NaNoWriMo 2008

Not that I'm so eager as to start the thread two months early or anything.

Might take a break this time around. We'll see.

You've earnt it, you've banked up approx. 12 million extra words over the years.

I have an idea this year - a man who disappears and then mysteriously returns, claiming to be his own son - as he is a time traveller.

i am in again. god help me.

No idea yet. Thinking though. I've got a list of disused ideas somewhere.

maybe this will be the year i get past page two.

I'm thinking about it, though I reckon the write a play in a month thing next spring might be more my thing.

thing used twice in one sentence - me am write good.

I might try this NaNoWriMo!

Due to nursing school, I'm out this year. But I will cheerlead the rest of you! (No promises on whether I'm getting the pom poms out.)

yeah, I just registered for this a couple days ago. couldn't go back to school this fall, so I've got a lot of free time, and I figure this might be the year I pull it off.

I don't have even the faintest whiff of an idea yet, though.

Hoho, I'm not even gonna PRETEND I'm trying this year! My first attempt, last year, yielded ~1k words split into 32 chapters. (I figured writing really short chapters would motivate me, but damn if I can't come up with a story that lasts longer than one page. Maybe if they had NaNoProPo, where you wrote a prose poem every day – that I could get into.)

Sample of one of the longer chapters:

CHAPTER 4: MANGO CURRICULUM VITAE

The mango had grown up at the other side of the island. The tree from which it had grown was healthy and inspired by the warm, salty breezes and lackadaisical island culture. It started out a bold, splendid blossom favored by insects above all others on it tree, bees hovering to touch its stamen and bathe in its golden pollen. Soon it grew into a hard green fruit, swelling with promise and juice as it expanded every day. The sun warmed it from yellow, to orange, to a fiery gradient of the above framed in glorious crimson.
It was friendly and encouraging to its mates on the other branches, spinning yarns of their future sweet, firm flesh and with what pride they would represent the mango population.
The mango went to school and learned all the basic stuff, like proper sentence structure and math and being a good citizen. It wasn't that exotic. The mango's resumé was short. Simply not that much education was available to the fruit.

CHAPTER SIX: WE ARE SO GRATEFUL FOR ALL OUR MANY BLESSINGS

Mangoes don't have appendixes.

CHAPTER EIGHT: MORE VAIN HINTING AT ORIGIN STORY

I think we'll save that for a later chapter.

Longest chapter BY FAR:

CHAPTER NINE: UNFEASIBLE TOIL

Mines! I've been working at the fork and glue mine since my skull joints ain't been fused. I push a cart full of those tiny empty Elmer's glue cartons with the lids unscrewed, and a service holding container for the average kitchen drawer, and hope the glue and forks drip into the proper container. If not, I gotta separate them out and get glue all over me and my hands. The common punishment for the idle, the insubordinate, or the malingerers is to be forced to stand naked, under the ooze of adhesive and silverware, "forked and glued." Then sometimes dipped in pigeon feathers and guano. It ain't happened to me, and shan't as long as I ain't framed. I am not a malingerer.
Mines! I'd give them the shaft if I could. I hate mines and I reckon I'll hate mines as long as the coxswain is vexed by the cat staring at the sausage beneath the table. I'll hate mines as long as the moon keeps waking and waning, when I finally am good enough to bow; without bumpers in the gutter, when sic even more severe levels of burns are discovered, when cats get tired of catnip, when a wild burro falls in love with a domesticated monkey, when a furlong equals a hectare, when the devil's tears turn into chocolate apostrophes, when my itches are healed by the sun's golden rays, when I can gorgonize a man by giving him the double deuce (this being a two-handed, bilaterally symmetrical employment of the bird or lone middle finger (the mango shudders (a pair of nude pantyhose fall off a drying line, looking to all the world like a snake's abandoned sheath of shucked skin), it shudders again (the hand falls off a statue of Philo T. Farnsworth in Rigby, Idaho), the mango refrains from its chilled shudders), once again, when a man shall foreswear the savor of salt, when a sock shall remain clean and dry after 80 consecutive hours of wear, when the rhino lays down with the anti-rhino, then shall my peace with mines be made.
But that'll be a long time from now.
My name is Errol Reed Gilbert, and I endorse this message.

Oh man why did I ever try.

Due to nursing school, I'm out this year. But I will cheerlead the rest of you! (No promises on whether I'm getting the pom poms out.)

-- Sara R-C, Thursday, August 28, 2008 10:01 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

are you at the U? maybe we'll run into each other!

are you allowed to outline your novel ahead of time?

"allowed"

I imagine like how they can't STOP you from mentally counting cards in Vegas, they can't STOP you from fleshing out some sort of internal outline (at the very least).

Anyone want my copy of No Plot, No Preoblem? I will mail it to anyone who wants it. It depressed me, but, NB: I am a depressio.

No Spellcheck, No Probelum

OK, so I've checked out that book with the "Search Inside!" feature on Amazon, and basically the centre premise is that to write a novel in a month you need a deadline, right? I've never written a novel, but from my experiences with NaSoAlMo (National Solo Album Month), I know that deadlines don't really motivate me, much as I want them to!
Anyway, I will now quote Douglas Adams: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - there's a great bit in the intro to one of his novels where he talks about his working process and how it involves eating toast, drinking coffee, taking walks, having baths, and not actually doing much writing.

haha awesome

I liked Ray Bradbury's suggestion that your first 1k pages of writing are shit, and once you get those out of the way, you'll be a good writer.

srsly snoball if you are interested, I will mail it to you!

No, that's alright, thanks anyway. I once tried writing a novel, but it was crap. I was attempting to write a William S Burroughs style cut up novel whilst simultaneously following the writing advice of Ian Fleming. Actually some of Fleming's advice was pretty good, particularly the bit about not looking back at what you've already written until the novel's complete.
http://www.jamesbondwiki.com/page/Ian+Fleming's+Essays?t=anon
Anyway this year I'm doing NaSoAlMo again - is anyone else? Last year's thread sort of fell by the wayside.

Abbott I'll take yr book!

(although I don't know how helpful it will be, since I was also sort of planning on the NaNoProPo approach)

Abbott, an encouraging snip from the nanowrimo faq:

Outlines and plot notes are very much encouraged, and can be started months ahead of the actual novel-writing adventure. Previously written prose, though, is punishable by death.

I'm in.

MANGO CURRICULUM VITAE

Abbott can we exchange writing sometime

I'm trying to decide if I should use my idea about a guy who gets a vasectomy after surreptitiously freezing a sample of his sperm, which he then uses to impregnate his wife and sue the doctor for malpractice; or my idea about two german brothers who are both writers and share a bitter rivalry until one of them dies and leaves behind a will consisting of nearly a thousand handwritten pages of impenetrably dense, rambling prose punctuated by occasional moments of clarity.

Well, I'm finally in this year.

A story of black metal and the quavering fools it conquers.

You know, I have a few ideas, and one of them doesn't not have to do with metal.

Haw.

Suss that one out!!!!

Knoxville Kreator Kombo

I'm in.

Dueds ben-rad sow-ny

send me yr address

to

igotabeefpastry at gmail dot khaaannnnn

email: sent!
thanks: given! (repeatedly)

inbox: checked!

surely all NaNoWriMo books should be pulpy crap that read like the author was whacked on speed the whole time they were in production?

was also considering this approach, yes

Hopefully without actually taking speed?

there's more than one way to get it done

there is some story about Richard Allen once writing a novel in a week (or was it a weekend?).

Hopefully without actually taking speed?

-- Abbott, Friday, August 29, 2008 3:17 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

will probably just drink lots of caffeine/smoke lots of cigs.

drink lots of caffeine/smoke lots of cigs

A traditionalist!

also I turn 21 in october, so: booze?

also also I like weed, so: weed?

yeah weed really helps get things done

that to-do list not getting any shorter? try a fat bleezy

being high makes me, like, 70% more likely to do laundry

probably because it covers your wardrobe in 70% more swiss roll debris

Maybe if they had NaNoProPo, where you wrote a prose poem every day – that I could get into.)

-- Abbott, Thursday, August 28, 2008 5:10 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Link

All About PD30

bahahaha roxy

HOOS that is totally groovy & something I can get behind! I think I'll do it all by lonesome sans internettage tho. And I'm not expecting myself to revise a single one. HAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahaha I just made my own crappy rule.

Day 28:

My only wish
is to make love
to a swordfish

ts swordfish sex vs starfish sex

Woot just whipped one out right now. "Insects and You."

Poetry's EASY if you treat it like taking a dump!

by that reasoning a nanowrimo novel will be like dysentery

Haha that is the process I tried for NaNoWriMo ("I'll just shit it all out") but apparently my bowels hold only so many words. This metaphor is journeying into bad, mixed places.

back in black yall!

how much do you outline your novels in advance, veterans?

i know they advise against this, and i haven't written a thing down, but i've plotted things out in my head to a pretty obsessive degree

I've got a rough idea of the plot, and a semi-concrete idea of what's going to happen in each chapter, ie, "shady dude #1 blackmails X", etc.

good, i dont feel as bad then

I'm actually cheating majorly. Last year for NaSoAlMo 2007, I planned to write a double album based on a movie. I didn't finish it, but I did work out what the title of each track was going to be. I'm going to use those titles as inspiration for chapter headings for the novel, which will in turn serve as inspiration for what will happen in the chapters, in line with an outline that I've already come up with, centred around a lead character who never actually appears in the novel. So as I said, I'm cheating majorly...

Wait, how is that cheating?

Actually I've just had a look at their FAQ and it isn't!

Does that mean I can't use an outline or notes?

Outlines and plot notes are very much encouraged, and can be started months ahead of the actual novel-writing adventure. Previously written prose, though, is punishable by death.

oh wow, i thought they discouraged it for some reason

woah i thought this was some white power thing at a glance

how much do you outline your novels in advance, veterans?

I'm no veteran but I started mindmapping this week.

can we all be buddies on here?

i am here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/309522

add me

OK, I've set up an account and added you as a buddy. Doesn't look like we can set up a central ILXor buddy list on the NaNoWriMo site, so we'll all have to add each other individually, like handshaking at a Polish business meeting.

is that what it's like???

i added u back pal

Weirdly, I am 309252, add me &c.

(I am Vzzzbx btw)

OK, added you. BTW I am 311769

Yep :)

Ew I used a smiley.

You'll get used to it.

Am still thinking about a break this time around. (Quite honestly it'll depend whether I want to write 50,000 words out of sheer exuberance or sheer self-therapy, depending on what happens on the first Tuesday of the month.)

Oh, I forgot you were breaking!!!

u_u

Eh, I almost feel like Robert Smith saying each album will be the last album and then I end up doing it anyway! :-)

I'm trying to remember if I had a vague idea this time out.

First Tuesday of the month? Pay day?

You're in Australia so I forgive you. (Hint -- there's this little election...)

Oh. I still don't get it, but righto.

if ned wins his school trustee election, he is likely to be exuberant.

that sounds like a translation sentence in a foreign language instructional text

(Hint -- there's this little election...)

If Alice Cooper becomes president, you'll write a novel?

Does an obvious place to upload your novel suddenly appear in November? Apart from 'novel excerpt' (wtf is that) I can't see anything. The FAQ is horrible.

I think I should do one of these this year. Not sure if I'd do novel or album.

Really depends on whether I'm still in this contract come November (looking likely). In which case I might not have the time to do the latter but might do the former.

I almost never have a plotline when I start writing. I have characters in my head in advance, and just put them down and let them work out what they hell they are going to do. Only when I get to the end and look back does the story arc become clear - often amazingly clear in retrospect, with loads of foreshadowing. But get good characters and they write themselves.

Are you allowed to think of your characters beforehand?

You can do anything you like, as long as you don't start writing the actual novel. I've already got mindmaps up the goona.

not a single word of actual prose, but everything else is ok

I need to work up some characters. I've done this in the past, making notes for each character, but I've never gone as far as writing a "character diary" the way some actors do. How do people here go about it?

Oh, I don't ever do anything like that. I just kind of hold them all in my head.

I come up with a name, a bit of a back story. Let their personalities develop by thinking about them a lot, especially when I'm lying in bed, before I go to sleep at night, I try to imagine little dialogues with my characters, situations to put them in (even if they don't end up in the novel) and try to figure out how they'd behave.

Sometimes having a picture helps (I like to either draw them or clip pics out of magazines that I think they'd look like.)

Think about the people that have inspired them. (No characters are ever totally original - usually they are pieced together from bits and pieces of friends, people I know, etc.)

Jesus.

I've no idea how I'll get from these mindmaps to a freaking 50,000 word novel. I don't want it to be a quest but christ.

having managed to complete this, secret is never edit, never re-read until the month is up. srsly.

Awesome.

I wrote a ton of planning stuff last night. Feeling really inspired.

roxy I added u as a bud

thanks bro

also, I posted my preliminary story idea on the forum, and someone responded so positively that I was kind of suspicious -- like, there's no way this wasn't just a cleverly-disguised bot planted here to encourage me! but then it turned out to be a real person. hooray for motivation!

argh site relaunch, down for two weeks. We may have to re-add one another.

i upped a basic plot outline to my "excerpt" section, feel free to tell me what you think is retarded about it

also add me if you haven't

here i am: http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/309522

^written v. quickly, for example contains the word "seizure" twice in two sentences

oh man, I forgot about this coming so soon. On the one hand, my novel last year was AWFUL, but that makes me want to write another one in case it turns out any less humiliatingly, shamefully awful. Also, it made me feel accomplished. On the other hand, I need to get a job. And Nov. 1 is looking like a weekend when I travel to see friends and drink a lot, which is not a great way to get started.

will plot and plan and see if anything occurs, though. hmm.

I planned quite a bit of stuff out last night, but tonight I don't feel motivated to do anything. I think that this is going to be the real sticking point for me compared to NaSoAlMo - I mean, I can always cajole myself into getting on with some songwriting or recording or whatever, and then very quickly I start enjoying it and keep going. But with writing I have a real motivation problem. I've tried writing a novel four times: once in 1992, then in 1993, the third in 1997, and the fourth in 2002, and each time it's been a case of not writing enough. Any tricks anyone uses to get themselves to write?

In this case I think it's just spewing, really. No revision, no thinking, no reflection, just throwing down words at a cracking pace. (Easier said than done, I know.)

Pulling out.

I am really sad that I can't even try NaNoWriMo this time around. ;_;

Massive OT xpost to gbx - I'm not a student at the U, I'm at St. Kate's, BUT we do a lot of our clinicals through the University, so it's possible I might run into you. You can recognize my class by our awful white scrub pants paired with royal blue scrub tops.

I feel pretty ready.

So good luck to whoever's doing this. (Definitely sitting it out this time.)

I feel nowhere near ready (some work over-ran and my head feels like a watermelon full of mucus), but I'm going to start tomorrow.

Attention wri-ers, place your gongs at the ready. At my signal... Get it on. Bang a gong. Get it on.

Bah, not going to happen at the moment.

I got past page two before one a.m. this morning. I feel somewhat proud of myself, although this will evaporate if I don't get any more done today.

I like Abbott's novel, upthread.

i have yet to get any more done, today.

is anyone else going yet?

starting now. i dont get starting at midnight.

aw thx thomp

I would do this if I could ever think of a thing.

(xxpost) I've finished Chapter 1. 1400 words, so technically I'm already lagging! Is anyone else having trouble getting through to the NaNo website? Keeps on timing out for me.

I'm just finishing my first paragraph. Chill. You have all day to get 1700 words.

I stalled out when I had to come up with a name for the guy my main character is engaged in a conversation with as the book opens.

no, I did not do very much planning for this, why do you ask?

The number of characters in my novel that have the first name of someone I know and the surname of an author of a book on the shelf next to me... But you're writing this in a wordprocessor? Why not pick any name, and then if you think of something better later, do a search & replace.

Name the protaganist Pickles McGee. You will not regret this later. I guarantee it.

You can easily squeeze 3000 words out of that name.

Like squeezing vinegar out of a pickle.

So how was everybody's first day? I was hungover and feeling shitty from Halloween, but I still got my scheduled word count in. And y'all?

Neither of my naNoWriMo "buddies" have logged a single word, apparently. For shame.

And what's with this blue box at the upper right corner of the NaNo screen that says "Word Count" and displays 3 zeros no matter what you try to do?

Cause that's a little discouraging.

I would be logging 2280 words from yesterday, if I could get into the website! That "000 Update" button doesn't do anything for me either.

Chill. You have all day to get 1700 words.

Thanks for the advice. Somehow I'd convinced myself that I had to write one day's quota of words in one single session, and consequently ended up stressing myself out. But I relaxed a bit and got it done in two sessions.

I think that "Vzzzbk" is Autumn Almanac? He said upthread that he was pulling out. Anyone else on ILX doing NaNo?

I did my quota for yesterday in like FIVE sessions, haw. I'm considering that a special case cause I was mega-hungover from Halloween. Planning to do the other days in single sessions if possible.

I'm doing nanowrimo! my first time!

I am at 4,100+ as of last night. I am hoping to get to at least 6,000 today.

I'm unemployed at the moment, but there is a definite prospect on the horizon, so my strategy is to sock a lot of words away this week so that i have breathing room later on the month. My partner and dog are away for the week, too, so I have the house to myself. So far, so good - I want at least 20,000 by the end of the week.

3,002 words, and just now managing to stop procrastinating (ahem) and sit down for a session today. I suppose technically I only have to manage 334.

4,397, which means I am behind already. Are other people still going?

trucking along, in fact taking the night off probably

still going here, over 7,200 now. Should be past 8,000 by the end of the day, if not further. for 3 days, that's a good start!

writing at work is proving "tough"

ok so my protagonist shares a full name with the president of the north american baptist association, apparently

OK, I've passed the 10,000 word mark. Not ever going back and reading what I've already written is U&K. Some of the writing is so bad that I'm laughing out loud...

Norman and Hackett got into the lift and ascended upwards.

I sat down on November 1st with a hangover, wrote 400 words, and then got a call asking me if I could fly to Barcelona the next day.

I have not written much since then.

are you ernest hemingway?

the first two words of my story are made-up multisyllabic adverbs so I'm going with no

chalkingly...

fritterably...

he strolled.

Greysuitedly, blankstarefully,

(have now returned home and located half-full bottle of Wild Turkey 101, lighter, smokes; initiating phase 2)

So, how is this going for everyone? I am about two and a half thousand words behind schedule due to an ear infection.

im a couple thousand behind too, due to getting p'ed the f o

I'm the whole month behind due to originally deciding my demanding new position at work required so much focus as to render nanowrimo superfluous, and then last week resigning from that job and frantically looking for the next one.

Good luck on the job hunt. If things don't work out, you could always drown your sorrow in a sea of 50,000 words.

TO DO:
1) get job caretaking out of season hotel in the middle of nowhere
2) move there with wife and kid
3) write novel

1.5) have kid

I'm about 7000 words behind schedule. No problem.

I'm about 2200 words behind. Hang on... (types on knackered old manual typewriter)

All work and no play makes snoball a dull boy.
All work and no play makes snoball a dull boy.
All work and no play makes snoball a dull boy.
All work and no play makes snoball a dull boy.
<snip>
All work and no play makes snoball a dull boy.

Yeah, that ought to do it.

So what happened for everyone else?

I ended up working on another election campaign and got nothing done for about 2 weeks. at the final week i was at 18,000 words, way way behind. But I got onto a pace of about 5,000 words per day and finished the morning of the 29th. hooray! I've got way more to do, so I'll get back to writing through the rest of December, on it goes.

i did about half of it and then started having crises and quit, but then i returned and finished after the dec. 1 mark

editing now

TO DO:
1) get job caretaking out of season hotel in the middle of nowhere
2) move there with wife and kid
3) write novel

― snoball, Monday, November 17, 2008 6:37 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

this is kind of genius

you get the joke right hoos

I'm stuck at about ~35K. I'm planning to get the first draft finished before Christmas.

I finished. You can read my unedited first draft in serial form here: http://inuitbikini.blogspot.com/search/label/Furry%20Folk

Edited some today, and holy lol. I had this as a sentence:

"Here Judith complete dossier on."

WOWOWOWOWOWOW @ writing on 3rd shift

"It was his oatmeal-like qualities that enabled her to find his presence digestible."

lol

that's fukkin great!!

in a sense

deleted with gusto

I'm in HOOS's camp. That "oatmeal-like" quote was a great sentence - unless you were striving for an atmosphere of bejeweled elegance.

Thirded - that oatmeal line is pretty good.
As for "Here Judith complete dossier on", my first draft is full of stuff where I was tired and was bashing in anything.
Example:

The McHendrys sat on the side of the docks, watching as their luxury yacht slowly began to sink beneath the waves. By now, river police had arrived.

^^^ that's supposed to be a third of a chapter, but I was so ZZZZZZZZ at that time of night that I couldn't write any more.

"Here Judith complete dossier on": my only explanation for this is that I had some idea and was using this as a (really quickly typed) placeholder for it, and then never returned to fill it back in. And now I can't remember what it means!

The whole confusing mess was compounded because I had a planning document, and a separate chapter summary document, when clearly they should have been just one single file!

xpost: I assumed it meant "note to self: insert complete dossier on Judith here"?

Yeah, that's kinda what I was trying to explain there. It was just lodged into a paragraph like it was a normal sentence, though!

Anyone else starting up for 2009? Would start a new thread but if it is just me, I won't.

I got about 4,000 words further on my project since last November so I'm just continuing the same thing. This breaks the rule, I know, but oh well. This is for me and only me and it is a successful writing strategy, so here I go again.

I'm having a go for the first time. If I make it halfway I'll call it a rousing success.

A bunch of people in my town got together at a diner tonight so we could all start writing together. I got 2000+ words done and some nice fellow writer picked up my tab. Success!

so far the meets in my region are proving uninspiring. i've always found this kind of a problem tbh, i've only ever met two people i've really gotten along with as a result of nanowrimo

(577 words)

i have like 120 pages of final papers to write in the next 6 weeks so no nanowrimo for me this year. boooooo.

oh shit i thought the first was tomorrow. ok, after dinner i will start.

ok, so we need a new thread!

I just re-read my first draft and it is straight up garbage.

I just re-re-read my first draft and it reads like it was written by someone who'd never even visited Planet Earth nor interacted with a single human being, like, ever.

This project is a crock of shite but I tried it anyway