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Sometimes Quantity Is More Important Than Quality

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20:38 / 26.10.04

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Register and submit your novel by midnight, November 30th. The word count will be verified.

I'm going to try this, just so I can say I've written a novel. The main thing that has kept me from writing is that I know there's a period where one writes crap, and I'm too nervous or vain to go through that period. I might never emerge, if I do go in.

Thus, with the support of loads of other crap writers and possibly a few decent ones, I am going to try to write about 1700 words a day. I intend to cheat as much as possible (try to rework old material, start before November 1). It might not help.

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:19 / 27.10.04

I've tried before, and failed.

I might try again.

Whisky Priestess

11:07 / 27.10.04

Yeah, me too. I need something to kick my arse so hard it will coast through November just on momentum, though. I haven't done any proper writing for nigh on a year and it's beginning to really get to me. It's the lack of fucking privacy that's the killer, of course.

Flyboy - when and where do you reckon you're going to get a chance to do it? At work?

Last time I did a concentrated effort of novel-writing I did 10,000 words a (5-day) week - but that's still only half a novel in a month. Say your goal is 80,000 words (min novel length) you'd have to do 20,000 words a week or 2666 words a day, every day. Say you need one day off a week, aim for 3077 words/day. The actual daily tally doesn't matter so much as the weekly one - if you write 5000 words one day, you can ease up the next. Fuck the Muse, follow the calculator ... voila, success!

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:29 / 27.10.04

Fortunately, I become unemployed again very soon. Yes, there will hopefully be some work for me in November, but I may also have more time on my hands than I'm used to...

12:11 / 27.10.04

It's that time of year again - would like to give it a whirl this time... but Knights of the Old Republic is sooooo much fun and my laptop is needing to be fixed... We shall see...

13:11 / 27.10.04

I'm doing it this year, I decided about 5 minutes ago. I've been meaning to churn out a hackish Dan Brown* style occult thriller for the past couple of months and this seems like the right excuse. Having just scraped through 2 years ago (see here) I dare say I've got a fair crack at it. I've decided to keep it a secret from non-Barbelith types though. I don't know why.

*Meaning no disrespect to Dan Brown, or his well-thumbed copy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

13:48 / 27.10.04

*Meaning no disrespect to Dan Brown, or his well-thumbed copy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. or indeed his equally well thumbed copy of the Templar Revelation or all the other books he liberally rips off...

18:21 / 27.10.04

I don't expect to have any time for revisions whatsoever. If my school experiences (so many years ago) mean anything, then I will write a quarter of this in the first week of November, and half in the last week, and a quarter the night before it's due. The only thing I can think of that's emotionally potent enough to get me to write that much would be the course of my last few breakups. This will produce the most boring novel imaginable, but this is a Mount Everest thing. It's there, isn't it, and that's reason enough.

18:32 / 27.10.04

I don't expect to have any time for revisions whatsoever.

That's exactly the point. You're writing a first draft, here.

I am, after a year off, back in. My third attempt, this, after failures in 2001 and 2002. This time I will finish, oh yes I will. For I have a cunning plan.

Do you wish to hear my cunning plan? Of course you do.

My cunning plan is this: I'm going to write my goddam ass off and not stop until I am through.

It's pretty basic, as cunning plans go, but it's one I've never tried before.

Whisky Priestess

20:54 / 27.10.04

That's pretty cunning. Even cunninger if you're gainfully employed by day. Best plan is to tell all your friends (and work) you've moved abroad or have been committed to a secure asylum.

00:16 / 28.10.04

Let me share with you a few cunning plans of my own:

Proposed chapters:
1. Worst breakup -- ever
2. I hate my job
3. My rich fantasy life
4. BEER!
5.

The contest calls for 50k words. 10k per chapter, and I'm golden. Endings are tough though, very very tough. I'm considering ripping off my favorite Granta, The Family: They Fuck You Up.

Resources:
Email correspondence with former lovers
Youthful journals
Notebooks of favorite quotes
The scrap paper in my car and my closet, the back sides of most of which is covered with notes like, FETAL POULTRY: BAND NAME??

00:19 / 28.10.04

though really, ch 4 would be a shameless ripoff of at-swim-two-birds

11:38 / 28.10.04

3. my rich fantasy life

See, that's my whole novel, right there.

12:52 / 28.10.04

I tried this two years ago and I don't even think I broke 10,000 words. I'm sure there's a thread on here about it.

But, if Dwight is doing it....

Dwight, gimme idea.

14:02 / 28.10.04

3rd year for me. I succeeded both other times and hope to again this year.

15:02 / 28.10.04

David "Papi" Ortiz, here are my suggestions for your novel:

1. A Korean engineer becomes a misanthropic recluse after years of living in New York city. He decides to join a monastery in Spain, not through any interest in religion, but because he wants to take a vow of silence, and make cheese. The cows and goats he tends become very attached to him. There are rumors that he has unorthodox relations with a particular goat with bewitching green eyes. The other monks cannot turn him out because he makes a cheese so divine it has brought an entire village back to the lord.

2. A young Puerto Rican girl in New Jersey has an unusual gift for mathematics. Her talents are discovered one day when her mother, a paralegal, takes her to work. Her mother's boss is a grasping, frantic attorney whose firm defends environmental offenders. The evil boss has one soft spot: his elderly father, a retired professor who spends most of his days napping on a sofa in the back of the mailroom. The little girl wanders back there and while the old man tries out a few puzzles to amuse her, he is astonished to find that the child can grasp sophisticated concepts and perform complicated calculations at an astonishing speed.

3. A baseball team breaks an eighty-year losing streak after a desperate player strikes a deal with a midget with unusual powers. When he comes home one night to find the midget energetically bedding his young wife, he flies into a rage and kills him, stuffing the small body in the extra fridge in the garage. The team's fortunes take a turn for the worse, and the player reveals his crime to his teammates. They decide their only hope is to try to reanimate the corpse. On a stormy night, gathered in a dusty attic, they succeed ... sort of.

4. A happy-go-lucky trio of college students on a bender wanders into the murky confines of a bar above a Bulgarian cultural center. Little did they suspect what sort of dark rewards their boozy collegiate hijinks would yield. Years later, only one student remains, but his scars tell him the story of his lost comrades every time he looks in the mirror.

15:15 / 28.10.04

Interestingly, the dud in that batch, 2, is the only one not based on real life. 1 is a friend of mine that Qrommykr3000 has met but you have not, and 3 & 4 do not, I believe, require explanation.

17:23 / 28.10.04

There seems to be an art alternative to NaNoWriMo:
NaNoMangO

20:14 / 28.10.04

Qromm, that looks like it's right up your ... alley.

11:14 / 29.10.04

Here's the thing: NaNoMangO looks suspiciously like, oh, what an actual working comics artist does every single month.

So to my mind it kind of misses the point of the NaNoWriMo ethos, which is to aim for an unreasonably accelerated creative cycle, far beyond that of most folks doing this fo a living. (Yes, I know that the pulp dudes could bash out a book in a weekend. Shut up.)

A far closer equivalent, I think, is the 24 Hour Comic challenge, created by Scott McCloud.

13:08 / 29.10.04

I think for NaNoMangO you are supposed to say how many pages you are aiming for, and yes, 30 doesn't sound like much, but you could decide to do a lot more. The 24 Hour thing might be more manic, but it doesn't last for the whole of November like NaNoWriMo does, and the point of NaNoMangO seems to be to coincide with NaNoWriMo?

15:14 / 29.10.04

I actually thought the point of NaNoWriMo was to get going those people who've always wanted to write, but never done it because the thought of taking a year or so to write a proper novel was daunting.

22:50 / 29.10.04

Notes:

1. Collect a series of writing exercises for use on days when I get stuck.
2. Write out a list of characters.
3. Write out a series of scenes or incidents and assign characters to each one.
4. Make a CD to go with the novel.

Sean the frumious Bandersnatch

11:28 / 30.10.04

I'd like to give this a go, since I've nothing else to do (I'm not in school and currently unemployed). But aargh! the dreaded feeling of sitting down to write a first chapter...

13:00 / 30.10.04

Must try this. Signed up, first timer. Some good tips from nightclub dwight, thank you. I am very nervous. I suppose the novel making sense is important to me, just not sure if I can achieve that.

Must try this.

16:32 / 30.10.04

In the absence of anything much that could be seriously described as a life at the moment, and in an effort to apply some discipline where there hasn't been any for quite some time now, and as a break I suppose from the other nonsense, I think I'll give this a whirl...

21:09 / 31.10.04

Everyone ready? Got all your ducks in a row? Or are you going in duckless? Or without any kind of wildfowl at all? I've prepped a few characters, written a few chapter ideas, but am pretty much going into this blind. Years of research be jiggered, I'm going to get what I need when I need it and if I can't find it I'm going to make it up. Did you know you can make a working electromagnet with peanut butter, a lemon and a turkey thermometer? No? That's because I just made it up! Can you believe that? Straight from the blue!

23:26 / 31.10.04

[Don Fontaine voice] MacGYVERRRRRRR! [/Don Fontaine voice]

14:44 / 01.11.04

You had to bring a lemon into it, didn't you, Bizunth.

15:48 / 01.11.04

So how's it going so far ? I've managed about 500 hundred words of fairly interesting stuff, but there's no way round it, I'm going to have to speed up.

Basically,

MUST... RESIST... URGE... TO... EDIT... TEXT.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

16:41 / 01.11.04

My third year, and I'm doing a sequel to the first year's novel, so as to slam them together and make them something publishable when it is all done.

Of course, Barbelith hates me because I have succeeded every year...and I was pretty surprised when I found out that they don't even get 10% of people who register to put in the 50K mark.

2509 words so far this morning, and I'll prolly write some more when I get home tonight. Not bad for being at work all day today.

17:27 / 01.11.04

Of course Barbelith hates me... 2509 words this morning...

Well I don't know about this board as a whole, but personally, anyway...

18:00 / 01.11.04

4,116, and I haven't even broken a sweat.

19:28 / 01.11.04

I'm at about 220. I hate all of you.

19:30 / 01.11.04

Blood is coming out of my pores. I'm going back and changing all the can'ts to can nots.

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