Zkribbler
Deity
On the other hand, I think I may be done by the end of this week. It looks as if my story will end at 12,000-13,000 words. 
NaNoWriMo (November 2017)
- Thread starter Zkribbler
- Start date
You can always start another one and keep going. The 50,000 words don't all have to be in the same story.
Zkribbler
Deity
The Oz story I'm working on takes place in "a rather jolly dystopia." It seems to me that right now my Bluebird of Happiness's song is called for:
Spoiler Song lyrics :
Luckymoose
The World is Mine
Good luck to all of you doing this year. I'm doing one, but of my own pace (and failing, as it seems I do more and more of lately).
Zkribbler
Deity
Ding dong the witch is dead. 14,000+ words. Now it's back to the Emerald City. 
I'm pleased with the way I'm balancing enough of the original story so that readers will feel comfortable with enough twists and new stuff so they'll stay interested.
I'm pleased with the way I'm balancing enough of the original story so that readers will feel comfortable with enough twists and new stuff so they'll stay interested.
When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. So I took advantage of the 20% discount at the NaNoWriMo store, and bought a T-shirt from last year, to commemorate my hat trick (winning both Camp events and the November event). I also got a poster.
My XP no longer accesses the internet. I'm told that Firefox and IE no longer work on XP computers, so no internet and I can't even modify my story. I'm trying to copy it over onto my new computer so I don't lose it.
My XP no longer accesses the internet. I'm told that Firefox and IE no longer work on XP computers, so no internet and I can't even modify my story. I'm trying to copy it over onto my new computer so I don't lose it.
Zkribbler
Deity
Good luck.
My rough draft is done A mere 16,300 words.
It took me just over a month.
My rough draft is done A mere 16,300 words.
It took me just over a month.
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Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
Aight I'm failing at "real life" so I consider trying this crap are there any guidelines or whatever
The basics are that you do your best to write a 50,000-word novel, story, story collection (aka anthology), journal, or whatever else; poetry is fine as well, by midnight Pacific Time on November 30. The website is here: https://nanowrimo.org/
Nobody at the site actually reads what you write unless you choose to share it with someone on the forums. The quality doesn't matter, as everyone is doing first-draft things and everyone's writing will not be perfect by any means. On November 30 you copy/paste what you've written into the area of their website where their site will make sure you've got at least 50,000 words (known as "validating your novel"), and assuming you do, you'll be congratulated and directed to a page where you can download your winner's free stuff (banner, badge that can be used as an avatar, and certificate). The rest of the prize is some pretty generous discounts on various writing "how-to" books and software (ie. storyboarding and other ways to make writing easier and more organized). There are several online outfits that offer advice on publishing, as some people who do NaNoWriMo have gone on to have their stories professionally published.
In your case, however, I would suggest that you try this for the experience (since the month is nearly half over), and if you enjoy it there's another NaNoWriMo event next April that allows you to choose your own word count goal (minimum 10,000 words, which works out to 334 words/day - pretty much most of OT writes a lot more than that every day, often in the same post).
The website does have ways to detect cheating - for example, if someone just types in the same word 50,000 times. But since the only person you're competing with is yourself, I don't see the point unless it's to get the discounted software and other things.
You're welcome to share your ideas here, and ask for advice or suggestions (PM if you'd like). You can write about any topic you want, any genre you want. It can be about yourself and your own life, if you prefer. The original idea of this competition was to encourage people who say "I'd like to write but I never have the time" or "I'd like to write but don't know what to write about" or "I'd like to write but I'm not good enough" to just try it.
If you break it down on a per-day basis, getting to 50,000 means writing at least 1667 words/day, assuming you start on November 1. That takes me a couple of hours or so, depending on how well I've thought things out, whether it's straight narrative or lots of dialogue, and if it's a fight/combat scene (I don't know how to do those very well and it's the only really frustrating part of the experience for me).
I've been at this for 10 years. Last year was the first time I ever made it to 50,000 and beyond, and it felt wonderful. Some years I tried and got nowhere - nice round number of 0 words. Other times I got partway (best "partway" was 22,000 words). It does take a bit of planning or self-discipline. Some people can sit down and write a story cold, with no planning and do it well - the Iron Pen competitions here in this forum is an example of that on a small scale, in which people write a 1000-word story (or thereabouts) in 48 hours using a theme I don't give them until the beginning of the 48 hours.
But sitting down and writing 50,000 words cold with no planning is something I can't do. I've got too many ideas in my head, all clamoring to be the one I write about. So my approach to this is planning, outlining, and knowing where the story is supposed to go long before November 1 (or April 1, or July 1). Other people approach it differently. Luckymoose and Synsensa are able to write much more in 30 days than I can.
So the first step is to go to the nanowrimo.org website and register. They'll ask you for the usual stuff any website asks for, and you'll be asked about your novel (or whatever it is). They'll want a title, the genre (is it science fiction, fantasy, mystery, western, fanfiction, or a choice of many others), and there's a space for a brief description of the novel. You can post an excerpt if you want - totally optional, and I've never done that. There's a space at the top for you to keep your word count updated and you can see it grow on a bar graph that gets updated every day.
There are forums there with people from all over the world, and information about any NaNoWriMo groups you might be able to join in RL. I've got a writing buddy from another forum (the one who got me into this all those years ago) who lives in Kentucky. We've never met in RL, but he said there are a lot of other people in his RL area who are into this, so he's gone to a meetup where everyone brings their laptop and meets at a coffee shop and they swap ideas and encouragement and just socialize (and presumably do some writing as well).
Of course you don't have to do any of that if you don't want to. About the most social I ever get about my writing is talking about it here. Since pretty much nobody around here is into the same stuff I'm into, it's a bit pointless to say, "What do you think of my Fighting Fantasy fanfiction? I'm novelizing my games!" and they have no idea what to say since they've never read or played that RPG. Ditto with Hulzein Saga fanfiction; I'm the only person I know around here in RL who's even read them, never mind had any idea of writing more about that setting. The original author died over 10 years ago and there's so much more that deserves to be written in that universe. I looked around to see what I could find online and there's nothing. So I decided to write it myself and NaNoWriMo was the perfect way to give me incentive.
And that's the thing. NaNoWriMo is one way of providing incentive to write. If you make it to the end, you get prizes. If you don't make it to the end, you do have the satisfaction of knowing you tried. You don't have the stress of worrying about whether you're better than other people, as winning means getting to 50,000. Lots of people make it, so the fact is that the only person you're in competition with is yourself. I'm happy if I do better than I did the last time. As mentioned, some years I got literally nowhere. Some other years I got somewhere. In the last couple of years I finally started finishing, and it's a great feeling.
This is probably more than you wanted to know. I tend to be enthusiastic about this and carry on...
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
Thanks
tbh I never knew about the prizes, so that's pretty neat. Never quite understood the timelimit for this until now
I haven't done proper writing in almost 4 years, and haven't written fiction in over 7 years, so I don't have too high expectations to begin with
So I'd guess jumping into it, trying and failing and then take lessons from it would perhaps be a decent enough thing to do
Congratulations on making it last year, btw
tbh I never knew about the prizes, so that's pretty neat. Never quite understood the timelimit for this until now
I haven't done proper writing in almost 4 years, and haven't written fiction in over 7 years, so I don't have too high expectations to begin with
So I'd guess jumping into it, trying and failing and then take lessons from it would perhaps be a decent enough thing to do
Congratulations on making it last year, btw
Zkribbler
Deity
to s
The rules re set out in the NaNoWriMo website. The general idea is to take all the prep time you desire to create an outline, draw maps, etc. Then, starting Nov1, you have 1 month to pound out a novel of 50,000+ words.
I am probably the least likely person you should be asking because I'm a bit of a rebel. I use NaNoWriMo to motivate me, but I use their rules a "suggestions."
Last year on Oc 28, I found out about this. I had almost no prep time and so once I started writing, I crashed and burned due to lack of an outline. So I stopped, bought a book on how to create an outline, created the outline, and then started writing again. I gave myself an extra month to make up for the time I'd lost. When I finised up with only 49,999 words, that was close enough for me.
This year I began early because I'm having eye surgery in December and I wanted to make sure I was done. I had lots of prep time. Then I started writing early. About a month ago, I changed everything. I decided to do an updated version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The original book is 40,000 words. Because I planned to bbreviate the time in Kansas and to omit most of the meandering ending, I estimated my version would be ~30,000 words, Oops, it turned out to be 16,000. But that's okay. I did what I wanted to do.
Thank you, Lohrenswald.Lohrenswald said:
I do encourage you to try. No matter how far you get, it's farther than you got before. It's like the time when someone told me she had a friend who was discouraged by the lack of progress he was making with a course he was taking; he didn't think he was learning fast enough. So I asked her this: "Does he know more today than he did yesterday, no matter how much or little?" Her answer was yes, so I told her, "He's making progress, then."
General question to everyone here: I've got a bunch of writing how-to books I've been collecting over the years - not the technical grammar kind (though I've got a few of those as well that I used back when I had my home typing business typing academic papers and everything had to be perfect), but on topics like how to plot, how to write dialogue, how to create worlds (for folks into writing science fiction and fantasy), and so on. Would anyone be interested if we tried out some of the exercises in those books and had a kind of writer's workshop here? It would be with the same provisos I set out for Iron Pen: Whatever critiques are offered, they must be constructive. It's not enough to say "I don't like that." You need to say why, or the writer won't get anything out of that other than discouragement. Other than that, no competition, no deadlines, other than maybe an "exercise of the month" sort of thing that people can go back to and post in later on if they want to.
Thoughts on this?
Zkribbler
Deity
I'm leaning towards "yes" but maybe you can give us an example.
Two possible problems for me:
I'm going in for eye surgery in December. I don't know if my eyesight will be good enuf afterward to allow me to write.
My computer is doing really weird things. It might be dying.
Two possible problems for me:
I'm going in for eye surgery in December. I don't know if my eyesight will be good enuf afterward to allow me to write.
My computer is doing really weird things. It might be dying.
Zkribbler
Deity
I've pinpointed my antagonist. He has two demi-schemes. I've been wrestling for days, trying to forge them into a single scheme. Last night: success!One scheme is a smoke screen, which allows the other to succeed.
This post is from last September. I still know my antagonist, but I no recognition of either of his schemes.
You're the writer. If you don't like his schemes, give him different ones.
I'm relieved to have found some of my other NaNoWriMo material stashed away somewhere online. I'd forgotten where I put it, so at some point I can continue those stories (novelizations of Scorpion Swamp and The Quest for the Crown of Kings). Not sure where my handwritten notes and maps went, though.
I'm relieved to have found some of my other NaNoWriMo material stashed away somewhere online. I'd forgotten where I put it, so at some point I can continue those stories (novelizations of Scorpion Swamp and The Quest for the Crown of Kings). Not sure where my handwritten notes and maps went, though.
Sooo... it's November 30. If everything had gone according to plan, I'd be somewhere around 60,000 words by now, frantically trying to beat last year's official word count (which was just shy of 60,600).
This year I made it to 1290 words and then Firefox decided it didn't want to play nice with Windows XP anymore, and neither did IE. I had no other browsers installed, so that's that. Not even the word processing program works now. All I can hope for is to rescue my files, get them onto my current computer, and carry on next April.
But I was sent a coupon code for 20% off merchandise, so I decided to take advantage of that. I now have a very nice 2016 Winner's T-shirt and a Camp NaNoWriMo poster from a couple of years ago (2015 was the first year I was able to make it to the end and an official win).
Did anyone here make it to 50,000?
This year I made it to 1290 words and then Firefox decided it didn't want to play nice with Windows XP anymore, and neither did IE. I had no other browsers installed, so that's that. Not even the word processing program works now. All I can hope for is to rescue my files, get them onto my current computer, and carry on next April.
But I was sent a coupon code for 20% off merchandise, so I decided to take advantage of that. I now have a very nice 2016 Winner's T-shirt and a Camp NaNoWriMo poster from a couple of years ago (2015 was the first year I was able to make it to the end and an official win).
Did anyone here make it to 50,000?
Zkribbler
Deity
not even close
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Chukchi Husky
Lone Wolf
I managed to write 51102 words.
Well done!
