Terminalcoffee discussion

It's my first time and I'm completely freaked about it. (In good and bad ways) What the heck do I write about? Can I write every day without serious brain crampage? What if I don't finish? What if I DO?!!

Is anyone else participating, or have in the past? What are your tips & tricks for starting it and keeping it going?

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, here's the official website for National Novel Writing Month.

It's 1,667 words a day. If you can keep on track with that, it's in the bag.

The trick, I think, is to write without editing. This is coming from a girl who has started NaNoWriMo like 3 times. :)

I haven't decided if I want to try it or not. I'd like to, but I don't know if I would have the motivation or if my writing would just suck because of my mental state. I've heard that it can be easier if you plot things first, thus, if you get stuck and don't know the next jump, you already have the idea written out. Or you can skip around, and on one day you don't want to write about that day's scene/that plot twist, you can skip ahead and write the scene you're interested in writing.

I have a few online friends who have finished 50,000 words in under 7 days. I have online friends who "win" it every single year they participate. One of the friends who can nail it down in less than a week will spend an entire year editing, though, and for her it's a motivational challenge to put her idea down on paper. For the friends who win every single year, they tend... to get a little snotty about it. It's definitely an accomplishment of will, and writing, but writing a novel does not a writer make! (One of them told me that since I had tried doing it three times and couldn't finish, that I should stop going to school for Writing because clearly "I don't have it in me." *snorts*)

I'd love to do a novel collection of short stories, or a memoir but I think the short stories would be a better challenge right now, since once I finish one, I can actually submit it for publication somewhere.

If I do it this year, I may type mine on the word processor, not allowing me to edit. :)

I guess I'm glad I don't have friends that have done it, because I wouldn't want that kind of pressure. Yea, it's an accomplishment... but, as you said, it doesn't mean you are a good writer just because you can pound out 50k words in a few days. I don't think that's the spirit of it at all.

My goal is to actually see if I can write nearly every day... to make ideas come flying out of my head that I've only sketched out briefly. It's not supposed to be good the first pass, that's what my little NaNoWriMo kit says (my awesome sister bought it for me for my bday). It's to help you get over your own stumbling blocks and get the ideas on paper, the Muse flowing, and then later on you can work it if it turns out viable. Maybe a big part of it is discover what your stumbling blocks are in the course of it, helping you to overcome them so you can write better the rest of the year. Hmmm... have to think on that.

I would think that a bunch of short stories, if that is more your thing, would work too. Maybe they just need to have a theme of some kind tying them together. Many of the Greats started off with short stories, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker. Ignore your friends, forget about past failures, maybe you need to figure out how you need to do it to make it work for you? It's worth a try. :)

go sher go! i will be your NaNoWriMo cheerleader. partly cause i like you and partly cause it sounds like an indian pow-wow deal (mostly cause i like you)

Aw thanks Kev. I'll take all the cheerleading I can get. But, you have to come up with some pretty imaginative rhymes for Sher and write and novel, maybe throwing in one for orange now & then. ;)

Cosmic Sher wrote: "I guess I'm glad I don't have friends that have done it, because I wouldn't want that kind of pressure. Yea, it's an accomplishment... but, as you said, it doesn't mean you are a good writer just b..."

That's the real challenge/goal of the event, I think: to write every day and to really PUSH yourself to sit down and carve out time for writing. If you go in with that attitude, even if you don't finish, you've gained a lot of insight and are still very much a winner. :)

Yup, I agree. I have never done anything like this ever. I think the most I've written was in college for a creative writing class, maybe 30 pages? And, it was crap. LOL I know I've gotten a lot better with my writing since then, but for me this is huge.

No pressure... ha! I'll be really happy if I get half of it done and it comes out intelligable.

So, you gonna do it with me Angie? I won't pressure you, I won't scold, and I may not even make it to the end. That's gotta make you feel better. :)

ok, i am interested. where can i find out the rules and who-ha on this deal?

I'm planning on doing NaNoWriMo again this year. After some false starts in 06 and 07, I dove in last year and finished three days ahead of time. It felt good to finish but I quickly fell out of habit of writing.

Tricks:
1. Keep pushing ahead. No one's expecting an award-winning read.
2. Write more than 1667 words per day if you can. There will be days when something prevents you from writing.
3. Once you get a week into NaNoWriMo and have an idea where the story is going, write an outline. It will help you to keep from getting stuck. But don't be afraid to change it if need be.
4. Don't get discouraged if you get stuck. There are thousands of other people in the same boat. Read for a little while and come back fresh.
5. Keep pushing ahead. I know I mentioned this already but it's so important I'm mentioning it again.

That's all I've got. NaNoWriMo is definitely a learning experience.

I signed up last year, got all excited about it, then forgot to do the whole writing part of it. DOH! I intended to try it again just because I want a first draft of something in the can, and now that I see that several of you are also signed up it motivates me even more. We can have a little friendly competition/support group!

Angie: You're friend with the snotty comment must not know that it took Danielewski close to ten years to write 'House of Leaves' and I recently read that William Gass wrote 'The Tunnel' off an on over a period of twenty-four years(!!).

I've thought about it, but the fact that so many of you are participating, I'm encouraged to do the same. So, yeah, I'll toss my hat in the ring.

Yea! I'm so excited that other people will be doing it too. Kevin, you should give it a try. I love your off-the-hook writing and who knows where it will take you? The url is: http://www.nanowrimo.org

Misha, what is the url of your NaNo page? I can't seem to find you by just searching your username. Mine is: www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/537115 under the username sherart. Anyone feel free to add me if you're using the website.

Dan, those are great tips. I only have a vague idea of what I'm going to write, but I keep hearing (from this thread as well) that it's a good thing. I also like the fact that in the official novel-writing kit Rule # 10 forbids the author from doing dishes, scrubbing bathrooms, running errands or mopping. I'm gonna milk this for all its worth! hehehehe

Alright Misha, I'm in. I just added you to my buddy list. If anyone else wants to friend up, my username is tadpole316.

im doin' it, actually learned about goodreads from someone on the nano boards i friended.. my name on the nano site is oukvekpwv..

Misha, I love the book cover! I'm dorky enough to appreciate it, and may just do the same. :)

Okay, I've added tadpole, Misha and David.

Well crap, this means I really have to do this now, huh? I guess this is the good kind of peer pressure.

Are any of you going to be posting your novel-in-progress online or posting exerpts?

I think I might do it. I'm just wondering if I should publish the novel-in-progress and allow people to comment on it, to keep me going, or if I should not publish it at all because it's going to be crap.

I don't think that you should worry about it being crap, Angie. We're all presumably doing first drafts so I imagine that we will all produce some rather stilted prose this time around.

Hey Misha, once we discussed the whole posting online thing and you mentioned that it could cause some logistical snafus if one tried to formally publish the work in question later on as posting online is considered "publishing." If you have the time and the inclination you might want to go over that again here. Most likely any postings that I do will consist of single sentences or paragraphs that i'm surprised that I came up with.

Yo Larry! Where you at dawg? I think that you should join us, as I know that you are batting around some cool book ideas in that head of yours.

Yeah... I'm aware of the publishing game. Some publishers take it to mean even things posted under a friends-lock, which is probably what I would do: post it somewhere and only allow certain people to request to read it. (I can't imagine my mother reading it!) I would probably also disable comments OR just not have them sent to my e-mail and force myself not to read them until I finish, letting people know they can tell me what they like/dislike in each thing and I'll read them only after I finish it.

I've had to request friends to take down some of my work when I've gone to submit them for publication. It kinda sucks but I understand the need-- I only wish the publishing places who are really strict would lighten up a little, as I wouldn't mind deleting the original publication online and providing a link to the publication (if it were online-based, of course).

Ooh Laaaaaarrryyy.... come join the fun with us!
Or at least come join us in tearing our hair, breaking pencils with our teeth, and generally cursing the very air we breathe when we can't think of what to write about. :)

One of us! One of us!

I'm feeling a bit Borg-like in this. You will be assimilated!

Kay, I'm done with my geeky Trek references now.

Angie wrote: "Are any of you going to be posting your novel-in-progress online or posting exerpts?

I think I might do it. I'm just wondering if I should publish the novel-in-progress and allow people to comment..."

I posted each chapter as I finished on my Goodreads profile last year. It motivated me to keep going since I had some co-workers pushing me. "Hurry up! I need something to read during lunch!"

My NaNo id is akaGunslinger, btw.

I'm doing it again. I did it last year - finished and everything! It was a thrilling experience. I've always had confidence in my writing, but I'd never had the stamina to finish a long piece. That particular finished product will never see the light of day, though I'm revising it slowly. Most of it will be scrap, but now I know I can do it.
It was fun. I liked the camaraderie and the progress bar and the daily goals. As you've already said, it's worth it just for creating/forcing the habit of writing every day.
I'm going to have a rough month of it this time, since I'll have family visiting the first weekend (last year the 10000 I wrote in the first weekend went a long way to helping me finish), two 10 hour drives, a pony to take care of, and a trip on December 1st that I'll probably want to pack for ahead of time. I'm giving it a go anyway.

Cosmic Sher wrote: "It's my first time and I'm completely freaked about it. (In good and bad ways) What the heck do I write about? Can I write every day without serious brain crampage? What if I don't finish? What if ..."

I forgot to mention that last year everyone who finished got a code that would get them a free copy of their book printed by Createspace. The prospect of having a book with your name on the spine on your bookshelf is good motivation.

ok, i am in. just checked out the web site. so do we not try to think of a plot or characters or anything prior to Nov. 1 ???

From the website:
Outlines and plot notes are very much encouraged, and can be started months ahead of the actual novel-writing adventure. Previously written prose, though, is punishable by death.

Yeah,at least some planning is good. An idea, for example. I have a friend who did a full plot outline, but I just went in knowing my idea and my main characters.

Sarah Pi wrote: "Yeah,at least some planning is good. An idea, for example. I have a friend who did a full plot outline, but I just went in knowing my idea and my main characters.
"

I'm going in a lot more prepared this year. Last year, all I had at the beginning was a setting and a couple characters.

all i have is a first line:

It was a dark and stormy night....

Wasn't it Raymond Chandler who said something to the effect of whenever you get stuck have a guy with a gun come into the room?

Is the NaNo site acting goofy for anyone else this morning?

tadpole wrote: "Wasn't it Raymond Chandler who said something to the effect of whenever you get stuck have a guy with a gun come into the room?

Is the NaNo site acting goofy for anyone else this morning?"

I didn't notice any goofiness but it's definitely slower than usual.

OK, i'm in now. I think it was an id10t error...

ive only been on it a little bit this morning but so far so good but theres times where it does act up some..

PS as were talking about advice and mottos for writing a nano ive been reading a few books about writing and of course reading the boards, my favorite saying so far to put me in a good frame of mind is "the first draft is shit" - Hemingway .. it takes away the fear of being perfect the first time for me, which has always been a big thing for me when writing, i'd always edit every sentence a billion times before writing the next.. its just about getting it out there, then you could work with it after you have something to work with.. i hope i could stop editing enough to just get it out there..

I think computers create a tendency to revise and revise without moving forward -- a continual first draft.

The nice thing about NaNoWriMo (for me at least) is it creates a real first draft, with a clear vision of what goes where, even if there are still things to fill in.

Angie, my hat's off to ya if your chapters are shiny enough to show to people as you go along. I could never ever ever do that.

Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants was a NaNoWriMo book. I find that pretty inspiring, since I loved that book.

I was getting a bunch of error messages and sent it along and they sent me back a response saying that every time they send a reminder e-mail they get a corresponding surge of people signing up and crashing the site.

we should have a way to submit small excepts so we can check out what each other is doing along the way WITHOUT bothering those on TC who don't give a rip about this

You can start a TC-spinoff NaNoWriMo group if you want, Kevin. I'll join. I probably won't spend a lot of time on here in November though, and I definitely won't be submitting excerpts...but I'm happy to cheer others on.

Here's my NaNoWriMo profile - Dabi71.

Gus: nice synopses/profile =D

Thanks for sharing Gus.

Sarah Pi: I write like Sherwood Anderson-- my finished stories don't really look all that much different from the first drafts, which can be a good thing, and is often a very terrible thing. I've also been keeping an online journal since 2003, and anyone who does that tends to have a decent out-the-shoot writing ability. I mean, I write everyday as it is, but it's usually about what is happening in my life, my emotional state, what I ate for lunch... and not fiction.

The hardest thing for me is going to be motivation, as well as getting past the depressive mental blocks I have. I have all the ideas in the world, but I tend to brood over them for years before even attempting to let them out.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/537933 is me.

And Misha: I'm writing something similar to yours. I totally think you can do it! I don't know if I'm going to try to make an interconnected novel out of my works, or say that a short story collection = "lengthy work of fiction." I'm really quite fascinated with the short story/novel idea and have read three books that follow that principle this year alone (Winesburg, Ohio; The Martian Chronicles; Miles From Nowhere). So I'm excited to see what you come up with!

You move fast Angie, I keep looking behind me, but never see you. :-).

:D I'm just that good.

::bows to the master::

How can you bow to her when she's still behind you?

Misha wrote: "Angie, my project is basically a character study with no plot. Or with lots of mini-plots, I should say."

Are you trying to follow a character through different periods of his/her life, or something else?

That sounds awesome! :)

Sarah Pi wrote: "How can you bow to her when she's still behind you?"

Have I ever told you before that I'm a contortionist?

Good luck Misha.

Jim wrote: "Sarah Pi wrote: "How can you bow to her when she's still behind you?"

Have I ever told you before that I'm a contortionist?"
I've heard of people bending over backwards to be helpful. Maybe this is like that?