Jul 28 2009
NaNoWriMo 2009
I’m debating right now if I want to participate in this years NaNoWriMo which is coming up fast — this November. I’ve participated the last five years, and won twice: last year and 2006. The first year I had an excuse that I found out about the challenge halfway through the month of November and so was far behind before I even began, other years I made good counts at least 10’000 words. The year before last we found out in the middle of the month that we were going to have to move so I stalled at 16’000 words to focus on finding a place to live. We weren’t lucky enough to be able to get an Outer Banks foreclosures but we got a very nice property with a few quirks, and last year fully moved in I was able to actually rattle out around 55’000 words and win the challenge.
NaNoWriMo’s challenge is that you write 50’000 words before the end of the month, which averages to about 1670 per day. The idea is that you take a new story and just roll with the punches, writing and writing as much as you can each day without editing. So, it helps if you do a lot of preparatory work in the months leading up, deciding on your subject and perhaps outlining a few characters and a direction for the plot so that on November 1st you can get a good start out the gate to give yourself the ability to slack off if you get stuck later on.
Then once you’ve got your huge word count and won NaNo then you can go back and revise the story and in theory get it ready to potentially be published or just sit back happy in the knowledge that you just wrote more than you’ve ever written before.
As I say I’m a bit reluctant to participate this year. Writing has been coming very difficult to me lately, but I should instead look at this as an opportunity to actually get something written. Last year I wrote the most I’d written all year while writing for NaNoWriMo.
I say go for it. This may help unstall you.
And if nothing, you can fall on the NaNo classics. Zombiers… or smut lol
LOL. Good idea!
Sorry I didn’t respond sooner. For some reason I’m not getting comments emailed to me from here. I hope I’ve fixed it.
I actually came up with something that has potential the other night, BUT I can’t find my old notes. I was going to reactivate a story idea I’d had ages ago, but the folder with that title on is empty in my file box ;_; ah, well, maybe a total reboot is a good idea.