novel-writing

[dragonlady7]

You know, I had pretty much decided that NaNoWriMo was a stupid idea and I wasn't doing it again. I've won it every year I've done it, thereby proving that writing 50,000 words in a month is absolutely no trouble for me. The first year I did it, my grandma died in the second week and at the end of the third week I left for Europe for a week, and yet, I still reached 50k before I left with no trouble. The second year I did it, I was working full-time in a job I hated, and managed to do it. The third year, I was unemployed and wrote an entire novel start to finish with a whole structure, and then proceeded to spend the next six months tearing it apart and hating it to the point that I can't look at it anymore. Indeed, during 2004 I wrote well over a million words and not one of them has been published.

Should I do it for a fourth year?
Well, I just signed up. So I guess I will. I guess I've been pretty blocked this year. Maybe it'll be good for me. Which project should I work on? Should I just say what the fuck and do a fanfiction epic, such as I've returned to in moments of crisis? Should I work on the Old New Original Fantasy Novel that I have precisely three pages rewritten on after several years' hiatus? Or should I, as per the guidelines, start over entirely from scratch yet one more time?

I dunno. Who else is doing NaNo? I should start a community, except I think I'm already in like three. I did meet a lot of good people last year, most of whom are still on my flist because they were totally worth knowing.

Also I don't feel like moderating any communities. Someone else, start or reactivate a community for me. Or at least, other friends doing NaNo, leave comments so I can feel like I'm a part of it. :) I really don't know what I'll do this year. It doesn't make any sense for me to do it, except that I've sort of decided I'm not running away to Japan, so I need something else to distract me from how fucking stupid my life is.


Come on, Inter-Nets: Take away my pain with shiny, shiny distraction. It's what you're for.

Comments

[silverwerecat.livejournal.com]

Who else is doing NaNo?

I'm doing it.

Although I'm not writing a novel from scraps, rather adding (hopefully) 50,000 words to my story Dragondust.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm wondering if I should throw the 'new stuff only' rule out the window and try to use it to get a new draft of one of my existing novels out...

Although it's tempting to try something new, I don't really want to continue this throw-away trend I have, where I crank out half a million words and then abandon the project. It's getting sort of depressing.

[silverwerecat.livejournal.com]

For me, NaNo is just a motivation to move the damn story forward. It took me months to write the first 30,000 words, so, even if I add a good amound to that I'll be happy.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Yeah... That should be a good motivator. :)

[kkatowll.livejournal.com]

I'm probably gonna do it. Last year I tried and failed miserable (I think I got 3,000 words) but the year before I finished a story that...sucks. oh, well.

This time I'm gonna try to turn my Girl Scout trials into a fiction story. Somehow. Surely all the blood and sweat with those hoodlums can make some sort of story. And maybe I'll have it end on a happy, successful note, thereby earning the "fiction" bit of it.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

> Girl Scout trials

I'm considering trying to write something nonfictional or less-fantastically-fictional than normal. Could I even do that, considering I don't live in this world?

Ah well. Happy and successful is a nice fantasy aspect, I agree. Go for it.

There was that one year when I signed up, but I never wrote anything; honest

[eideteker.livejournal.com]

I have succeeded at not doing NaNoWriMo every single year since its inception. This year will be no different. As someone whose expertise is in fiction that takes less than fifteen minutes to read, I can't imagine anything I've ever written being 50,000 words. Not without wasting a lot of space.

Re: There was that one year when I signed up, but I never wrote anything; honest

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I don't seem to be able to do anything that's less than about 20,000 words, so, I see we're in very different realms of storytelling. Hey, maybe you could write fifty short stories.

Re: There was that one year when I signed up, but I never wrote anything; honest

[eideteker.livejournal.com]

More like 500 short stories.

Re: There was that one year when I signed up, but I never wrote anything; honest

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Sweet.

I think if it's under 1000 words you get to call it 'flash fiction'. Good flash fiction's hard to come by, and is quite marketable. I wish I could make myself say something witty and concise, as good flash fiction tends to be, but I can't help but blather on for another thirty pages. Frustrating.

Well, are you going to write 500 short stories, then?

Re: There was that one year when I signed up, but I never wrote anything; honest

[eideteker.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I'd call it "good (http://www.livejournal.com/users/eideteker/374544.html)" so much as "quick (http://www.livejournal.com/users/eideteker/411305.html)".

But no, I'll be studying instead. I do plan to start my day by writing for an hour every day, if I can. Studying has to come first, though.

[tehta.livejournal.com]

I might try it. Although my fastest writing time is 500 words/hour, so that'd be, like, three hours a day. A bit too much, no?

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

> too much

Never!

It'd be fun, though. I do actually like your speed-writing.
What do you think you'll write?

[tehta.livejournal.com]

Well, since currently I am lucky if I can find one hour a day, I think three might be unreasonable.

I might set myself some other speedwriting goals in the honour of NaNoWriMo, instead. Like, try to do 1000 words in an hour.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Hey, you can play NaNo like I play most drinking games: play to lose for the sheer drunken hell of it!
Actually half the fun of NaNo is whining about how you're not getting any writing done, and feeling horribly put-upon etc.

And there's nothing better to excuse a good weekend binge of pyjama-clad tea-drinking pencils-in-hair incoherence than an utterly improbable word count total.


Although I myself am considering abandoning the wordcount total thing and trying to achieve some other, personal benchmark: I've proven three times now that wordcount really is no object, but that doesn't mean I've done anything constructive. I mean, there's some progress: the first two years I just produced stuff, and the third year I actually wrote a whole novel; maybe this year I can step up from that and write a whole novel I somewhat like, which would be something indeed. But I don't think I can feasibly hold out hope for that, given the retarded schedule I now work. And given how little I've produced since midsummer...

Anyway, I'd love to read your attempts. :D which is the other half of the fun of NaNoWriMo, of course.

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

I'm going to participate from the side again this year - just watch others do it.

Last year I did indeed reach 50,000 words, though it's not official since I didn't sign up. I didn't sign up because I was not starting something new. I realize now that was foolish.

But this year I'm spending every moment possible on getting the house back in shape by Christmas. After I've accomplished that, I'll write 50,000 just to celebrate!

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

I meant to say, I think you should do it. You need to get yourself back on track and have a goal you can believe in.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

> a goal you can believe in

It's true-- I know without a doubt I can produce 50,000 words in a month. So I guess this could be useful, at least to prove that i'm no worse than I was.

I just wish I could finish something.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

> house back in shape

Oh yes, that's pretty important.

Maybe you could parley this experience into writing a how-to-remodel-your-home book. ;) Featuring naked Elijah, of course. I think that would be pretty darn colorful.

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

Now that's a good, practical and fun suggestion!

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I'd buy it!

Well, I'd probably buy it even without the naked boyliciousness. I could use some good concise, clear advice on wiring. Hell, even painting... And I need to insulate my attic...

[elentari-valie.livejournal.com]

I'm doing it this year, and starting it from scratch. I have finished a couple of projects well over 50k, and abandoned others along the way. But this is my first year, so I don't really know how I am going to go, specially since I'm still deciding what premise I'll use.
I usually write 2k in one and a half hours, so I'm not concerned about speed. I'm concerned about the plot.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Plot? We don't need no stinkin' plot!


Well, yeah. I can produce too. First two years, I focused on wordcount. First two years, I produced big old piles of better-than-nothing that I then never edited.
So last year I focused on completion. My goal, regardless of wordcount, was to produce A Novel. So I did-- it was about 90,000 words (including one 3,000-word dead end where I took the wrong fork and realized it was dragging the plot off course), and had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And it was an entire novel.
Sadly, in the editing stage the thing exploded and I'm afraid to touch it now.

So I don't know what I'll do this year. Should I go back to wordcount, since I've been so unproductive this year? Should I try to refine my Finish A Novel technique? Or should I set some other goal? I'm undecided...

My total cumulative wordcount for 2004 was about 1,020,000 words. (Yes, I am aware of the number of zeroes in that.) My cumulative wordcount for 2005 is probably something more like... 30,000 so far, so it's pretty goddamned pathetic. Maybe I should just go for wordcount.

Have you done NaNoWriMo before?

[elentari-valie.livejournal.com]

*have to take a few deep breaths after those numbers*

Nope, NaNo Virgin here.

I don't know if I can make it A Novel, with a great plot and all, but I'd like the beginning/middle/end thing. I'd like that a lot. I just can't see myself spending hours writing ks of words that run in circles and go nowhere...

I'm voting for 'refining the technique' because the two first tries didn't sound like they gave you any joy (And if you're going to waste your time and get a headache, it better be something you enjoy, right?)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

My numbers are scary.
They are also somewhat depressing. Apparently Neil Gaiman said something about how there's an awful lot of failure in writing, and something like your first 100 words wont' be brilliant, or your first 1000, and some people have to write a million before anything good happens, which is what prompted me to go back and check all my writing files for the year to find out how much I'd written. I thought it was pretty profoundly depressing that I'd written over a million in a single year and still had nothing to show for it...

I actually absolutely love writing, and I love the excuse NaNoWriMo gives me to immerse myself in it and be a total drama queen totally committed about it. I just wish I had something to show for it at the end. But given how little I have written this year, it may not be possible for me to attempt to do more than in previous years: even achieving as much as the first year I wrote, when I just managed to bang out 50,000 words on a single story, might be more than I can do now.

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

You may or may not have seen on my LJ, but I'm playing this year. I think I signed up for the past two years and produced nothing but good intentions. This year it falls at a really good time, though. I've been editing for so goddamn long that I need to start writing again. So October will be about finally getting the ghost book out to agents, and November will be about writing the "modern-day Pride and Prejudice set in a regional theatre" novel. Because this world needs another modern-day Pride and Prejudice retelling. Shyeah.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I think I did see that you were signed up. Good.

I've actually never been that into Austen-- I know I must've read Pride & Prejudice once or thrice but I get it confused with Sense & Sensibility, so really, retellings of it strike me fresh every time. So lay it on me!

Thumbs up on finishing the query letter stuff and synopses, by the way, because that's the kind of thing I've never really succeeded at.

[elentari-valie.livejournal.com]

Mommy! You're here too!

:*