I first heard about NaNoWriMo from Kristin in July. After looking into it, reading some of the experiences (themselves novel-worthy) by previous participants, and floating the idea by my spouse without incurring a veto, I’ve signed up.
The challenge is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel from scratch between November 1 – November 30, 2004. To be this prolific, I will have to forgo the editing. (Perpetual editing is a problem I have while blogging that, paradoxically, reduces the quality and quantity of what I want to write.)
I will not be posting the content to my blog for a couple of reasons. First, a novel written in such a short time by someone who’s never, ever written a novel before will certainly have a high craptastic quotient. It would be cruel and unusual punishment to inflict that upon you all. Second, knowing my writing was available for any real-time scrutiny (including my spouse’s) would certainly throw me back into perpetual editing mode, which would defeat the purpose of doing this literary marathon.
I will definitely write about the experience, but be aware that I can get very weird when I’m under a lot of duress.
So in the four weeks preceding NaNoWriMo, I’ve read Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem! and have found a few useful links:
- Rob’s TGIFriday’s prank — Rob cracks me up.
- 37 plots — a plot generator of sorts.
- Uber-information, useful if you need to know what happened in a particular year.
- Character sheets — I don’t know how much I’ll do pre-planning on this.
- Sci-fi name generator, in case I start calling everyone “Dude.”
Edit: 11/2/2004 — since people are looking for this, here is Erik Benson’s Worksheet.
very interesting… I’m going to have to check it out.
Thinking about it…although I am tempted to cheat with a short story that I had worked on a few years ago.
I think in the true spirit of the project, you cannot slow down on your blogging. “Even if you have 1,000,000, having 1,000,001 is not going to make a difference.” 🙂
Correction: You do get to weed out enough things you can live without to leave yourself 2 hours of writing time each day… Read, Lisa… 🙂
> you cannot slow down on your blogging
You’re right, of course. It’ll be like how I used to always start a long, hairy novel (Lonesome Dove, In Cold Blood, Atlas Shrugged or Red Storm Rising) during finals week.
The big challenge will be weeding out the 2 to 2 1/2 hours of time a day. I started working through the list of things I will deprioritize for time: cutting back on blogshares, not cooking ornate meals, reading email only twice a day, and working in the morning should help.
I’m sure I have about 2 hours of websurfing I can cut out, if not more. I’m such a junkie.
My blogsite finally started trading on Blogshares. I was pretty excited to see that.
I’m anxious, by the way, to get to the part where I figure out what the heck I will be writing about. 🙂 The NPNP book is hilarious!
p.s. break out the Easy Mac 🙂
After much “flip-flopping” (can I say that here), I thought I’d give it a shot. I just started cycling this summer and never thought I’d go over 50-miles in a day. Kitsap Color Classic was a great ride. Blogging? Forget about it. Well, NaNoWriMo will be another challenge for 2004. I gotta get all this pent up what-have-ya’s out before the baby in December. See you at the finish.
I have left a message for you on my blog. 🙂
http://brittysmom.blogdrive.com/archive/85.html