So, with November coming up, so also comes up NaNoWriMo.
Are any of you fellow MBers planning on participating?
Hate to clog up the OT, but I figured some of us might like a project to work on.
For those of you not familiar with the concept, Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.
I think about doing this every year, but it seems like it's never the right time for me. Right now, I'm working on finishing up this novel I'm already writing and I just don't want to have to put it away for a month. Maybe next year.
Well you don't have to, honestly. They say the best cure for writing a novel and not getting tired of it is to write something else, anything else...and this could help.
But I still need to decide between two ideas...hmmm...
Here's what I used to do when I had more than one idea and I couldn't decide which one to work on.
I would write down each of the ideas on a piece of paper and put them in a bowl. Then, I would close my eyes and choose one. I kept doing this until I finally pulled out an idea that I didn't feel like tossing back into the bowl. Then I knew that was the one that I had really wanted to work on all along.
Well, one of the ideas is one I was planning on.
The other, was one that came up recently, that I had a burst of creative thought about. I started reading Dante Alighieri's "Inferno"...
Hrm. I'll try your idea.
Or I could try the INSANITY method and try both, but that would never work.
Really? Have you got your idea set up or are you just going to wing it?
I'm poking fun at the eccentricities of my southern heritage. the novel is called "You Need Lipstick: Memoirs of a Southern Woman's Daughter." It opens with a woman who is planning her mother's high society funeral - her mom was killed in an unfortunate ball-washer malfunction at the country club.
I was going to either do a dragon novel or a rewrite of the Inferno...
Decisions, decisions....
Your idea sounds so much more planned out than mine!
Ugh, you girls have more motivation in discussing your ideas than I have exhibited in the last 4+ months of saying "Oh, I should write a book..."
As penance, I said I would write 20 pages this week. A novel over a month, though, sounds nicer now.
(Because, you know, the motivation doesn't have to kick in yet - I have 'til Nov. 1st! :D)
Oh, you guys are really making me want to do this now.
But I'm so close to finishing this novel.
Ugh.
Anyone interested in writing should check out the Poets & Writers Speakeasy forum. I've been a member for years.
http://www.pw.org/speakeasy/Lots of great advice and support and they generally have a thread dedicated to NaNoWriMo every November.
If anyone wants to know my NaNo screen names the mods can give you my email.
Not participating in NaNo, but I am back at work on a novel after not writing for something like four years.
Best advice I know: Do *not* put your novel aside and work on another one because you are "bored" with what you're writing! You will only end up with a drawer full of unfinished manuscripts that way, and nobody can publish half-done work.
If you're getting bored with your work, it's often because you are spending wayyy too much time rewriting and rewriting the same chapters and scenes over and over again.
Try this:
Sketch a scene-by-scene outline of the whole thing, so you know you have a beginning, a middle and an end with enough conflict to sustain it.
Then write your whole draft straight through. Secret: Do NOT go back and look at what you wrote earlier! Just keep going until you have the entire draft.
Then start rewriting. Since you didn't look at the earlier chapters while doing the draft, they will seem fresh and new to you and you can easily see what you want to fix or change. And you won't be bored with it at all.
good luck - I did finish and sell 9 novels this way -
This is something posted on another forum. I am a "just write it" writer. I have to keep writing and get the story out. I go back and edit later. I was also the student in HS who wrote her term paper and THEN made the note cards and bibliography cards.
Here are a few things I do...but bear in mind that it was only in being adopted by wonderful, structured, type A parents that I am not in a Bohemian skirt playing the guitar on a street corner during the day and reciting poetry in performance art style at night, so some of my writing "prompts" are.....weird. There, I said it
1. "method writing" - you know method acting? All that "BE the ice cream cone" and "what's my motivation" stuff? I do that. I become the character. If I can't figure out what to write I let me character go off on a tangent. I let her yell at me. Sometimes I let her say stuff I wish I could say to all kinds of people. Of course, that may never make it into a book, but being someone in the book gets me so immersed in taking on their mannerisms I forget that "I can't think of anything good to write."
2. Writing what wouldn't work. If I can't figure out what should happen, then I just write all the stuff that's way too ridiculous to ever happen. Sort of the Gregory House process of elimination method of diagnosis.
3. Write something different. As soon as I finished my manuscript, He remains Faithful, part of my brain was already writing the sequel, His Ways Are Higher. Then I got stuck. I just couldn't write about Kelly/Mike/Megan/ blah blah blah characters anymore. So I joined Nanowrimo and started with an idea about a bipolar serial killer - not usually my kind of story. I'll probably never finish that because I don't have the time nor desire to get a master's in law enforcement and criminology. But it was different enough from the other that it was a fun distraction
4. Forget that publishers exist. Seriously. I have been writing since I could hold a pencil, and though my most secretest biggest dearest dream was always to be a "real writer," I write a whole lot better when I'm NOT trying to figure out who might want to publish it one day and how many rejections I will get before it happens. In fact, one of the funniest things I have ever written is an essay/letter/poem where I, um, thumbed my nose at anyone who might be too ill-informed to realized just how brilliant I am. It shed that whiny, nobody will ever like it thing. Anyway, I am a Real Writer. I have the flash drives, CD-R's and 5 1/4" floppy disks to prove it. neener neener neener!
5. Read Emily Dickinson, Erma Bombeck, Judy Blume, and J K Rowling. Seriously, these people are all very different from each other, and they all have influenced the way I express myself. Or, if you really want to shred tissues or poke yourself in the eye with a fork.....read Jane Eyre (I love that book)
6. Write, just write. Channel your inner James Joyce - AKA don't worry about it following any rational structure or logical time-line. Structure is for, like, responsible grownups and junk!
There. The above wisdom will buy you an extra small skinny mocha-chino at Starbucks, providing you also have 5.00.
I am already feeling more motivated. And, Mulan, I am very much a victim of the half-finished drawer, (even if most of it is in my head).
AND I am getting bogged down in re-reading and editing and I haven't even gotten to the meat of the story yet!
Aw, y'all are giving me ambition!
Ahem--note screenname. Am now on year number 8 and I love it. Every year now around November, a new idea for a plot spontaneously appears and we're off and running! Yet another crazy novella making its way to the Drawer of Unfinished Novels. High five, Luri!
I think, with my current book, I have just been stuck in the re-writing phase for too long, mostly because I had a baby 2 years ago after not having any little children in the house for a very long time, and that just threw everything off for me. But the end is so close I can smell it and I really just want to finish this book and get it sent off so I can move onto something new. However, I doubt I'll be ready to do that by November.
Oh, and I LOVE Julia Cameron, especially "The Right to Write" and "The Sound of Paper." She has some great writing prompts that have worked for me, especially Morning Pages (basically 3 pages written in long-hand every morning when you first wake up, a sort of free-writing, brain-dump thing).
For two straight years now I have said that I would participate, and I have done nothing.
This year, I will do it.
And I WILL finish!!!!
karma! karma! karma!
if you're really hard up for a plot, eat some really spicy food late at night and then write down your dreams as soon as you wake up.....weird stuff.
I'm not hard up for a plot, I have now three that I could be doing.
Good advice, though, I do tend to have really weird dreams...
I'm NaNoing! I haven't been on the boards, is there still a free book prize? Last time I "won", I wrote a book for my son and got a free copy from Lulu. Then Lulu quit, there was a stale year, but then who? Cafe Press? Amazon? Offered a free bound copy? Are they doing it this year? I have a little girl who loves a mystery...
I had tons of fun one year writing a 'create your own adventure'. It was craptastically funny.
Oh, I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid!
I know, but there seemed to be so few options. Hrmm....
Nanowrimo has begun! Good luck to all of you MBers who are participating!
Just a check-in. How's the participants doing with wrapping up their novels in this last week?
I stink! I've had way too many end-of-semester projects.
Ermmm, was I actually supposed to be
writing for NaNoWriMo, and not just talking about it here?
My total right now's about 36k words...I need to bump it up a notch. I keep barely making the day's quota...3 minutes before the next day begins.
36k is still awesome! What genre?
Fantasy, it's a dragon novel.
I will totally cheer for your 36k, and I am most decidedly NOT going to ask what the day's quota is - failing is failing, and I don't need to know by how much!
I'm wondering what to do when I finish, though. I'm thinking I'll write it down and edit it from there, but...hmmm.
I'll just concentrate on getting the words out for now.