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[Malt_Hitman]

NaNoWriMo 2016!

It’s that time of year again!  Delve once more into National Novel Writing Month once again for the Xth time or for the first time!

What’s NaNo?

For the uninitiated, National Novel Writing Month is the challenge to write 50,000 words in the span of a single month.  Yep, that’s it.  It doesn’t have to be good, it doesn’t have to make sense.  It just has to be 50,000 words at least.  You can do longer if you want (overachiever) but you’re not getting anything extra for it.  At least not from me, that’s for sure.

Why start now?

Procrastination!  You can’t truly procrastinate until you’ve officially started.  Want to plan?  Well you’ve got half a month to say that you’ll do it tomorrow!  Want to pants?  You’ve still got half a month to sit around and think about thinking about it tomorrow.  So whether you’re going to post-to-write, post-to-watch, or simply post-to-say-I’d-really-like-to-do-this-but-I-won’t-have-the-time then you’ve come to the write thread!

Do I get anything if I finish?

You might.  Not from me though.  In past years certain NaNo sponsors have offered discounts on software, free trials, and other digital thingys.  Plus, other people will congratulate you on writing 50k words in a month.  Plus you’ll have written 50,000 words and have won and it feels good to win.

Other questions about NaNo?

If you want to know more you can go and post on their forums.  After you create an account you can even earn stinkin’ badges for stuff like buddying up, posting on the forums, and joining your local community.  So join up, announce your novel to the world, and then make yourself look better by comparison to those who haven’t!  Or something like that.

Other linky bits:

NaNo Countdown:  http://nanocountdown.com/

Older Threads: 2015  2014  2013  2012

[Skynet]

Quick question. Would participation in the spin-off competition NaNoGenMo (National Novel Generation Month) also count as on-topic?

Because I'm participating in that competition.

I'm actually interested in that question. On one hand, NaNoWriMo cares about the writing of 50,000 words, and not the origin of those words. There's also no need to worry about the quality of the novel in question. So technically, NaNoGenMo should qualify as on-topic. On the other hand, while computer-generated novels are interesting to read and may even be decent, the amount of actual "content" in a computer-generated novel is lower than that of a human-generated novel. Reading a few chapters get you a good sense of what the computer-generated novel is about, while you're expected to read the whole human-generated novel. (I'm trying to fix that this year by curating a human-generated corpus and limiting the computer's involvement to the arrangement of that corpus...emphasis on trying though...no guarantees on success).

[Malt_Hitman]

Consider yourself welcome here.  I don’t know how much help you’ll get out of this thread given the technical nature of coding but I’m certainly interested in how you’ll go about generating a 50,000 word novel using code.

It was the best of times, it was the Segmentation Fault (core dumped)

[Caz]

Quick question. Would participation in the spin-off competition NaNoGenMo (National Novel Generation Month) also count as on-topic?

Because I'm participating in that competition.

I'm actually interested in that question. On one hand, NaNoWriMo cares about the writing of 50,000 words, and not the origin of those words. There's also no need to worry about the quality of the novel in question. So technically, NaNoGenMo should qualify as on-topic. On the other hand, while computer-generated novels are interesting to read and may even be decent, the amount of actual "content" in a computer-generated novel is lower than that of a human-generated novel. Reading a few chapters get you a good sense of what the computer-generated novel is about, while you're expected to read the whole human-generated novel. (I'm trying to fix that this year by curating a human-generated corpus and limiting the computer's involvement to the arrangement of that corpus...emphasis on trying though...no guarantees on success).

It'd probably fall under the heading of being a Nano Rebel. Would be interesting to see this, the only outcome I can think of is some kinda hideous word salad.




So I'm doing character spreadsheets and need to do a summary plan thing to figure out wtf to write. I thought of about 11 concurrent plots so I shouldn't run out of material this year.

Story get: Bandits of the Mazewoods!

[Emma]

I tried last year and quit around the 10,000 word mark. I'm going to try again but actually plan something this time around since that might help me not dawdle too much.

[Arx]

I was going to do it this year. This year was gonna be the year. Exams were planned to finish on the ninth of November, leaving me with plenty of time.

Haha no. They're now finishing on the 27th. RIP NaNo dreams. ;_;7

[Eagleon]

I'll try again this year, came very close last - 39k words, still picking away at it. Are second drafts of previous NaNo failures ok? I haven't decided on a new story yet, and it'd feel good to finish/improve that one.

[Darkmere]

Honestly the higher-ups don't really care, but doing an edit is gonna be much harder since only the words you actually write in November count.

But you could also post "shit" 50,000 times and the validator would accept it, so that's also an option.

[Baffler]

I stalled out on this last year because I didn't really know where to take the story past ~4k words. Maybe now that I'm starting thinking about it sooner and got some idea of what to expect I'll do better.

[Sirus]

I've got concepts in mind for two different apocalyptic scenarios. Might as well give this a shot once more, right?

Now that have a better schedule this should be easier to stick to. Might even break the five-digit mark for the first time.

[Skynet]

The computer requires corpus (written text). Without a corpus, a computer cannot write, in the same way that a human cannot write without having ideas. Before I can do anything, I need to collect a corpus...and to limit the possibility of the machine writing silliness, I am going to have to hand-curate this corpus. My goal is to create a 50,000-word corpus by November 1st, by copying and pasting from public domain resources. That way, I can focus on manipulating the corpus for the rest of this month. (I'm also compiling a file that will provide citations for each of the public domain works that I'm using.)

Currently, I got over 4000 words in the corpus...and according to wordcounttools.com, it will take someone 21 minutes to read through all of it. (For comparison's sake, a 50,000 word novel should take 250 minutes to read.)

Copying and pasting other people's work is difficult, because you have to read it to see whether it's good or not, and then have to change up a few words to ensure that it stays thematic with all the other works you copied and pasted from. It's probably slightly easier than having to write the thing from scratch. There has been a rich artistic tradition of humans using other people's words (appropriation art) and as long as I provide proper citation and use public domain works, my computer should be able to avoid charges of plagiarism and copyright infringement.

[Caz]

Prepping shit. Trying to finish a char sheet, plot synopsis, chapter outline and some sorta geography map before NaNo starts.

[Digital Hellhound]

I doubt I'll do NaNo, but I'll definitely be writing through November - so if you get a chat going like in years past, I'd love to hang around there.

[TheBiggerFish]

Who knows, I might actually try writing something.

[Caz]

I doubt I'll do NaNo, but I'll definitely be writing through November - so if you get a chat going like in years past, I'd love to hang around there.

IIRC the last one was \nano on darkmyst or freenode or something. Also I can't seem to make a hash sign with this keyboard. Imo joining a chat or board is essential for winning - word wars are a great tool.

11 days now until the beginning. How are you guys preparing? Are you? And what are you writing?