11/2/06: NaNoWriMo ho!

[davidlevine]

Word count: 337 | Since last entry: 337

Well, I have been foolish enough to stay up past midnight doing it, but I have embarked on NaNoWriMo -- well, really a Pseudo-NaNoWriMo, because I have no intention of writing an entire novel, or even a miniature NaNoWriMo "novel" of 50,000 words, in one month. My goal for the month is 10,000 words, which requires an average of 333 words per day. This is going to be hard, what with WFC, OryCon, and Thanksgiving in there, but -- as this entry demonstrates -- I'm crazy/determined enough to do it. Wish me luck.

The first 337 words... well, they suck. But there they are. Gotta start somethere.

Leaving for Austin bright and early tomorrow (um, later today). See some of you there.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Good luck! I'm doing a psuedo-NaNo too. My target is 20,000 new words on the novel that I first started well over 30 years ago and which I've never been able to finish.

[kvaadk.livejournal.com]

I am NaNo-ing. My goal is a 60,000 word mystery on the 30th. 2,000 words a day is 125% of my usual cruising speed; I'm using the challenge to stretch myself.

(And 50,000 words isn't a miniature novel. Industry definition of novel is 40,000 words. NaNoWriMo organizers chose 50k, iirc, because that's the length of either The Great Gatsby or Brave New World. Or both.)

And, yeah, just about anything you write under the gun feels like it sucks. That's completely subjective -- the stress of the writing circumstance affects your perception of the writing itself. Take it from a guy who does most of his writing at the 11th hour -- readers outside your head perceive no substantive difference.

[davidlevine]

Well, the Hugo/Nebula definition of a novel is 40,000 words, but that's mostly for historical reasons. I believe that almost all novels published these days are 75k words or more.

And the stuff I'm writing now feels like it sucks not because I am writing fast (I'm not) but because I'm accelerating from a standing start. It'll take me the first few chapters to find my voice and figure out what the novel is really about.

After that it'll feel like it sucks for some other reason.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Have fun at WFC and good luck with the PseuDoNaNoWriMo.

[thirdworld.livejournal.com]

Good luck!

[(Anonymous)]

Hey David--
C'mon. I'm NaNoing this year, and doing it while juggling writing up IEPs, running Student Study Teams, and solving middle school special ed problems with a single bound (well, yeah, I also have a couple of days off and am squeezing in time between other stuff and using totally pain-in-the-you-know-what paperwork time to scribble novel notes).

;-)

But in my case, I'm just trying to jump-start the dang book that's been sitting in my head for a while. I'll know I'm getting crazed when I start scribbling in the faculty room during lunchtimes.

And yeah--I went from whimpering about not writing at your Hugo party to suddenly roaring into action when I applied the Anthony Trollope solution to my writing time issue. We'll see if the health holds up....as well as the writing time.

But for me, I'm hoping that the effect of forcing myself to write 2000 words per day for a month will help establish some good writing habits that will last me. Certainly, so far it seems to help with alertness when it comes to facing middle school kids at oh-dark-thirty in the morning.

Joyce