Anybody doing Nanowrimo this November? For anyone who isn't as nerdy as they should be, Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month. People sign up to it (probably when drunk) and spend the whole of November writing a 50,000 word story. Well, either that or they spend it crying and tearing their hair out screaming "WHY WON'T THE IDEAS COME?" I've grown my hair especially for the event.
It's taken me two years to write a 200,000 word novel and will probably take me another two years to write the next. No chance I'm going to churn out 50,000 words in a month, it'd be utter shit....
It's one of those rare cases where quantity>quality. To accomplish the goal, you'd need to write around 1667 words per day, every day of November. Consider it a kick-start and support group for those of us who say "I have an idea and want to write a novel...one day". I'm planning on writing whatever the hell I can (got the basic plot and history worked out), then putting it through a metric fuckton of drafting. Even if it just sits on my hard drive and gets a bit of interest from my grandkids a few decades down the line, it's better than it sitting in my head and being lost when whatever brain-eating disease I get kicks in. Also, it kind of means I can settle a bet with a friend...
Fun fun. A few other things in my life got in the way and I got nowhere near the target (got about a fifth of the way), but I got some of my ideas down. Also, Miles is a fucking awesome name.
Miles is. Sadly, in the programme I watched today, he was a wicked, cursed little boy and died. Although I didn't actually see the death. I heard about this before, never quite got what it was. I want to do this now, but I figure I'll wait till next november.
I doubt the result of me writing that much in a month would have been good, though those kinds of exercises can be beneficial in other ways than simply producing a great novel. When I was doing the young writer's program with the Royal Court they made us write the 1st draughts of our plays in a single weekend, and then we spent several weeks polishing and altering them, it was a good experience, and got some fairly decent writing out of it in the end
I started and failed It was wayyy to hard for me! Might try again next year cause i'll know how much work i'll have to put it :| lol Good luck to all who are still going!!
