Late getting the thread created this year for a few reasons, but the big one is that I mostly forgot it was almost time for this again. Another wrinkle is that there's apparently been a lot of controversy with the NaNoWriMo organization since last year, although I mostly don't care. I used the website as a progress tracker but never participated in their forums or bought any swag from them or anything like that. The challenge itself doesn't have to have anything to do with the organization I guess, and I know some people have started using other websites to track progress. I may do so, or I may keep using nanowrimo.org since it's simple and I have my history there. Apparently I've done this and succeeded for 7 years straight now, and I kind of hate to break the streak.
Obligatory copied content from the last few years:
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:20232022202120202019201820172016201520142013 2012201120102009
Like last year, I think I'll have a pretty easy time actually getting words out, but I currently have no idea what idea to use as a story idea. If I don't get a solid idea in the next few days, I'm probably going to end up redrafting my Vacuum Decay project from a couple of years ago since I wanted to get it to a state that I was happy self-publishing it, but NaNoWriMo really isn't the best way to redraft something since you're supposed to go fast.
Guess I've got a lot of thinking to do in the coming week.
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Topic: National Novel Writing Month 2024 (Read 397 times)