5 ms·

NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month

100 points by rfreytag 3y ago

rfreytag 3y ago
The podcast 'Writing Excuses' is also doing a series to help people complete a novel in a month: https://writingexcuses.com/ https://writingexcuses.com/ See the Oct 29, Nov 5, and Nov 12th episodes so far.
23B1 3y ago
Nanowrimo was started in 1999! It's a great project and there's no better time than now to start your book.
tluyben2 3y ago
My wife participates in it every year (for many years); in october she gets the outline done, then in november she writes the book, in december she has editors go over it and she publishes during the next year. The productivity of just saying 'this month is fully for writing' and sticking to a minimum word count really has been a very productive mechanism.
- mark_l_watson 3y ago
  That is a good story, good for your wife. I belong to a local self-published authors group in my small town. We are going to cover NaNoWriMo this weekend.
asicsp 3y ago
Haven't written a novel before. I had an idea a few months back and had been taking notes here and there (fantasy genre). I decided to participate, setting myself a 500 words/day goal. Just crossed 12k words and now I'm hoping to end up around 30k at the end of November. If that pans out, I'll push to finish the first draft in December. My main goal is to have fun and I did feel great a few times, especially when I thought of something clever or spotted a mistake that'd not work with what I had written a few chapters back.
phoe-krk 3y ago
I've finally managed to complete it in 2021 and 2022. This year is much harder because writing prose causes a lot of hard topics to get brought up from my subconscious into my everyday, but I'm still aiming for 50k this year and not giving up.
- Jemaclus 3y ago
  I believe in you!
aoanla 3y ago
I'm glad that NaNoWriMo continues to work for people, but I think it's important to note that it doesn't work for everyone - and it's ok if it doesn't work for you. I attempted it twice in consecutive years about a decade and a half ago, and not only failed to complete anything, but was also driven into a worse depression because of it. I had to avoid people talking about it in November for years afterwards or I'd start to relapse, too.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  Writing this much seems to take significant mental energy, so if you are already prone to depression you need to be extremely prepared. It's also true depending on your intentions for all creative things, particularly if you have low self confidence. For example you might feel bad about yourself because you don't do enough art so you enter some kind of art competition, but then you immediately feel shitty about yourself and so you can't bring yourself to do it, leading to even worse self confidence about it. My therapist told me that in Germany there is an idiom that in English translates to "if you want to prove that you will fail you will always succeed". If I did NaNoWriMo, I would have the full expectation that I will fail, even if I try to tell myself that I have hope it would go well, and so I will just naturally make myself fail.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    not sure if this fits here, but just today the thought occurred to me that depression may be related to expectations i have of myself but also what others expect of me. by avoiding pressure from others and not expecting to much myself but without considering that a failure, or by not blaming myself if things don't work out, in other words, avoiding things that would lower my self confidence, may be a way to avoid depression. i have never tried NaNoWriMo, but if i did, i'd look at my situation and realize that i would not get much done, but for me that would not be a failure, because i wouldn't even go in with the expectation that i should be able to change that. on other words, i would not even have the hope that it would go well. instead it would be the realization that without participating i'd write nothing. by participating i'd write something, and so i may consider that a (small) success.
- 3y ago
edent 3y ago
I've just completed my first #NaNoWriMo. I decided to do it as a series of short sci-fi stories. You can read them at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/TalesOfTheAlgorithm https://shkspr.mobi/blog/TalesOfTheAlgorithm It was fascinating to me how much like programming it was. So much planning, lots of time trying to figure out what isn't working, and a bunch of spelling bugs! Well worth attempting this if you have the time to exercise your creative muscles. Anyway, if you have any feedback on my weird stories, I'd love to hear it.
- karmakurtisaani 3y ago
  Did anyone read then? My experience in writing things online is that barely anyone reads them and even fewer comment on them. I might just suck at it, but if didn't someone would probably pay me to do it.
  - edent 3y ago
    I've had a bunch of my blog's readers and Mastodon friends leave comments on them. The stories aren't as popular as my normal blogging - but I was expecting that. Looking at my logs, I've had a few hundred people read them, which is lovely. And, frankly, it doesn't matter if I suck or you suck. The joy of creation is its own payment.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    The average published novel hardly sells (couple of hundred copies on average), so if you write for the sake of a big audience, novels are not the thing to write - in that case aim for articles in a well read paper or magazine. Selling even reasonably well takes a mix of persistency (building an audience over multiple works), talent, hard work promoting it yourself, and luck.
    - boznz 3y ago
      So true. I'm still learning the hard part about writing is not the writing, it is getting someone to read it. I documented it here => https://rodyne.com/?page_id=1252 https://rodyne.com/?page_id=1252
ActionHank 3y ago
Do they have a policy on AI, I feel like they are not prepared for the coming flood.
- glanzwulf 3y ago
  From what I remember when I last tried it, NaNoWriMo worked with the honor system. If you wanted you could paste a wikipedia article in the editor and it would count the words and tell you good job, but you'd only be lying to yourself in the end.
- FourHand451 3y ago
  Is there a reason you feel they are less prepared than any other organization?
- jyunwai 3y ago
  Back when I did this, you could already technically "win" the pat on the back just by copying and pasting 50,000 words of gibberish to meet their word count. But then you would be cheating yourself: the point isn't truly to get the award at the end, but rather to challenge yourself to write 50,000 words in a month, to make novel writing seem less like an impossible task.
- phoe-krk 3y ago
  Why would they need to be prepared? NaNo is on you, you don't get anything for winning other than satisfaction and online badges and stuff from sponsors, such as some promo codes for writing software and getting your initial draft printed. A text that reads "Rabbit." written 50,000 times is enough to win NaNo.
  - dave1010uk 3y ago
    https://gist.github.com/dave1010/a7e7207edef422cf972968b029b25d0b https://gist.github.com/dave1010/a7e7207edef422cf972968b029b... Feel free to fork.
    - phoe-krk 3y ago
cfr2023 3y ago
NaNoWriMo, though a net positive force in the world, strikes me as a creative exercise for non-creatives. Truly not a bad thing, no offense intended. Trying to create regularly will help you become more creative. However, if you're already someone that is able to maintain a writing schedule and hit daily targets of hundreds of words, and can see your dream works emerge through the simple act of scheduling... I'm gently skeptical of where your motivation to create comes from. Bear with me. Before we get bogged down in it: Misery and disorder are not requisites for creativity and I'm certainly not advocating that, either. The issue is that trying to hit some sort of material target by artificially imposing a daily grind on it forces your work into a box created by the work-a-day-world. An undeniably effective one, but for everything? The global marketplace is what sets deadlines like "by the end of the day!" and "by the end of the month!" where as works of art and creators can both bloom like flowers and get seasoned over large segments of time like waves washing over a rock face. Your arc as an artist or creator, starting from the discovery of that impulse inside yourself, may be one that spans decades or your entire life. If that's the case, success or failure in NanoWriMo may be a bad indicator for you: "Oh shit, I missed my 7pm writing alarm and forgot to write ~1700 words, now I'll never be the next Charles Dickens!" could come from the same writer as: "After a slow walk through my city on a crisp fall morning, I can sit down and write 5000 words without so much as stopping to stretch my wrist." and: "I don't practice art regularly, but sometimes when I get the urge, I will be in the throes for 3 days trying to work out the specifics of an image that has flashed into my mind." These and many other creative modes are valid and exist independently of schedules, clocks, word counts, time limits and other cops we might invite to sit by our writing desks, easels and computer terminals.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  The problem is that most people just fundamentally don't want to make art. NaNoWriMo is in many ways just an excuse to force themselves to do so "because they know they should".
  - crdrost 3y ago
    People do though. Making art for most people is like exercise. It's good for them and once they get into it they like it, but there is an initial cost and your initial attempts aren't going to be very fulfilling and all that. Almost everybody feels that surge of excitement in front of the potter's wheel. But, pots collapse, finding a teacher to mentor you is expensive, the people who want to start it have to start by researching clay and how you work it and can I use my oven as a kiln or do I need to buy a dedicated one and do I need glazing materials... And then the same thing that killed exercise has killed the “artism” that we feel. People stopped going on daily constitutionals because of the TV, we made the TV more addictive and put it in your pocket and called it TikTok
_lvbh 3y ago
I remember doing this back when I was 11 or 12. Very nostalgic. I wish I could find the short novel I wrote back then but it seems like I purged all my files.
drakonka 3y ago
I am not participating in it exactly, but I'm finishing up my next novel draft right now and it is still really satisfying to work alongside all the NaNo-ers. Coincidentally this can also be a nice time to get that writing or editing software you might be interested in, since many of them run sales around NaNoWriMo.
mkerrigan 3y ago
It's interesting to read the criticisms of NaNoWriMo because they don't really change. I have completed it for 15 years in a row, then on year 16 I sort of hit a wall and this year I am deliberately not doing it. But my friend and I have been doing it since high school. The point is usually not about doing it to become published but rather to have fun. I'm not sure if I would have been able to do it without going to some of the in-person write-ins. I even know someone who met their husband at a in-person write-in.
harperlee 3y ago
I guess that NaNoGenMo, the variant where you use algorithms to create a novel, is really going to change this year...
tunesmith 3y ago
I'm in a small writing club and all four of us are trying it. I successfully finished it two years ago with a series of ten interlocking short stories that (surprise!) tell a complete story as a novel by the end. One thing I notice is that a lot of people use it as a project to just get words out, regardless of quality. They talk about vomit-drafts, and/or just sitting down to write to see where it takes them, to see what the characters will do. I don't think that mindset is very compatible with story forms that requires mystery or twists or foreshadowing. My story this month has that so it's been difficult. I'm at 11,000 words now and we're late enough in the month that it's telling me I have to write more than 2,000 words/day to finish. Soon I'll be past the point of no return, where it will be practically impossible to catch up; I think the most I've ever written in a day is 5,000 words. Ah well, it was still good motivation, and I'm signed on enough to my concept that I'll probably finish it even if I'm not done on 11/30.
- Jemaclus 3y ago
  Well, the explicit goal of NaNoWriMo is word count, not quality. You aren't wrong in your analysis, but NaNoWriMo is not the event through which you write complex stories and spend a ton of time thinking about each scene. It's pretty explicitly for plowing through as many words as possible in 30 days. An analogy I would make is that a marathon is measured as 26.2 miles. It's not measured in minutes or hours -- it's not the 2:30 run, for example. The standard of success is measured in miles, not minutes. Similarly, NaNoWriMo is measured in words, not quality or twists or ready-to-be-published state. You are right, though. It's good motivation. I've finished every year for 10 years, but I've never gotten anything to a state I would consider to be even remotely publishable. :)
- criley2 3y ago
  For the record, the point of NaNoWriMo is pure word count, and folks consider December to be "National Novel Editing Month" where you refine the word vomit. Obviously this is not the only approach to writing, and some folks are incompatible with the concept of "just write with abandon" and "sort it all out and refine it in edit". If you want to write and edit at the same time, consider halving your total word count (since they take two months to do that), or double your time (and continue through December).
eludwig 3y ago
Writing (and illustrating) an amateur novel is the most creative fun I've ever had. Highly recommended if you have a mind to try. (trained artist, but software developer by day) I wrote one[1] about 5 years ago. It's amateur and too long, but it's my great American novel, for better or worse! It actually took 4 years, but so much fun! The most annoying part was getting it into a viable ePub. I ended up using Sigil, as it was the easiest to use at the time. [1] https://darladarling.com https://darladarling.com (free ePub)
jdriselvato 3y ago
I love NaNoWriMo and have written and won every year since 2019. My only issue is once the month is complete, no one cares about your novel or that you finished it. So when I got laid off earlier in the year I started working on an alternative to NaNo. https://penpinery.com https://penpinery.com At the moment it's in MVP but it current has: - Author profiles w/ blogging - Publication cataloging + reader reviews - WIP cataloging with word count tracking - A community feed similar to Goodreads + WIP word count updates The idea is I think NaNo could be more social post-November. With Pen Pinery's current MVP I think Authors can build a readership fanbase much easier than anything NaNo could do. In the future I want to also have goal tracking based on pages instead of word count and for editing as well. I also think there's a lot of potential for building out an ARC sign up system. Pretty much I've self-published 15+ books and I'm putting everything that worked for me into a social author/reading platform. Authors who use NaNo or are completely against it, I'd love to get some feedback on the concept from a description standpoint. Any thoughts or tips? --- Since this is YC, the tech stack is Django 4, Postgres and Bootstrap 5; Hosted on DigitalOcean.
- boznz 3y ago
  Nice concept, for me and millions of others at the mercy of the Amazon algorithm to what we read next I may try a few books here. You are right nobody cares about your novel but the rush from finishing and publishing something even if nobody reads it is pretty satisfying.
  - jdriselvato 3y ago
    Right now I'm in the middle of the chicken and the egg problem where we don't have enough authors cataloging their publications and b/c of that obviously readers are not interested in using the site. I've gone back and forth with taking Open Libray's [0] catalog as that would at least flesh out our collection of books but then I'd have to deal with verifying authors to accounts so they can access their books. Which sounds like a major headache and also just defeats the concept of building a community. Since this is really a weekend project, I'm just going to keep building the tools out to perfection and hope people will trickle in over time. Luckily for me I just want to write, so the tools I'm building are exactly what works for my writing goals and I think overtime others will find the same value. [0] https://openlibrary.org https://openlibrary.org
spiritplumber 3y ago
The problem on my end is finding readers. My stuff is at https://emlia.org/ https://emlia.org/
blakewatson 3y ago
I’m I love this little challenge. I've participated almost every year since 2010. At the peak of my involvement l was a local organizer (Municipal Liaison). I met a lot of cool people and had a great time at write-ins and such. It was a good social outlet for me because I have a pretty severe mobility impairment and, long story short, small groups and laid back activities are easier for me to participate in than other things. I haven't really gotten back into in-person stuff post-COVID, but I still enjoy making November a time to write and hanging out in the local NaNo Discord server. I enjoy perusing the NaNo forums, particularly the Adoption Society, where people offer up plots, characters, running gags, opening lines, chapter-naming schemes, and more for anyone to use. There's also a bit of fun lore that has developed. For example, if you're stuck, kill a character with the traveling shovel of death ("traveling" because us Wrimos are passing it around). Or find a way to include Mr. Ian Woon (anagram of NaNoWriMo). NaNoWriMo is different things to different people and I love that about it. This year and last, I lowered my goal to writing a 20k-word novella. I have difficulty typing and a lower word count makes it a bit easier for me (that makes me a "NaNo rebel" lol I love all the little jokes and stuff).
Waterluvian 3y ago
On this topic, where do people go for short stories online? I find myself with 20 mins here, 40 mins there, and half the time gets spent trying to find a decent short story.
leashless 3y ago
I did NaNoWriMo in 2010 and it was a great experience and produced a not very good genre novel about the first sentient AI’s inability to deal with humans and how the human race survived the biotech apocalypse. The “write fast get it done” format liberated me from the need to make sense. Let it rip! Good luck. Edit: the novel http://files.howtolivewiki.com/MOTHER_OF_HYDROGEN_NOVEL/index.html http://files.howtolivewiki.com/MOTHER_OF_HYDROGEN_NOVEL/inde...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
deafpolygon 3y ago
It took a bit of digging to find out just when it is. November.

100 points by rfreytag 3y ago

The podcast 'Writing Excuses' is also doing a series to help people complete a novel in a month: https://writingexcuses.com/ https://writingexcuses.com/ See the Oct 29, Nov 5, and Nov 12th episodes so far.

23B1 3y ago

Nanowrimo was started in 1999! It's a great project and there's no better time than now to start your book.

tluyben2 3y ago

My wife participates in it every year (for many years); in october she gets the outline done, then in november she writes the book, in december she has editors go over it and she publishes during the next year. The productivity of just saying 'this month is fully for writing' and sticking to a minimum word count really has been a very productive mechanism.

mark_l_watson 3y ago
That is a good story, good for your wife. I belong to a local self-published authors group in my small town. We are going to cover NaNoWriMo this weekend.

asicsp 3y ago

Haven't written a novel before. I had an idea a few months back and had been taking notes here and there (fantasy genre). I decided to participate, setting myself a 500 words/day goal. Just crossed 12k words and now I'm hoping to end up around 30k at the end of November. If that pans out, I'll push to finish the first draft in December. My main goal is to have fun and I did feel great a few times, especially when I thought of something clever or spotted a mistake that'd not work with what I had written a few chapters back.

phoe-krk 3y ago

I've finally managed to complete it in 2021 and 2022. This year is much harder because writing prose causes a lot of hard topics to get brought up from my subconscious into my everyday, but I'm still aiming for 50k this year and not giving up.

Jemaclus 3y ago
I believe in you!

aoanla 3y ago

I'm glad that NaNoWriMo continues to work for people, but I think it's important to note that it doesn't work for everyone - and it's ok if it doesn't work for you. I attempted it twice in consecutive years about a decade and a half ago, and not only failed to complete anything, but was also driven into a worse depression because of it. I had to avoid people talking about it in November for years afterwards or I'd start to relapse, too.

bowsamic 3y ago
Writing this much seems to take significant mental energy, so if you are already prone to depression you need to be extremely prepared. It's also true depending on your intentions for all creative things, particularly if you have low self confidence. For example you might feel bad about yourself because you don't do enough art so you enter some kind of art competition, but then you immediately feel shitty about yourself and so you can't bring yourself to do it, leading to even worse self confidence about it. My therapist told me that in Germany there is an idiom that in English translates to "if you want to prove that you will fail you will always succeed". If I did NaNoWriMo, I would have the full expectation that I will fail, even if I try to tell myself that I have hope it would go well, and so I will just naturally make myself fail.
- em-bee 3y ago
  not sure if this fits here, but just today the thought occurred to me that depression may be related to expectations i have of myself but also what others expect of me. by avoiding pressure from others and not expecting to much myself but without considering that a failure, or by not blaming myself if things don't work out, in other words, avoiding things that would lower my self confidence, may be a way to avoid depression. i have never tried NaNoWriMo, but if i did, i'd look at my situation and realize that i would not get much done, but for me that would not be a failure, because i wouldn't even go in with the expectation that i should be able to change that. on other words, i would not even have the hope that it would go well. instead it would be the realization that without participating i'd write nothing. by participating i'd write something, and so i may consider that a (small) success.
3y ago

edent 3y ago

I've just completed my first #NaNoWriMo. I decided to do it as a series of short sci-fi stories. You can read them at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/TalesOfTheAlgorithm https://shkspr.mobi/blog/TalesOfTheAlgorithm It was fascinating to me how much like programming it was. So much planning, lots of time trying to figure out what isn't working, and a bunch of spelling bugs! Well worth attempting this if you have the time to exercise your creative muscles. Anyway, if you have any feedback on my weird stories, I'd love to hear it.

karmakurtisaani 3y ago
Did anyone read then? My experience in writing things online is that barely anyone reads them and even fewer comment on them. I might just suck at it, but if didn't someone would probably pay me to do it.
- edent 3y ago
  I've had a bunch of my blog's readers and Mastodon friends leave comments on them. The stories aren't as popular as my normal blogging - but I was expecting that. Looking at my logs, I've had a few hundred people read them, which is lovely. And, frankly, it doesn't matter if I suck or you suck. The joy of creation is its own payment.
- vidarh 3y ago
  The average published novel hardly sells (couple of hundred copies on average), so if you write for the sake of a big audience, novels are not the thing to write - in that case aim for articles in a well read paper or magazine. Selling even reasonably well takes a mix of persistency (building an audience over multiple works), talent, hard work promoting it yourself, and luck.
  - boznz 3y ago
    So true. I'm still learning the hard part about writing is not the writing, it is getting someone to read it. I documented it here => https://rodyne.com/?page_id=1252 https://rodyne.com/?page_id=1252

ActionHank 3y ago

Do they have a policy on AI, I feel like they are not prepared for the coming flood.

glanzwulf 3y ago
From what I remember when I last tried it, NaNoWriMo worked with the honor system. If you wanted you could paste a wikipedia article in the editor and it would count the words and tell you good job, but you'd only be lying to yourself in the end.
FourHand451 3y ago
Is there a reason you feel they are less prepared than any other organization?
jyunwai 3y ago
Back when I did this, you could already technically "win" the pat on the back just by copying and pasting 50,000 words of gibberish to meet their word count. But then you would be cheating yourself: the point isn't truly to get the award at the end, but rather to challenge yourself to write 50,000 words in a month, to make novel writing seem less like an impossible task.
phoe-krk 3y ago
Why would they need to be prepared? NaNo is on you, you don't get anything for winning other than satisfaction and online badges and stuff from sponsors, such as some promo codes for writing software and getting your initial draft printed. A text that reads "Rabbit." written 50,000 times is enough to win NaNo.
- dave1010uk 3y ago
  https://gist.github.com/dave1010/a7e7207edef422cf972968b029b25d0b https://gist.github.com/dave1010/a7e7207edef422cf972968b029b... Feel free to fork.
  - phoe-krk 3y ago

cfr2023 3y ago

NaNoWriMo, though a net positive force in the world, strikes me as a creative exercise for non-creatives. Truly not a bad thing, no offense intended. Trying to create regularly will help you become more creative. However, if you're already someone that is able to maintain a writing schedule and hit daily targets of hundreds of words, and can see your dream works emerge through the simple act of scheduling... I'm gently skeptical of where your motivation to create comes from. Bear with me. Before we get bogged down in it: Misery and disorder are not requisites for creativity and I'm certainly not advocating that, either. The issue is that trying to hit some sort of material target by artificially imposing a daily grind on it forces your work into a box created by the work-a-day-world. An undeniably effective one, but for everything? The global marketplace is what sets deadlines like "by the end of the day!" and "by the end of the month!" where as works of art and creators can both bloom like flowers and get seasoned over large segments of time like waves washing over a rock face. Your arc as an artist or creator, starting from the discovery of that impulse inside yourself, may be one that spans decades or your entire life. If that's the case, success or failure in NanoWriMo may be a bad indicator for you: "Oh shit, I missed my 7pm writing alarm and forgot to write ~1700 words, now I'll never be the next Charles Dickens!" could come from the same writer as: "After a slow walk through my city on a crisp fall morning, I can sit down and write 5000 words without so much as stopping to stretch my wrist." and: "I don't practice art regularly, but sometimes when I get the urge, I will be in the throes for 3 days trying to work out the specifics of an image that has flashed into my mind." These and many other creative modes are valid and exist independently of schedules, clocks, word counts, time limits and other cops we might invite to sit by our writing desks, easels and computer terminals.

bowsamic 3y ago
The problem is that most people just fundamentally don't want to make art. NaNoWriMo is in many ways just an excuse to force themselves to do so "because they know they should".
- crdrost 3y ago
  People do though. Making art for most people is like exercise. It's good for them and once they get into it they like it, but there is an initial cost and your initial attempts aren't going to be very fulfilling and all that. Almost everybody feels that surge of excitement in front of the potter's wheel. But, pots collapse, finding a teacher to mentor you is expensive, the people who want to start it have to start by researching clay and how you work it and can I use my oven as a kiln or do I need to buy a dedicated one and do I need glazing materials... And then the same thing that killed exercise has killed the “artism” that we feel. People stopped going on daily constitutionals because of the TV, we made the TV more addictive and put it in your pocket and called it TikTok

_lvbh 3y ago

I remember doing this back when I was 11 or 12. Very nostalgic. I wish I could find the short novel I wrote back then but it seems like I purged all my files.

drakonka 3y ago

I am not participating in it exactly, but I'm finishing up my next novel draft right now and it is still really satisfying to work alongside all the NaNo-ers. Coincidentally this can also be a nice time to get that writing or editing software you might be interested in, since many of them run sales around NaNoWriMo.

mkerrigan 3y ago

It's interesting to read the criticisms of NaNoWriMo because they don't really change. I have completed it for 15 years in a row, then on year 16 I sort of hit a wall and this year I am deliberately not doing it. But my friend and I have been doing it since high school. The point is usually not about doing it to become published but rather to have fun. I'm not sure if I would have been able to do it without going to some of the in-person write-ins. I even know someone who met their husband at a in-person write-in.

harperlee 3y ago

I guess that NaNoGenMo, the variant where you use algorithms to create a novel, is really going to change this year...

tunesmith 3y ago

I'm in a small writing club and all four of us are trying it. I successfully finished it two years ago with a series of ten interlocking short stories that (surprise!) tell a complete story as a novel by the end. One thing I notice is that a lot of people use it as a project to just get words out, regardless of quality. They talk about vomit-drafts, and/or just sitting down to write to see where it takes them, to see what the characters will do. I don't think that mindset is very compatible with story forms that requires mystery or twists or foreshadowing. My story this month has that so it's been difficult. I'm at 11,000 words now and we're late enough in the month that it's telling me I have to write more than 2,000 words/day to finish. Soon I'll be past the point of no return, where it will be practically impossible to catch up; I think the most I've ever written in a day is 5,000 words. Ah well, it was still good motivation, and I'm signed on enough to my concept that I'll probably finish it even if I'm not done on 11/30.

Jemaclus 3y ago
Well, the explicit goal of NaNoWriMo is word count, not quality. You aren't wrong in your analysis, but NaNoWriMo is not the event through which you write complex stories and spend a ton of time thinking about each scene. It's pretty explicitly for plowing through as many words as possible in 30 days. An analogy I would make is that a marathon is measured as 26.2 miles. It's not measured in minutes or hours -- it's not the 2:30 run, for example. The standard of success is measured in miles, not minutes. Similarly, NaNoWriMo is measured in words, not quality or twists or ready-to-be-published state. You are right, though. It's good motivation. I've finished every year for 10 years, but I've never gotten anything to a state I would consider to be even remotely publishable. :)
criley2 3y ago
For the record, the point of NaNoWriMo is pure word count, and folks consider December to be "National Novel Editing Month" where you refine the word vomit. Obviously this is not the only approach to writing, and some folks are incompatible with the concept of "just write with abandon" and "sort it all out and refine it in edit". If you want to write and edit at the same time, consider halving your total word count (since they take two months to do that), or double your time (and continue through December).

eludwig 3y ago

Writing (and illustrating) an amateur novel is the most creative fun I've ever had. Highly recommended if you have a mind to try. (trained artist, but software developer by day) I wrote one[1] about 5 years ago. It's amateur and too long, but it's my great American novel, for better or worse! It actually took 4 years, but so much fun! The most annoying part was getting it into a viable ePub. I ended up using Sigil, as it was the easiest to use at the time. [1] https://darladarling.com https://darladarling.com (free ePub)

jdriselvato 3y ago

I love NaNoWriMo and have written and won every year since 2019. My only issue is once the month is complete, no one cares about your novel or that you finished it. So when I got laid off earlier in the year I started working on an alternative to NaNo. https://penpinery.com https://penpinery.com At the moment it's in MVP but it current has: - Author profiles w/ blogging - Publication cataloging + reader reviews - WIP cataloging with word count tracking - A community feed similar to Goodreads + WIP word count updates The idea is I think NaNo could be more social post-November. With Pen Pinery's current MVP I think Authors can build a readership fanbase much easier than anything NaNo could do. In the future I want to also have goal tracking based on pages instead of word count and for editing as well. I also think there's a lot of potential for building out an ARC sign up system. Pretty much I've self-published 15+ books and I'm putting everything that worked for me into a social author/reading platform. Authors who use NaNo or are completely against it, I'd love to get some feedback on the concept from a description standpoint. Any thoughts or tips? --- Since this is YC, the tech stack is Django 4, Postgres and Bootstrap 5; Hosted on DigitalOcean.

boznz 3y ago
Nice concept, for me and millions of others at the mercy of the Amazon algorithm to what we read next I may try a few books here. You are right nobody cares about your novel but the rush from finishing and publishing something even if nobody reads it is pretty satisfying.
- jdriselvato 3y ago
  Right now I'm in the middle of the chicken and the egg problem where we don't have enough authors cataloging their publications and b/c of that obviously readers are not interested in using the site. I've gone back and forth with taking Open Libray's [0] catalog as that would at least flesh out our collection of books but then I'd have to deal with verifying authors to accounts so they can access their books. Which sounds like a major headache and also just defeats the concept of building a community. Since this is really a weekend project, I'm just going to keep building the tools out to perfection and hope people will trickle in over time. Luckily for me I just want to write, so the tools I'm building are exactly what works for my writing goals and I think overtime others will find the same value. [0] https://openlibrary.org https://openlibrary.org

spiritplumber 3y ago

The problem on my end is finding readers. My stuff is at https://emlia.org/ https://emlia.org/

blakewatson 3y ago

I’m I love this little challenge. I've participated almost every year since 2010. At the peak of my involvement l was a local organizer (Municipal Liaison). I met a lot of cool people and had a great time at write-ins and such. It was a good social outlet for me because I have a pretty severe mobility impairment and, long story short, small groups and laid back activities are easier for me to participate in than other things. I haven't really gotten back into in-person stuff post-COVID, but I still enjoy making November a time to write and hanging out in the local NaNo Discord server. I enjoy perusing the NaNo forums, particularly the Adoption Society, where people offer up plots, characters, running gags, opening lines, chapter-naming schemes, and more for anyone to use. There's also a bit of fun lore that has developed. For example, if you're stuck, kill a character with the traveling shovel of death ("traveling" because us Wrimos are passing it around). Or find a way to include Mr. Ian Woon (anagram of NaNoWriMo). NaNoWriMo is different things to different people and I love that about it. This year and last, I lowered my goal to writing a 20k-word novella. I have difficulty typing and a lower word count makes it a bit easier for me (that makes me a "NaNo rebel" lol I love all the little jokes and stuff).

Waterluvian 3y ago

On this topic, where do people go for short stories online? I find myself with 20 mins here, 40 mins there, and half the time gets spent trying to find a decent short story.

leashless 3y ago

I did NaNoWriMo in 2010 and it was a great experience and produced a not very good genre novel about the first sentient AI’s inability to deal with humans and how the human race survived the biotech apocalypse. The “write fast get it done” format liberated me from the need to make sense. Let it rip! Good luck. Edit: the novel http://files.howtolivewiki.com/MOTHER_OF_HYDROGEN_NOVEL/index.html http://files.howtolivewiki.com/MOTHER_OF_HYDROGEN_NOVEL/inde...

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deafpolygon 3y ago

It took a bit of digging to find out just when it is. November.