Or, as I like to call it: “National Novel Writing Month Freak Out Preparatory Blog”
After this week, and the next week, there are only four weeks left until NaNoWriMo! Time to officially start freaking out, if you’re into that kind of thing.
I participated in my first NaNoWriMo last year, and found the experience pretty interesting. I played by all of the traditional rules, writing every day, lusting after that tasty goal of 50,000 words in ~30 days. While I didn’t attend any local writing meet-ups, or really work within any writing community to speak of, I still found the entire event a great catalyst to plain getting shit done.
I’m going to play again this year, despite having even more on my plate than last year. I wrote nearly 80,000 words last year (ok, some of those came post December 1, but it was in the same fit of writing), which is more fiction than I wrote in the other 11 months combined (I don’t keep track of how much nonfiction I write, for whatever reason).
This year, I’m going to break from tradition, and write a collection of short stories. It’s the same idea in principle, words into stories into a book, it’s just a bunch of smaller narratives instead of one big, epic one.
I also hope to be part of a bigger community this year. If anyone wants to get in on some hot, word on word NaNo action, my handle is: OliverGray14 (my profile picture is the same as my twitter acount, me in a sweet bowler hat)
To prepare, I’ve already outlined the basics of the stories, as well as the plot lines and characters for each. I’ve also started mentally getting into “shitload of writing everyday mode” which involves finger stretching exercises and building my caffeine tolerance. I still need to figure out if my stories are all going to tie together, or if they are going to be stand alone.
Is anyone else out there doing NaNo this year? If so, are you preparing yet, or am I just freakishly proactive?
Tagged: fiction, NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo 2012, national novel writing month, preparation, short stories, writing
Love the ‘multiple short stories’ idea. I think I may attempt the same.
I figure this is all just experimentation disguised as art, so why not do something crazy! I wrote a boring old novel last year. Time to step it up!
I haven’t done NaNo since my kids were born. Now that they’re in kindergarten, seems like a good time to go again. Perhaps this whole planning thing might up the quality level. Plot would be good. I’ll look for you if I decide to throw November to the wind.
Yea! Jump back in the ring; you’ll enjoy it, I promise 🙂
I sat on the sidelines during NaNoWriMo last year. I plan to participate this year and your post is inspiring me to get moving on developing a story line, characters, etc. It’s not to early to start, especially considering how mind boggling the goal really is. Hope to have a success story come Dec 1st. Best of luck to you, sounds like you’re off to a great start!
I’m glad you’re going for it this year!
The goal really isn’t all that bad. Think about it like this: 1667 words a day. If you’re awake for 16 hours, that’s 104 words, or roughly a paragraph, an hour.
Now, writing 104 every hour for 16 hours isn’t very efficient. But most writers, even those out of practice or excruciatingly self-critical can write 750 words an hour.
So really, it’s only 2 hours a day. 2 hours x 30 days = 60 hours.
That’s like a work week and a half.
You can totally do that in a month.
When you break it down like that, it actually seems doable! Now whatever “pass” I was thinking about giving myself in advance to fail will have to be revoked. Thanks for taking the time to break it down.
You’re not that freakishly proactive. I’ve been planning since March. Having said that though I have now changed my mind and am going to be writing something different which I started planning yesterday. I am very fickle when it comes to NaNo.
You did beat me to the NaNo related blog posts though. I wasn’t planning to start until October.
Do love the short story idea. I’ll come and find you. I’m Deborah Osborne over there.
Good luck.
I’ll definitely find you as I start ramping up.
Good luck with your new plan!
Thanks. Yours too.
You inspired me to put up my own NaNo post. I’m back linking here too. Hope that’s ok?
Yea, totally ok!
I’m so glad you posted about the NaNoWriMo! I missed it last year and wanted to give it a shot this year. Yikes – I’d better start getting organized now 😉
Good luck & have fun with yours!
Get to it! It’s a lot of fun, and if you manage to “win”, you feel incredibly good about yourself 🙂
Good luck with that! Hope you post some of your stories.
Thanks! If they turn into anything even half decent, I’m sure I’ll share some 🙂
Good luck to you! I’ve tried NaNoWriMo multiple times, and I did great for the first three years…those being the years that I was in college and living in a dorm. Once I moved home and started graduate school, the whole thing kind of fell apart, and I’d be lucky if I could even start NaNo let alone finish it.
I like the idea of writing a writing multiple short stories, and I may have to steal that plan from you this year. That way, even if I don’t make it through the whole thing, I should at least have one or two finished stories, instead of a half-finished novel rotting on my hard drive.
Yea! It’s also a great way to make real, tangible “micro-progress.” Finishing a chapter is one thing. Finishing a story is another.
I encourage you to play! Drop me a line with your NaNo name if you do 🙂
I’m SunMoonAndSpoon. You? I’ve been participating every year, and I’ll probably at least give it a shot this year. I just need to figure out WHAT to do. Are you outlining all of your planned stories, or just going with vague concepts?
I’m OliverGray14 (creative, I know).
I’m very loosely outlining the stories. If I’ve already thought of characters and names and other specifics, I drop them in. Otherwise, it’s often just loose notes and a rough order.
I’ve also decided to have a persistent narrator with his own story that is tied to all of the others, sooooo yea, that’ll be a hot mess.
a novel in a month? on top of the blog and all your other writing? you are CRAZY!!!!
but you’re also pretty talented so it might just work…
good luck, godspeed, and may the force be with you!
Well, no one said it was a “good” novel in a month, just enough words with enough organization to loosely apply the label of “novel.” 🙂
Writing is a weird thing for me; the more I do it, the more I do it, the more I do it. It kind of just falls out of me once I’m in the mode.
Now, let’s not talk about the other things that get neglected as a result 😛
I suppose it’s just a question of priorities. Between writing, and beer, looks to me like you’ve got yours sorted 🙂
I try 🙂
Good luck! I’m doing NaNoWriMo too. Will try to remember to add you!