NaNoWriMo 2010

[DavidRM]

I'm doing well, so far. I've hit my goal of 2K words every day, so my month-to-date total is a smidge over 6K words.

-David

[BookCat]

I'm being a tortoise and pacing myself. I'm at 5,607. I'll try and get ahead a bit but friends have decided that now's the time to invite me shopping etc! Have told them about NaNo, but it's still happening. They're also making comments about wanting to read it when it's done when I'm trying to write a sh*t first draft for fun; nothing like piling pressure on. Have decided not to let them see it. Will make lots of excuses about being out of printing ink!
Must not have 2hr phone calls with friends I've told I can't meet for city shop trawling!

[GeoffC]

I was well ahead before yesterday. Spent the morning at the dentist having a check up and unexpected filling !
Came back and re-wrote half of what I'd done !
How crazy is that !

As crazy as a loon with its tail on fire trying to run rapidly across a frozen tub of ice cream whilst juggling three babes in arms, five carrots on a stick, three bats in the belfry and, to top it all, blindfolded with an uncertain plot leading every way but to the end......

slainte !

(nothing a morning coffee and an afternoon snack on chocolate won't cure - to be sure ....)

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I finally realized I just can't do it. For one thing, I still have almost a dozen books to rewrite and get up onto the new site. For another thing, my schedule as it looks over the next few weeks just won't permit a regular pace of writing... I've often been going for days without getting near my work, as much as I would like it to be done.

So, again this yer, I'm stepping aside, and will watch from the sidelines (when I can) as others pursue their muses through the November marathon. Good luck, all!

[TM98]

Unbelievably, I just signed up myself! Writing a novel has been something I've always dreamed of doing but never started. I know it's a late start, but since they said they're looking for quantity and not quality I figured why not. I can always use it as a springboard later

[lene1949]

Originally Posted by TM98

Unbelievably, I just signed up myself! Writing a novel has been something I've always dreamed of doing but never started. I know it's a late start, but since they said they're looking for quantity and not quality I figured why not. I can always use it as a springboard later

Good for you...

[crich70]

I just got a email through NaNoWriMo that was sent out to the writers. Mercedes Lackey was the guest writer. Don't recall offhand if I've read any of her work or not but I have heard of her certainly.

Dear Writer,

I can't think of anything more intimidating than a blank page. Especially the first blank page of a new project. Now, after twenty-mumble years of writing, I have a lot of things to get me past that, one of which is to use the screenplay writing technique of the late Blake Snyder---you can find all of that in his book, Save the Cat! And on the website dedicated to his techniques.

And these things work really, really well if you already have the basic plot idea and the characters and world in your head.

But what if you don't? What if all you have is a plot?

This is where I am going to deviate from practically anyone you have ever heard from, and tell you this: try writing fanfiction.

For those of you who don't know what fanfiction is, it's pretty simple, and I would bet that you have vaguely thought about doing something like it without ever realizing it. It goes like this: you see a movie or read a book or even play a game, something you really love, but when you're done the first thing that pops into your head is "But what if they had done---" or "And then what happened?" or "Gee if there had been a character like this---"

Fanfiction is taking an existing world, and possibly even some of the characters, and writing your own stories in it. And it is a lot less intimidating than making everything else up for yourself (especially when you're talking about fantasy, science fiction, or horror). Now I am not advocating that you do this with the idea of selling the thing, (though more on that later), because that's called plagiarism and it's illegal. And there are writers and publishing companies that don't allow fanfiction to be published in any form, even on the web, so you have to be very careful about that.

But for purposes of practice? It's fun, it's going to give you a giant kick-start, and you would be surprised at how many professionals started out that way (and still do it!). Well just as an example, go have a look at all the Star Trek, Star Wars, and game-based books there are out there. If you reduce things to principles, most of those are fanfiction---fanfiction commissioned by and given the blessing of the publisher, and produced by professionals, yes, but still fanfiction.

And there are those of us professionals that still write fanfiction for fun (although I doubt there are very few who will be as up-front about it as I am). Sometimes it's because someone else's creation got us by the throat and our storytelling demon won't let us go until we get our version down on paper or in pixels. Sometimes it's because it's not the genre we make our bread and butter at. Me, for instance; I got involved with a small group of folks in the City of Heroes superhero MMORPG (www.cityofheroes.com) and we were all driven to write fiction about the characters we played. I did that for a couple of years until an even smaller group of us decided to take those characters, create a new setting for them, and see if we could write some real books around them. That became The Secret World Chronicle, which is in podcast form at the website above, and will be a series of books coming from Baen starting in March. So you can see that what sta rts out as fanfiction can, once you get your practice in, turn into a real, marketable project!

But the point is you have to get that practice in first---and NaNoWriMo is one of the best forums for that, just as fanfiction can be one of many platforms for you to launch from. If that's the route you want to go, bravo! Let your fanfic flag fly! You’ll be following in the footsteps of a lot of greats, like Marion Zimmer Bradley (who wrote Tolkien fanfic)!

Now get out there and conquer that blank page!


Mercedes Lackey

[GeoffC]

I don't know why but I find these 'little so-called-pep-talks' a little annoying ....

[kennyc]

Go Geoff Go! ....oh.....wait....oops....Sorry!

[GeoffC]

[crich70]

Well it is interesting (IMO) that a professional author would take the time to write such a note to those of us who are trying to write a book for NaNo anyway.

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

I think Jasper fforde has in a previous NaNo

[GeoffC]

Don't get me wrong, it's good of them to help out.

[BookCat]

But I always expect them to be more helpful and interesting than they are

[Greenkeeper]

I've been hitting it pretty hard since Nov 2nd (started a day late) and I've gotten only 5,946 words by the official site count. Compared to my usual careful edit-as-I-go approach I'm zooming, but at this rate I'll never hit 50K by the end of the month. Oh well, the dialogue may suck and the plot is a little shaky but I'm spilling out ideas on the page like you wouldn't believe! When all this is done maybe I'll be halfway through a new novel that I can spend the next 6 months polishing to get a real gem out of it.

Writing a dark YA fantasy, btw. Lots of fun