*NaNoWriMo or "Write a Novel in a Month"!* :)

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I just registered with this, at: http://www.nanowrimo.org/ It's free. :lol ( unlike the online creative writing course I subscribed to a few weeks ago, £169 for ten modules, with feedback, to be completed in one year ).

With NaNoWriMo you have to write 50,000 words between the 1 and the 30 of November. It's a deadline, which according to the founder of NaNoWriMo is the magic secret ingredient of successful writing! :lol

So, there are two and a half months to go before it starts, ( another deadline! ), and I think that I'm going to do some preparation; free-association/"stream of consciousness" brainstorming, mindmaps, character sheets, plot outline/synopsis, summaries/breakdowns of the "acts" and scenes, etc.

Of course I might end up doing nothing at all beforehand, and apparently that can work really well too, but I have been reading excerpts from various "How to write ... " books on Amazon this last couple of days, and ordering some of them aswell, because it has begun to dawn on me that although I have always been able to write, fairly fluently, copiously even, :lol, ( and did write stories as a child etc ), I don't actually have the faintest idea how to construct a story.

I've written on and off for 37 years now, ( since I first started an Enid Blyton fan-fiction aged 10 :lol ); ie. poems, a few short stories, my autobiography, ( last year, in four identical black notebooks ), thousands of pages of journal, and dozens of first chapters of dozens of different books, ... but I have never finished anything, ( other than a great many posts on WP that is!! :lol ) ... I always seem to run out of steam, get bored, not know how to move the action forward etc, and I edit and erase constantly, cripplingly.

And reading lots of bits of these books about "How to ... " I'm beginning to think I could get seriously interested in, ( read "obsessed by"! :lol ), how stories "work", the mechanisms involved ... especially since stumbling on Jim Hull's website last evening, at: http://storyfanatic.com/ with its hundreds of articles dissecting films and explaining story structure, using "Dramatica Theory", ( anyone here familiar with it? I'd never heard of it ), which contends that rather than the classic three acts there are actually four, and explains that the protagonist is not necessarily the same thing as the main character, etc ( an idea which blew me away but which applies to some of my favourite films; "Sixth Sense", "The Shawshank Redemption", and one of my favourite books, "To Kill a Mockingbird", among many others ).

I think/hope that this is the beginning of a new "special interest", ( with the potential to displace even diet and mental health :lol ) because I suspect that it may be what I need, aswell as a "deadline" that is, ( which like "Option/Time Limits" in stories may be what I need to give "meaning" to a great many things, thus enabling me to do them :lol ), if I am ever going to write anything remotely publishable, ( and my options, for a creative/productive, potentially remunerative occupation are rapidly running out ).

Is anyone else doing NaNoWriMo, or thinking of it, or already done it before?

I like the idea of a Wrong Planet NaNoWriMo Support Group Thread, to keep me/us on track, etc. Anyone else interested?
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Last edited by ouinon on 13 Aug 2010, 3:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I bought a course by a guy named Nick Dawes a few years ago on how to write a novel in 30 days. It had some useful information and advice in it, but ultimately it didn't help me increase my production speed significantly. Apparently he was aiming his course at people who don't had inattentive ADHD.

One thing I noticed though, was that while Mr Dawes himself does have an impressively long list of published book to his resume, a lot of them are throwaway junk like "Enjoying Italy on Fifty Dollars a Week," not exactly a serious creative work. And though he has also published some fiction, none of it is anything I've ever heard of, and of the examples of his own work that he cites, none is terribly impressive. It doesn't suck, but it doesn't, well..POP!, either.

So while the course wasn't a total waste of the thirty bucks or so I spent on it, nearly three years later I'm still not sh*tt*ng books like Stephen King, but I am down to the last sixty pages (give or take) of a novel and that's farther than I was ever able to get before. I've just had to find a system and a rhythm that works for me, and from what I've read by other authors, that's pretty much what everybody does. Unless I publish a property that gets optioned by a movie studio, I'll probably never make any real money at it, but at this point I'd be thrilled to get something finished and published. I would consider just doing that one of my life's greatest accomplishments.

I noticed that too, about a lot of the courses and books, ( and the author running and tutoring the paying course that I've subscribed to has only written one thriller and a few short stories, and although the thriller has a great twist it isn't otherwise outstanding/memorable ) ... but NaNoWriMo is free, and almost a hundred people have published the books they started during it, including a couple of best-sellers apparently, so ... I'm hoping it will push me past my usual sticking points.


That's great.

For me too it would be one of the greatest things, ( another thing being the 11 years that I have managed to be a mother )
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Last edited by ouinon on 13 Aug 2010, 3:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, mine's about to turn 18, so I'm almost past the point where I can take much credit for her. In fact, she's turned out better than I could have ever hoped to produce, so there's something bigger than me involved in that.

Friday I submitted the first module of the online writing course that I'm doing, only two thirds done but I was beginning to run out of steam/motivation, and taking longer and longer to do the exercises, and thought that getting some feedback might help.

I got the feedback yesterday, ( some interesting comments/analysis and pointers ), and the next module, and have already started it; feeling excited again!

This module is all about character creation, which is really fun. Doing it also seems ( in just 24 hours ) to have had an effect on how I feel out in the world; it seems easier to look at people, and I see them more vividly/clearly/three-dimensionally. It's as if the position of *active*/purposeful observer creates a liberating distance from others, which makes me feel safer, at the same time as bringing people closer up, which is odd, but really nice, and reminds me of my childhood, when I was generally less anxious around other people, and fascinated by them.

Looking forward to getting my books from Amazon.

Anyone else doing/done NaNoWriMo, or other online writing challenge/course, and want to post about their experiences?
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So, I was creating a character according to the steps outlined in the course, and in a number of other places too, starting with appearance, a name, then background, history, then psychology, motivations, fears and ambitions etc, in that order ... and I got totally stumped, bogged down, because my character was beginning to sound more and more like me, having started off very different.

But while analysing the difficulty I was having, in writing, because I often think better that way, ranting a bit about how boring my super character had become ... I worked something out, which fits with Dramatica Theory, ( and with a comment that my tutor made about one of my scenes for the first module too, ironically ), which is that every thing in a book must have a role, a function, a purpose ... and that characters are not exempt from this rule!

I realised that I can't create a character, a credible, convincing, distinctive character, if I don't know or understand what that character's role, function and purpose is!! !

So I'm going to create a new character, starting with what the course gives as the last step in the process, but which I had already noticed comes first on a couple of other online guides, ... the character's goal. What they are "there" for, why they exist! Seriously happy about this discovery! Like Dramatica theory's argument that the main character does not necessarily have to be the same person as the protagonist, it explains so much about my own experience of writing.

I am particularly pleased to have learned this now, because I was hoping that these character creation exercises might provide me with one or two good ones for NaNoWriMo, and when it wasn't working beyond a certain point I was feeling very gloomy about my prospects in November, writing a novel without characters!

Still noone else on a writing course, doing NaNoWriMo, or similar?
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There's another contest which I am entering which has a considerably larger payoff.

http://www.terrypratchett.co.uk/news/te ... tions.html

20,000 pounds, publication, open to anyone in the British Commonwealth...and all you have to do is write a novel set on a parallel Earth between 80,000 and 150,000 words. I've got a concept that is brilliant, I just need a proper plot.

I took part in Nanowrimo last year. it was difficult but I managed it in the end. It's fun. I have a plot going around in my head for this year too.

That does sound very attractive, but unfortunately I don't currently live in the British Commonwealth. Good luck with the plot!


Yay! Great!

I so far have one character, a faint suggestion of another two, one interesting storyline/goal and background theme for the first character, and a couple of other ideas, plus 64 possible/potential settings!! ! :lol but that's it. Need lots more, to compost for the super-detailed outline that I want to have before I start. If I don't plan I think that I am capable of writing a lot of waffly rubbish, and "winning" but losing at the same time, because it'll just be another pile of s**t to file away unused.
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I think about doing it every year, but then don't because I find the deadline too intimidating, especially with all the other stuff that I have going. I think it's going to have to wait until I finish grad school, at least, since right now I have to make school my first priority if I ever want to finish. If you need cheerleaders, though, I'll put on a ridiculous imaginary outfit and wave some virtual pompoms.

Yay! Thank you very much! I look forward to that! :lol

I'm currently "composting"!

And am discovering, with interest, how much material it takes to produce a small amount of good "s**t"/fertiliser/compost. It explains why so many "beginnings" in the past faltered and died after a chapter or two; I had started writing with just one, or at most two, ideas, and it simply wasn't enough. I'm beginning to see that a living breathing full-length story needs masses of backstories in all directions, dozens of ideas approaching each other at breakneck speed. The pile of notes is growing, and am increasingly glad I still have two months to go, to compost much much more, and to build a basic structure/skeleton. Re. structure: I've been reading more about Dramatica Theory. It's fascinating.
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Cool! I'm on the kid's version because I can't take critisism.

I have done NaNo a couple of times and got some good work done but still haven't managed to finish a novel.

If I participate I am going to do something really off the wall like write it in a language other than English. In fact I am tempted to write it in a language (Volapuk) that I don't yet speak. (I do have a little time to learn it....)

Anyone else planning on some really warped way to do NaNo?

It's getting a bit closer - is anyone else taking part?

I've taken part every year since 2006, and I'm not planning on stopping now. It's just too much fun!

2006 = Slow start, won anyway. The Blind Assassin --->>> still in need of work, but I like what I have
2007 = Barely started; mostly slept. Exhausted self throughout October helping clear out a dead friend's apt...
2008 = Slow start, won anyway. Seeking Heir --->>> still needs a lot of work, but an interesting core
2009 = Very slow start, won anyway. Misled --->>> got stuck (after 50,000) on an ending...
2010 = Have an idea, working on a outline. Preservation --->>> with a somewhat aspie MC

I'm going to attempt to make myself do this.