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[Telgin]

NaNoWriMo nearly caught me by surprise this year so I didn't start this as early as I did the last few times I remembered to create the thread, but here we go.  A little over a week remains before it starts so that's time to think about potential topics.

In case you aren't familiar with NaNoWriMo:

What is NaNoWriMo?
NaNoWriMo is an informal challenge to anyone who wants to write.  The idea is simple: you simply have to write 50,000 words of a story during the month of November.  You don't necessarily have to finish the story, so long as you write that many words, and it doesn't matter what the story is.  This isn't going to be published anywhere without you doing it, so it can be fanfiction for all that the challenge cares.

The point is to just get words down.  A lot of writers agree that this is the hard part, and you can easily get stuck trying to edit or world build.  From experience, I can say that it's very true, and anyone who wants to give this a shot is strongly encouraged to not fret about the quality of your work and just focus on getting a first draft down.  I did last year and hate how it turned out, but I'm still glad I did it since it puts me in a better place to try it this year.

Is this a competition?
Not really.  You're only challenging yourself.  You can certainly compare your progress to others, but it's informal and you won't get anything but a warm, fuzzy feeling for beating someone else.

Is my writing safe?
Sure.  You don't have to publish anything you write, and nanowrimo.org just has a tool for inputting word counts.  They have a word count utility as well, which supposedly scrambles the text so that nobody could possibly steal it, but in seriousness there's no reason to be afraid of whatever you're writing getting out in the wild without you doing it.

Can I win anything?
Only personal satisfaction, which is a surprisingly good thing in my experience.  Supposedly you can get some discounts on software or other sponsored goodies if you "win" by hitting 50K words, but I don't actually know how this works.

Can't I just cheat and enter whatever I want in the word count tool then?
Sure, but you're only cheating yourself in the end.  The whole point is to make something of your own and prove to yourself that you can do it.

Official website:
https://nanowrimo.org/

Links to previous years:
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009


I'm in a better mental state this year than last year so I've spent a bit of time considering what I'll write this time.  While I originally planned to once again take a crack at my Ashen Scales setting that consists of sapient fantasy dragons in an undead apocalypse, this year I decided to try to change pace a bit and salvage a video game plot I was working on instead.

The gist of the idea would be a near future fantasy universe of anthropomorphic mythological creatures where a sociopathic dragon has taken control of a medical alchemical device that transforms people into mind controlled robotic slaves in her bid to conquer the world, while a ragtag group of rebels try to defeat her.  You get exactly 2 brownie points if you can guess which setting this is inspired by and essentially a spiritual successor to.

[Telgin]

It's go time now on the east coast.  Bay12 is pretty deserted these days so I may end up just talking to myself, but I'll probably post weekly updates as I go regardless.

[delphonso]

I'll be reading. I did one of these back in University and tried again about 3 years ago.

Of course - life has decided Novembers are for tragedies and miracles and not for writing.

[Caz]

First time I won't be doing it in a decade or so. Good luck to all though.

[MaxTheFox]

The important plans for my hard-SF novel are nearly done. GO GO GO GO

[Telgin]

It's been a bit over a week now, and I'm up to about 16,000 words, which is above the 15,000 word checkpoint for today.  Not my best start, but I'm getting there.  One year I was averaging about 2,000 words a day at the beginning, but so far I've only managed about 1,782 words per day on average.  Above the minimum but I like to get buffer room in during the first week when motivation is stronger.

I've found my writing lately to be a bit... bland, and that's sapping some motivation.  I was expecting this project to be easier than it is, with more interesting characters, but the accelerated timeframe hasn't given me a lot of time to really think about events and how to flesh the characters out.  Funnily enough, one of the villains has the most character development so far I think.

Well, after NaNoWriMo is done I think I'm going to go back to working on another writing project that I've been percolating in the back of my head for years now.  That one, I think, already has more foundation for the characters so maybe it'll be easier to write.

[MaxTheFox]

I won't finish in time and I know it.

[Telgin]

If you started within the last few days then that would make it a lot harder to finish on time.  A couple of days only adds like 100 words per day to the requirement, but doing 50,000 in 20 days means 2,500 per day.  That's a lot.

Some days I've struggled to hit even the 1,667 point per day, and I'm starting to relive the same feeling I've gotten almost every year I've done this.  I feel like NaNoWriMo is encouraging some bad writing habits since it encourages being overly verbose and descriptive to get the words in, while sacrificing time to really work on characterization.

Well, I guess it does still serve its purpose as a way of getting you to write a first draft that you can later edit.  Maybe some day I'll actually go back and try to edit a NaNoWriMo draft into something good, but once again I'm not feeling like this will end up in a state that's worth doing that.

[Telgin]

We passed the halfway point a couple of days ago, and I'm currently sitting at a little under 30,000 words with a par of 28,839 today without having written anything yet.  I've averaged about 1,850 words per day so I should finish a few days early if I don't start slacking off at the end like I did the last few years.  We'll see.  I kind of want to get the badge for hitting par every day, but if I were going to do that I should have only reported 1,667 words every day even if I wrote more.

[EuchreJack]

Good luck, you can do it!

[Telgin]

I am victorious this day, with 50,049 words written and very few of them I'm happy with.  The same story as every year I've done it, and probably the same story next year.

The daily writing has at least gotten me into the habit a bit so I may transition to working on a different project I've been composting for a while.  That would be the third attempt at writing in the dragon setting I tried a couple of years for NaNoWriMo, and maybe the third time is the charm.

[EuchreJack]

Congrats!

They really should make December January into National Novel Editing Month to keep up the momentum.  Now you Edit 50,049 words in one month.
Probably best to let the words sit for a month and come back fresh.  Also editing is even harder than writing, and it needs the push.

[Telgin]

Agreed.  If you sign up on the NaNoWriMo website I think they actually do send some emails to you about some follow up editing month, but I doubt many people do it.  I never have.  It's probably harder to really quantify and gamify in the same way as writing, since you can't just count words toward some goal.  You really can't even count chapters edited since you might get rid of chapters in editing or totally change them.

In any case, one funny thing I found while writing is that I enjoyed writing from the perspective of the main villain's depressed assistant more than the main villain herself or any of the protagonists.  I've debated trying to redraft the story from her perspective completely, but I'm not sure it would work out the same way.  It might work as a short story instead, which is an idea.  I've considered trying to do a short story anthology for NaNoWriMo for a couple of years.

[EuchreJack]

I find that to be an interesting perspective, you should run with it for a bit.

[Bobbop]

In my opinion, the idea itself is quite good, it is worth a little work on it, it will be just great