NaNoWriMo Escape Pod - It's over and we rocked the house!

Since this is a support thread, I'll suggest an excercise that we do in APLAC. Some of you may have already heard of it and done it; it's called freewriting.

The concept is simple. Pick a specific number of minutes, whatever you want (could be five, could be ten, could be twenty or thirty), and write nonstop fro that long...without stopping for anything. You pen CANNOT detach itself from your paper. If you can't think of anything to write, then write your name, or your address, or maybe "I love Star Wars" over and over.

What good is this? Well, first of all, it will help get you ready for NaNoWriMo. Second, it will help turn off your internal editor. And third: the purpose of this excercise is to pull forgotten moments or thoughts from the recesses of your mind. It's an excercise for your imagination. Plot bunnies are 99.9% garaunteed.

Just a note: after one page, your hand starts to cramp up, so I don't reccommend you go for a half hour. Five to ten minutes is what we do in class.

 

Okay, call me crazy..

I just signed up to do this totally crazy thing...LOL

I'm not sure I'll ever reach 50k but I'm going to try...

Now darn it if all those random plot bunnies will behave and produce something for me to write.


FL

 

Yeah, darkwriter, that principle was how the 10-minute challenge here was started.

 

In high school, my senior English teacher had a similar exercise. She called it "morning papers." We would write in class, but the original exercise was that you get up in the morning and write for about 10 minutes, whatever comes to mind. Of course no one took them seriously. The crackpot things people would say in their papers, I think the woman was really worried about our mental stability.

 

Some kids in my class write, "I wonder if she's reading this..."

In the McGraw-Hill book, there's an essay on freewriting. I was so excited because last year I thought my creative writing teacher had just made it up.

 

LOL, Jade. The choral conducting grad students at BYU have to do 3 pages of morning papers every day and the conductor of Women's Chorus (my choir) wants us to do the same.

 

Why do you have to write papers in choir?

 

Not to turn in, but to focus our thoughts. Bear in mind, this is the same lady who makes all 173 of us do yoga at the beginning of rehearsal.

 

Well, I'm doing NaNo for my third year. It's historical fantasy set during the early 1700s.

As for the Internal Editor problem, NaNoWriMo is an excuse to just sit down and write. It's designed as an exercise to get words on the page into an editable draft. It does take a little bit getting used to, as a lot of people have a hard time ignoring problems in their works. But the goal is quantity, not quality. Quality can be fixed.

Free writing exercises are a lot of fun, and a great way to work out stories and plots.

 

oqidaun: Music, ooh. There was one time music I was listening to completely changed the tone and course of the story I was writing. So I'm not sure whether to hate music for doing that or love it for inspiring me.

Ish: LOL! I'm glad you liked the second idea best too, otherwise, things might've been a bit awkward. j/k

Gah, I can't turn off my internal editor. Even after I've sent stuff to my betas, I'm still changing stuff afterwards, continually nitpicking. Sometimes I wish I could turn it off.

Darkwriter: I loooove doing stream of consciousness so much. If I ever have writer's block, writing nonstop where I can't stop writing/typing overcomes it, every time. But then there's still the problem of when I'm done... I have to go back and edit it all. LOL.

Yay for more people signing up! Flowerlady, awesome to see you here!

-Mia

 

Yes, well, Mia, that's what makes you an awesome writer.

 

welcome to all the crazy new faces! wow folks, we've got a total of 21 people signed up for this insanity already! i'm impressed and thrilled to see you all taking the plunge and also a bit relieved that i'm not alone!

here's a couple questions for those who've done NaNo before:

After November, do you find that the experience has changed the way you write? are you more willing to let ideas flow? are you more inclined to take on a larger story? do vignettes feel less satisfying? or is your brain just a steaming pile of bantha dung and you can't think of ever writing another thing again?

 

Hello people!

I?m really psyched to see this thread up. It?s really going to be fun.

I?ve not quite decided what I will write for NaNo ? original fiction or fan fiction, and I?ll wait until then to sign up. Meanwhile, here?s a fun link NaNo-ites will find very useful:

http://www.zokutou.co.uk/wordmeter/

It's a barometer of your words written/50,000 limit mark.

 

When I got off nanowrimo, it took a couple of days for me to recuperate. I just wanted to pass out and crash my hard drive, but since it wasn't my hard drive that I was using to write, I couldn't. Vignettes were actually my stress relief afterwards.

 

In '04, NaNo was all about "getting it out of my system." I had a story I wanted to write, but I kept going on and on with research and never actually WRITING the damned thing. NaNoWriMo forced me to write and write and write, and if I didn't know something and couldn't Google it, it was improv time. Then, it was done, and I was okay with it, and I knew I could go back any time I wanted to and edit. I felt free to move on to other projects and not get hung up in months of research on just one, because it was written, errors and all - out of my head and on paper.

 

After NaNo, I've found that I'm more willing to let stories take control rather than fumble along the path I've chosen for them. I'm also writing longer fanfic stories (novellas) as well as vignettes.

Writing immediatly after NaNo- "how much further do I have on the story until it's finished" is the question I ask myself. Either that or shove the words away and start studying for exams.

 

Oooh, I hadn't realized it was Nano time again. I signed up for it last year, but my story never really got off the ground. I think I had about... one paragraph maybe?

But I'm hoping this year will be different. I'm going with original fiction, and the plot line is a bit more developed than my previous one. *sighs* I'm in the process of world and universe building and I never realized how difficult it could be, especially when the world is set in a not too far away future. Yikes!

As for the internal editor - no matter how much I try, it's always on. I can't get away from it and that's what gets me into trouble with deadlines and things like that.

 

Ish? Thanks, but, .

LadyLunas brought up something I've been struggling with recently - sometimes, stories want to take different paths than the one I wanted or planned, and sometimes that's hard for me to follow. I don't want to waste the original outline or something, I guess. But trying to write for NaNo.... it does help with letting go of that.

I'm getting way excited, and I can't choose just one thing to work on. I want to work on everything!

-Mia

 

holy cow!

i can't believe how many fanfic folks have signed up for the insanity!
if you're not on the list in the first post, drop me a line and i'll get you up there!

thanks to the veterans for your input, it's very enlightening and reasurring to know that your brains will actually recover!

 

I have always let a story find its own path. I have outlined a few stories but I never follow the outline any way. I rather just have a general idea as to where I want a story to go and let the story write itself. I've written all of novels this way and some of my best plot bunnies and/or plot devises have come from doing this.

One example is the plot bunny that gave birth to 14 yr old Stefen (Boaden) Durran in my short story turned 58000 word novel Second Chance. The idea of creating an illegitimate son for Kyp Durron just wouldn't let me go and so I gave into it. And am so glad that I did. That story arc took my original idea that didn't really have that great of a resolution and gave it new life. In fact, he was so well recieved by everyone who read the story that they want a sequel about him and his love interest, Jysella Horn.

I think I'll approach NaNo much as I do my other writing--with a general idea, some research to flesh out a few of my plot bunnies and not much more.

I'm thinking of doing an orginal story, a historical romance set durring the American Civil War and on a plantation near Charlestown, SC...

FL

 

it's friday the 13th! you know what that means?

no, it doesn't mean we're all out of luck.
it means there's only 18 more days until NaNoWriMo starts!

give us an update! how's your planning going?
are your characters itching to run amok?
how are you going to handle your WIPs here on the boards?
is Obi-Wan going to miss you while you're gone? (okay, maybe that's just for me. )

 

is Obi-Wan going to miss you while you're gone? (okay, maybe that's just for me.

Nah. I'll be looking after him!

*cheers on all the NaNo victims!*

You're all braver than me taking this on, but hats off to you!

I'm going to enjoy hearing about how you all get on!

 

I went to the first regional meeting yesterday and we all gave an update on our plots, character development, etc. I'm having great fun/travail working out the basic criminal elements' contribution to the eventual plot.

 

I've got a list of major characters and a few things about them, a vague idea of where the plot is headed with a handful of clear plot points/scenes along the way, and some subplotting. That's pretty much it...