NaNoWriMo

[SamuelAWilkinson]

Since there are a good few typewriter monkeys of one kind or another on the board, I find myself wondering how many other Squaxx will be taking part in this year's National Novel Writing Month, or, indeed, if any had heard of it.

Simply put, it's an astonishingly mad sort of a challenge. The aim is to write a 50,000 word novel entirely from scratch within the month of November, which works out to just over 1667 words a day. On top of which, there's all the rest of one's day to day life.

Succeed or not (and the best I've ever done is 37,000), it's awesome fun involving a lot of late nights, swearing, and writing whatever crap flows through your head in order to get your word count up. Also, for those who need to save their money for the Christmas season, it's a good excuse for not leaving the house in November.

Anyhows, there's a link below for those interested, and I may well start a blog thingy this year, that I may post my progress for all and sundry to see, which I'll probably link to later.
//http://www.nanowrimo.org

[Buttonman]

Who gets to read the wretched things once they've been spewed out? I could do 50,000 words no bother but most would be ghost written by the cat sitting on the keyboard!

I'm not really negative you know, and normally embrace such madcap schemes but sadly I'm going to Leeds for 2 days in November which would wreck my timetable.

[Denari]

I tried this a few years ago and got up to 34K words... however, I was unemployed at the time, until about half way through November.

I think the idea is not what you write, as much as just getting you in to the habit of writing everyday (good, bad or atrocious).

It is tempting this year, I'll admit... hmmm.

[paulvonscott]

Has anyone gone for this?

I missed this post originally, but a friend put me onto it.  

I've been meaning to start a novel for a while, but of course, the temptation to do other things instead has been too great.  So I've decided to give it a go.  Sadly the first week was a write off with work and life getting in the way, but I've made a bit of progress since and at about 11,000 words.  No idea if I'll finish, but I've certainly made a start.

If anyone is dong it, it would be good to sign each other up as I find seeing someone elses word count does inspire me to get my finger out.

[SamuelAWilkinson]

I'm making steady progress; missed a day last week because I went to watch Mercury Rev rock out instead, but I just passed the 16,680ish mark last night. Should be time enough to catch up over the rest of the month, though.

[Tiplodocus]

My Ayrshire set zombie magnum opus "PURE DEAD BRILLIANT" is currently sitting at 6079 words.

I'll not manage 50000 by the end of teh month but I'll certainly start using my commute time to try and get that up by another 10000 or so.

(This means I'll have to stop reading ALICE IN SUNDERLAND though - shame I was enjoying it).

[paulvonscott]

Ah, cool, I'm paulvonscott on nanolwrimo too, so feel free to add and drop me your username

[Cthulouis]

While I'm not signed up on the official site, I'm using the month as an extra incentive to do writing, putting aside all other things until December.

I'm using the month to completely gut and re write a kids book I wrote during uni. Seeing as the whole thing only came to 23 000 odd words the first time round, I'm working to a much smaller word count, but even so I'm probably a bit behind. Ah well.

The latest procrastination comes from the fact that I have just started reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy, which I received for my birthday a few weeks back. Could  influence this tale for young folk in interesting ways.

[paulvonscott]

Well, nanowrimo is free to use (donations welcome), and involves not much more effort than filling in a few boxes and updating your word count now and again.  In return you get to see a graph of how much you've done per day and it's useful for seeing if you are on course.

You could start now and just whack in anything you've done so far.

[Dark Jimbo]

Back in 2005, during my last year of Uni, I wrote a 260,000 word novel (and that was the heavily edited version!). Unfortunately, I realised a little later that, some good bits aside, the majority of it was complete tosh, so now it sits languishing on my harddrive, forgotten and unloved. Still, doing it taught me a hell of a lot, and I'm glad I did it.

Currently 64,000 words into another book, the first in a planned series of 5 or 6, and I've already got the first few chapters of the second book written.

Not that any of this has much to do with the event in question, which I might well have used to spur me into a faster rate of creativity if only I'd heard about it sooner.

[Queen Firey-Bou]

jeez I applaud all of your dedication, I have no work & nothing to do at the moment & yet can't motivate myself to do 3 brush strokes a day let alone 2000's of words..

good luck everybody & keep us posted on your progress

[paulvonscott]

Maybe we could get something organised for next year on the board?  If I'd got to grips with it sooner, I'd have posted sooner.

There really can't be many less motivated people than myself in the world.  The trick, I guess, is to find a way to con yourself into doing it, and this(currently) seems a good way to me.

I don't know if I'll finish this year, enthusiasm is a finite resource I find, but in theory I'm up for it next year too if anyone else wants to do it.

About to break the 14,000 word barrier.  Admittedly, I've only used the same ten words.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Etc.

[Dark Jimbo]

Maybe we could get something organised for next year on the board?  If I'd got to grips with it sooner, I'd have posted sooner.

There really can't be many less motivated people than myself in the world.  The trick, I guess, is to find a way to con yourself into doing it, and this(currently) seems a good way to me.

I don't know if I'll finish this year, enthusiasm is a finite resource I find, but in theory I'm up for it next year too if anyone else wants to do it.

I'm up for that. Procrastination is my middle name, so it's good to have a self-imposed deadline now and again to shoot for.

[TordelBack]

Dark Procrastination Jimbo.  It does roll off the tongue alright.

[Gavin_Leahy_Block]

Sounds good, I've started writing a book a few times in the last two years but have never had the motivation to finish it. I'm also one of the world's slowest typists, so this won't help.