(no subject)

[serria]

All right, my dears, we're almost to NaNoWriMo take off. Who's playing? What are your ideas? Have you ever tried it before, and ever won?

Comments

[sarillia]

I've been doing it every year since 2007 and I can't imagine not doing it now. Not only did I reach the 50k goal each year, but all but twice I finished my main story too.

My main idea right now involves a girl who can speak to the dead and a recently deceased girl who has been turned into a martyr for a cause she disagrees with.

[serria]

Wow, you're awesome! I hesitate to admit that whenever I've tried it, I lose. I find that working with word count deadlines makes my writing suck, and causes me to obsessively check the word counter instead of get excited about my stories. Not that it's a bad concept. I could probably benefit from the discipline! But I think I'd work better in a "write for two hours every day" guideline rather than a word count one.

Good luck this year, though. That idea sounds really interesting, and definitely like something I'd love to read when it's finished! :) Keep us posted about your progress!

[sarillia]

I'm really lucky that the word count thing works for me so well. The word goals are like milestones that I pass by along the way to finishing the story. I'm having so much fun writing and oh look at that, I passed another big goal!

I hope you find something that works as well for you.

[alexseanchai]

That sounds like a fascinating idea.

[alexseanchai]

I'm playing. I don't know what I'm writing, except this year I am determined to win honestly. (I have won in the past. I have also counted schoolwork towards my words in the past.) I told my access list one thing, but that thing has a fundamental flaw in the vision that I haven't figured out how to fix yet and I have to know before I can start work on that novel. So it's probably going to be something different. What 'different' consists of, I truly do not know.

[sarillia]

Good luck figuring it out! I really should figure out several more things myself before I start on Friday night.

[alexseanchai]

Thanks!

[serria]

I've never won, but I once had a fandom friend who won... but also included lots of song lyrics in her fic, and refused to use contractions, so her sentences would be something like, "I am not hungry" rather than "I'm not hungry", no matter how unnatural it sounded. But hey, ups your word count, right? Lol At least your word count was more legitimate, it's all your own writing, even if it isn't for the same project.

Sometimes I find it easier to write when I have only a very vague idea what I'm going to write about. It's more exciting when you yourself have no idea what the hell is going to happen! :)

Good luck!

[alexseanchai]

Nodnod.

Thanks!

[ayumidah]

I am. I've won a handful of years. I'm equally anxious and excited for this year.

[serria]

Best of luck!

[ayumidah]

Thanks, you too!

[agilebrit]

I'm not because November is an absolutely hideous month to try something of that magnitude.

I won't call this year a "failure" as far as my writing goes, but I didn't get nearly as much accomplished as I wanted, so next year I have a new plan. I'm going to scribble the first draft of a short story at a NaNo pace at the beginning of each month, and then write a thousand words a day in a novel while editing the short.

This will keep my hand in the short markets while giving me something actually solid to try to hang an actual career on. At the end of June, I'll evaluate the process and see where I am.

Good luck to everyone doing NaNo this year. This icon is just for you!

[sarillia]

If it makes you feel any better, I always feel a bit inadequate when you report all the stories you've submitted. :p Definitely doesn't look like a failure from where I'm sitting.

[ljwrites]

I am! I've won Camp NaNoWriMo this past July, though my ideas have changed so much since then that I'm not sure if anything from the Camp draft is making it into the final product. It was still a good way to see what worked and what didn't. (Mostly what didn't.) I don't expect this month's draft will be much better, but I hope to get some trial-and-error out of the way.

For this round I plan to write the continuation of the Camp draft. In Book 2 the heroine's love interest starts a war when the widowed heroine refuses his suit and marries an outsider. She and her new husband, practically strangers themselves, have to figure out how to win while she struggles with some very inconvenient feelings for the enemy.

[skyjam]

I was thinking about doing NaNo this year, but now that it's just around the corner, I've been slowly doubting myself. I've tried it before in the past, but I don't work well under deadlines, and my myopic self-editing slows writing down to a crawl for me. I was originally thinking about doing it because it seemed like the best thing to get me to just start writing again and doing it on a daily basis, without it being a super-serious, involved "thing".

I have two ideas I'm playing with, but I may just write them freely without NaNo.