NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month

Found it!

 

Yes, I think you can start a new group on your own as long as it isn't anything pornographic. They seem to be pretty relaxed over at NaNoWriMo.

 

How in the world can anyone write a novel in a month? I started working on mine in 1999, and only on July 27 of this year did it go to press. I wasn't able to begin actually writing until the fall of 2002, and in this past May was when the copyediting process began. Page production alone took a month.

 

It's more like "Write 50,000 words in a month". Novel, in this case, means "work equal or greater than the minimum length of a novel".

 

So good to see the group idea used. I didn't have time during work to post it.

 

I just signed up--heading over to the TFN thread now. Thanks GAV!

 

Realize first of all, that quality is not an issue. Just write. You have all the time you want afterwards to go back, adjust, add scenes, etc. The idea is to just get the whole thing down, bad spelling, missing scenes, strange minor charactors that become major (and vice versa) - but to just get it all down. It's not going to be published long after that - this is a really rough first draft. And it's FUN! Because you can say "well, that doesn't work, so... bring on the ninjas!" Although I've yet to have to do that.... They say it's a great plot booster (and might have helped the first one I did).

That's it. it's not a novel ready for publication, it's just a novel. I've done two, and loved every minute of it.

Just Jill

 

I think that's a problem for some people- me included. I'm going to have to work on just writing and saying 'to hell with the editing' during November. But once you get past that hurdle of that way of thinking, NaNo is brilliant.

 

I think that's a challenge for many of us. I tend to edit as I go along, refining as much as I can. I have to get into the mind set of "I'm just going to vomit a bunch of words on the screen and see what happens" instead.

 

^Exactly. I'll often notice a mistake in the last paragraph and then go back and fix it. Or I'll sit for five minutes, trying to think of the right word to use. Not going to be able to do that come November...

You know, the 50,000 words really isn't that bad, though. That's like 1,666.66 words a day- which is about three pages in Arial, point 11 in MSWord. Thinking of it like that, it's definitely doable.

Just...have...to...stick...with...it...

But hey, with two threads to support each other- we can do this.

 

Typing Speed / Time To Make Daily Word Quota, rounded up

100 wpm / 17 minutes
80 wpm / 21 minutes
60 wpm / 28 minutes
40 wpm / 42 minutes
20 wpm / 1 hour 24 minutes

The 50,000 in a month sounds scarier than it is.

 

Nice. Now if only we could think at the speed we type! I figured out a way to get online here at work!

 

The 50,000 in a month sounds scarier than it is.

Exactly. It sounds so much, but it really isn't. You just have to keep on remembering that and not let yourself get intimidated.

 

The good thing about doing your original fiction is that you don't really have any pre-assumed givens. Of course, this brings the challenge of having to balance plot, character, and your environment.

 

Well, my original is based pretty much on earth, in modern day society. Just with some fantasy mixed in. And the plot is tied closely to the character. So that shouldn't be that hard...

But I think my readers are going to kill me, if I only concentrate on NaNo and not my fan fic as well...

There's a question- how do you balance NaNo and updating your normal WIP fics?

 

I've never done it before, but I assume I'll be doing Nano during work, when I have snippets of time, and fanfic after work. Or the other way around.

 

I'm lucky in that I have a job where I can often write during work hours (if the guys around here shut up long enough for me to be able to concentrate!).

And I type 60 wpm, so that means I only need 28 minutes per day. Yeah, right.

 

I type 75, so probably around 23 a day, but I'm such a fusspot that it'll take me hours to get 1,000.

 

I don't know how fast I type. I never really learned proper typing. I tried taking a class in school and learning on my own at home, but nothing really helped. I learned from writing all the time- it eventually got to the point where I knew where the keys were without looking and stuff. And I don't use my entire hand to type, only the first three-four fingers of each hand. Rarely use my pinkies unless it's for Shift or something.

So, yeah, have never timed myself or anything...

 

All this talk of typing speed is making me scared *goes to hide and cry*
Other than elementary school typing classes, I'm pretty inexperienced.
Freak-out! Ah!

 

Yeah, i had elementary classes, but I've just typed and typed until I got fast.

 

I'm hoping to make up that missed time between now and back then in a month of speed writing. Highschool had me stuck with anal paper formatting I hardly had the time to spare for doing some practiced typing.

 

Katie, if you just practice, you should get better. Try not to look when you're typing your posts and type some fan fic or something. *grins* Classes don't really do a thing in my opinion- they're one of the most useless things out there.

 

I could not agree more. Useless they are.

 

Oh, that's easy!

Finish the fic before you post it.

Just Jill