NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month 2019

PolarityMan

I know there's a few writers about the place..anyone doing NaNoWriMo this year? I "won" the last 2 years* and hope to finish my first book this year (bloody better be 150k words as a first novel is apparently ambitious).

If anyone's up for it then add me as a friend:

https://www.nanowrimo.org/participants/polarityman

Always looking for peeps to word sprint with.

*Officially winning means completing 50k words during November

thecolourbox

Looks like brilliant fun, I'd love to have gotten into writing when I was in more formative years when I had more to say but struggle finishing my own sentences nowadays let alone sufficient engaging words to write a whole story. Tremendous respect for those who do it, even if only for the dedication to finish something. Good on you

guitargeek62

Do you think someone could write a better name for it?

boogieman

guitargeek62 said:

Do you think someone could write a better name for it?

Agreed, it is a bit of a crap name. I should start writing again, but I get too distracted these d.......squirrel!!! 

Grunfeld

I had a go at Nano once but bailed early after about 12k words.  It was utter garbage too so nothing lost to the world of literature.  I've always fancied another stab at it so I'm bookmarking this thread and going to have a think...

PolarityMan

Apparently that's normal before the first edit

Grunfeld

PolarityMan said:

...hope to finish my first book this year (bloody better be 150k words as a first novel is apparently ambitious).

That's big!

Or rather, I thought NaNo... was a short novel, a novella at 50k.

A regular novel was about 90k

So 150k seems epic!  Have I got that wrong?

I mainly want to produce a non-fiction book, about 60k.  (Obviously non-fiction isn't a nano).

Nano wasn't on my radar but...

PolarityMan

Well i have 100k words and its not done..not sure if it will really need another 50k and i suspect an edit will end up tightening up some bit so it will prob end up a longish but not crazy long novel in the end

PolarityMan

So starts tomorrow...might be posting a bit less round here for a month!

Grunfeld

Good luck!

This won't be my Nano year. Still love the idea of these things though. 

And I am starting on another project which I'm going to do instead; still the one month thing.  Basically, getting rid of words... selling or re-cycling the thousands of books I no longer have a use for. 

PolarityMan

Made it!  3rd year running

https://i.imgur.com/fgYpixR.png

Grunfeld

Well done!

How did you find it? 

A grind?  Easy?  Writing like overflow or feeling inspired?

PolarityMan

Grunfeld said:

Well done!

How did you find it? 

A grind?  Easy?  Writing like overflow or feeling inspired?

Like most things if you manage to establish the habit it's easier. I had 3 days that I didn't write at all around the middle of the month and the few days following that definitely felt like a grind.

I also didnt really help myself in terms of planning. There's basically 2 schools of thought on writing, in Nano the community refers to them as "plotting" and "pantsing". One is when you have your full outline done before you start your first draft. The other is developing your characters and letting the story go where your characters take it. 

I kinda fell somewhere in between those and ended up with a very broad outline along with a few key scenes. The problem is that I started with those key scenes first including the ending and finished those 3 years ago. The problem has been working out how to connect those pivotal events with a coherent narrative. When I'm searching around for direction writing is a grind, when I finally hit something that feels like it is moving in the right direction it flows much better.

It also doesn't help that there by design aren't many characters in my book, only 3 viewpoint characters....2 of which are the same person. I also tried to be ambitions and write something that isn't a hero's journey.

So in short, parts did feel like a grind but in retrospect I think a lot of that was through my own fault.