I blog almost every day anyway, why not try to meet others by joining through BlogHer and our own little WP sub-group? (info on my blog if you are interested)
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I was thinking NaBloPoMo was some other, non-November month. Huh. I’ll check it out. 🙂
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BlogHer has “NaBloPoMo” every month of the year (yeah, I know, no idea what that’s about) but November is the “big” month. I guess it came from us non-book-writers wanting a challenge too.
BlogHer is the main site, but if you want in on the WP subgroup just for fun, it’s linked from my site but http://www.markbialczak.com is the main host 😉
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This month, I plan to finish a better part of my novel. I’ve done 5/8s of it, then life decided to barrage me with…well, life. And we all know what life does:
Makes you want to crawl into a hole and die somedays.
Even though I have a book to finish, I won’t be entering NaNoWriMo. I suck with deadlines, and the book’s over 100,000 words anyways. (That is, the old one is. I switched to an actual writing program, and I’m revising as I put the book into the program.)
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Which program are you using? I used Storybook pro (I think?) to do the 1st re-write of my book, and I’m glad I did. It let me see some forest (as opposed to trees) for a while, move bits around and tag them and get organised… But tbh I was dying to get back to plain ‘ol MS Word after a while. Haha
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I used Pages for a while, but I then decided to use the only program I knew about for Macs: iBooks Author. Tagging would help me organize which villains appear/are set to appear in which chapter, as opposed to randomly guessing which villain (or, on a few rare occasions, villainS) appeared in which chapter to confront the heroes.
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When villains are going to appear, and how you’re going to shed sidekicks: there’s often that one climactic scene where you want your protagonist to go it alone, and you need to plan out when everyone gets killed/incapacitated/delayed/captured/switches sides etc.
I flippin’ LOVED pages as a mobile word processor. It just synchronised so much smoother than anything else I’ve used, and I could always go back to the bit I was writing. Never had any laggy moments on huge files that some other apps do.
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For some reason, I always enjoy writing those moments where the heroine ends up alone, and a villain that is not really desired to show up…shows up. Maybe it is the thrill of making everyone say “What’s gonna happen next? I wanna keep reading!”, but I enjoy writing drama.
I have been on the lookout for a writing program, but I think I might just stay with iBooks Author.
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I just wrote a blog post about the pros (many) and the cons (few but substantial) of Scrivener for my latest book.
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I have tried SO HARD to like Scrivener. I WANT to like Scrivener. But Scrivener is for planners and researchers, and I will never be either of those.
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This one? http://plaeroma.com/2014/10/30/scrivener-it-was-the-best-of-software-it-was-the-worst-of-software/
Cheers, will give it a read and some consideration. I figure I ought to try it at least
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I should say, there’s a bit of a learning curve. It does a lot, and being unique, some of it takes time to see. Best software I’ve seen for long form writing, but YMMV, of course. Good luck!
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I seem to have settled on FocusWriter for this particular book; previous efforts have been in Word, although BA vol. 1 was written in Pages and stitched together in Word. This book also is going to have to have a passthrough in Word once I figure out where chapters and such go, because FocusWriter doesn’t really seem to do sections very well.
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I just can’t write that way. Tried it one year. Glad it works for some people, but I think too much about the process and just can’t write. This month, I’m aiming to finish up the sci-novel I’m working on. At least the rough draft. Needs another 10 or 15,000 words and some editing.
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I wrote my first novella and then my first novel before I even knew about NaNoWriMo. In 2008, I gave a try to NaNoWriMo, but I gave up within the first week. I kept the notes of the world I created, but that’s it. I haven’t written original fiction in almost 10 years, though I have worked on several outlines these past few months, which was a big thing for me.
With my nonfiction writing, I realized that I’m a slow writer, so the big and fast element of NaNoWriMo doesn’t work for me. Last year, I took part in AcWriMo, and completed circa 35K between chapters of my upcoming book “Women in Science Fiction Television” and other papers. So that was great.
This year, I’m not making any special plans, but I’m planning to work on at least one of the remaining pieces I have left to write for upcoming collection of essays about Star Wars. 🙂
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I’m looking long and hard at the idea of tackling a screenplay next year. I have no intention of even trying to sell it– from what I’ve seen, selling screenplays makes selling novels look like setting up a lemonade stand on the corner in your neighborhood– but I feel like it might be fun. There’s a month for that, too, I just don’t remember what it is.
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I find the 50k pace horrible, being as I am a full-time teacher. My natural ‘high output’ rhythm is about 1200 words a day, and it’s crazy how an extra 470 can break a person! I’ve won twice, but find I prefer the April and July version which is ‘set your own goal.’ I aim for 500 words a day, which while short, means I don’t avoid it. Just diligently working a bit every day on the work-in-progress is a key!
This year, while teaching, blogging daily, and doing grad school, I figure it’s enough to just work faithfully on the revisions my agent is waiting for. I’ve got 2 Masters papers/projects to get done this month, after all. 😉 So while I’m not ‘doing NaNoWriMo,’ in the spirit of the event, I’ll quit procrastinating about those edits the rest of my responsibilities are crowding out.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the event! Good luck with your projects.
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On the plus side, it sounds like hitting 50,000 words this month is gonna be a piece of cake– they just aren’t gonna all be fiction. 🙂
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Preemptive congratulations on your fantastic beard, sir. Enjoy your exponentially increased virility and shock absorption.
I’m skipping nano this year too, for much the same reasons you’ve given, but I seem to be doing the blog-a-day one by accident thus far. Might make that an actual thing.
Cheers!
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Yeah, I won’t be nano-ing this month (mostly because I’m on a good editing kick, and not in the mood to focus on word count at the moment.) But I think it’s nice for writers to kick it up a little in November even if they’re not actually doing the full sprint. I figure all of that writerly creative energy flying through the air has to benefit all of us 🙂
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I’ve never done NaNo but have heard a lot abput it. I gave myself a challenge to blog everyday for a year. I started Jan 1, 2013 and haven’t missed a day. I’m addicted. If prompts me to find something positive to write about,,or see something beautiful, or share something clever. Writing is such a blessing.
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I’m doing NaBloPoMo, and also the Photography 101 WP challenge I think–not sure yet exactly how those two will interact, but it may mean posting twice a day in November which is a ridiculous leap to make from posting 2-3x a week.
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I’m doing NaNoWriMo for the second time and I think your reasons for not participating are super valid and mature. I still haven’t turned the lump of 50,000 words I wrote last year into a novel but I’m working on it and I think having another go around with another story in the same series will keep up my momentum. Something I lack is self-discipline so for me NaNoWriMo is right on the money.
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