NaNoWriMo 2012

Oh, wow. It's already three days into October, and there's still no NaNo thread? What devilry is this?

Sooo for once I guess this discussion is not too horrifyingly early, then! For those of you who are confused, NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month, is a month-long event in which thousands upon thousands of crazy people each endeavor to write a 50,000-word novel over the course of November. You start on November 1st and see how far you can get by November 30th (writing around 1667 words per day will get you to 50K by that date, but you can always finish sooner or write something even longer!). It doesn't matter whether the writing is flawless, either—the point of the whole shebang is just to write, to get yourself putting words on paper/a word processor even though you're always telling yourself that you can't do it or that you don't have time, to make time for yourself and turn off your inner editor in spite of all the excuses. Even if you churn out 50,000 words of crap (and while a lot of it will be crap, oftentimes it's really not as bad as you think!), you'll likely find that you still had fun and felt accomplished doing it.

...besides, there's always National Novel Editing Month in January (or whenever!)—just make sure you get a foundation by actually writing something, and you can go back and edit it until it's solid later!

Who's participating? Who already has ideas for the story they're going to write, and how much planning have you done for it? Are we gonna have another big word war this year? :P

I may or may not be trying this year; depends on how much homework I have :U I've got the start of a plot in any case! It'll potentially involve alternate realities and the French Revolution.

Yes, absolutely. Every year. I haven't won since 2009 though. Maybe that'll change this year.

I miiiight give it a try again, even though November is Essay Month. Besides, it's always fun to do the word war on here~

I'm not going to be actually participating, but I thought of a great idea for a story that I can actually write and I'm going to using NaNoWriMo as a motivator.

I'm going to try but given my procrastination habits I'll probably end up somewhere around 7500 words.

So is the word war here or in its own thread this year?

Always in for NaNo. It would be against my better judgement, but I don't have any better judgement, so that's cool.

I've actually been going to a writing group at the local library that's going to be doing write-ins, so hopefully I'll be able to kind of cram most of my writing into that time and not have it spill over into all the other crap I have to do to any great degree (thus defeating the purpose, really, but oh well). Unfortunately, if they're having their write-ins at the same time they did last year, that'll be 9:00 on Saturdays, so I could end up with an even less coherent NaNo than usual.

Going to try original fiction again this year, and posting it as I go along like I did before. Hopefully this works out better than it did last year.

I have actually put thought into participating, or at least using the deadlines for myself. Never done it in the past, but it would give me a push to practice my writing. I write so little that it is hard for me to finish, or divide into paragraphs, or just not ramble. Be better for me in the long run, I figure.

Birdy said:

So is the word war here or in its own thread this year?

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Que? Maybe I missed something because I didn't do NaNo last year (even though I did follow the thread, iirc...?), but when was it ever in its own thread? Plan was for it to be in this thread, but if there's some logistical reason to separate it out then I guess we can???

I have nooooo idea what I'm doing for NaNoWriMo this year, haha.

I always at least start NaNoWriMo, but I only finished once, in '09. I was 12 at the time and only did a novel of 25,000 (the Junior NaNoWriMo allows you to set a custom word limit beforehand). I've been so bored with school lately I'll probably try again, but knowing my luck lately I'll inevitably get overwhelmed with homework in November.

no no no no no no no no no no no no I don't have the time

but my project this year is currently under construction. might be part of my dolonverse or it might be a standalone I've been working on that's two parts political intrigue to one part flying elemental warrior lady does cool stuff.

Last year was a blast for me, so of course I'll be doing this again.

I hate to say it, but I'm not doing NaNo this year. (I had a good run though)

I want to work on my Skyrim fanfic, so I'm doing a writing blitz instead of NaNo. My readers will love this. I mean I can still do the 50k words, but since I'll be working off something that I acutally really care about and already have more than 50k written for... yeah, best not go too fast.

Could I still be in the Word War?

I don't see why not, as long as you don't include pre-written stuff...

Of course, then I would've won before it even started. TDC has about 56k.

I really want to complete this, but I always seem to get distracted or just lose motivation halfway through. It's pretty frustrating, but I'm gonna give it another shot anyway.

I will be participating!

At least, I'll be attempting to write 50k words. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to officially do NaNoWriMo and start something new, or keep going on the story I've been focusing most on lately.

Here's my more in-depth thought process about this: the way I understand it, the reason you're supposed to start something new for NaNo is so you don't get caught up trying to make it perfect because you've been working with these characters and this plot and everything for a while; if you start something new, it doesn't matter so much if those ideas get executed poorly because they've never been executed at all. (At least, that's how I think of NaNo - maybe you think of it differently.)

But if I can get over that with my characters and plot and settings that I've been working on for a while now, then I should be able to do anything with my story. It might just be the push I've needed.

What do you guys think? Is it still officially participating if you're continuing a story (as long as you don't count the previous words)?

Is it still officially participating if you're continuing a story (as long as you don't count the previous words)?

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Yes. NaNo is, ultimately, a personal challenge. It's about just getting stuff out there, overcoming your fears, and growing your own abilities. If you're committed to participating, then you're "officially" participating, whether you're actually going for 50,000 words or only 30,000, whether you're writing fanfiction or a collection of essays, and so on. While most people do the standard 50,000 words-from-nothing approach, the spirit of the program is such that as long as you're stretching your limits and producing somehow, you're participating.

And seriously, it's not like anyone's going to come along and be like, "What is this? I see you aren't writing a novel/aren't going for 50k/aren't starting from scratch, hmmmm? How dare you??" There are no NaNo police. Participate however you want to.