Tag Archives: nano wrimo

Why I Say Yes to NaNo WriMo

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Note from Tom: This was originally posted December 2010, after another successful NaNo run. Since the Blogenning theme this week is NaNo WriMo, and we’re only a couple of weeks away from Day 1, I thought it would be worthwhile to re-post it. Please silently adjust all tenses to make sense – for instance, it is currently October, not December, and people are preparing their writing holes, not leaving them. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments!

As I write this, the National Novel Writing Month has been over for only a few days. Everyone, no matter how “well” they did, is coming out from their basements and their bedrooms and workrooms and blinking in the cold December light, making phone calls to loved ones to let them know they’re still alive and have a little free time again. They’re showering and shaving and generally coming back around again into becoming normal people.

Well, that’s the joke, anyway. The reality is a bit different. Very different, in fact. Because most of the participants in the event are not professional writers that hole themselves up all the time and just simply dedicated a month. The majority are people with very real lives to lead – parents, grandparents, high school and college students, full time professionals with a second job or a course load on top of work – that decide to dedicate a very real amount of time to themselves, to one of the greatest self-indulgent exercises society has to offer (that doesn’t involve extra calories or potential jail time): writing.

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Back in the Saddle Again

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30 - A Perfect PairI missed writing.

Last November, my NaNo WriMo novel was probably the darkest thing I had written yet – it was to be about a guy that was trying to hold his life together while he lost his mind due to rampant hallucinations. Over the course of the novel, the hallucinations grow stronger (they begin as simply visual, but over time begin to include auditory and…you know what? You probably don’t care about that. Moving on). I cranked out the first 50,000 words no problem during the month, and then in December attempted to keep working on it. I got maybe 1,000 more words in and then just…stopped.

It’s a weird feeling to leave a story dead in the water. I kept trying to go back to it, and I’d work out a sentence here, a sentence there, but never anything serious. In 30 days I wrote 50,000 words. In the following 8 months, I wrote about 1,200 more. Then this week happened. Continue reading →

Technophile

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I own a typewriter.

It’s a decent looking thing. Clean, has a soft hum when you turn it on. The keys seem to work, although if I type too quickly the arms get stuck against one another. There’s even a method for whiting out letters, which is rather ingenious (you shift the tape up to the white portion of it, and re-type. The white will cover the black).

I have to admit, there is a part of me that sort of wishes it was one of the old school mechanical ones. Those iron monsters that weighed 40 lbs and just simply attracted whiskey glasses and cigarette smoke. The kind that you could imagine Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet writing on. Ultimately, I would like to get one, but I’m willing to wait. I have time.

The only other real news is that I totally fucking won Nano Wrimo again. Here, have a thing about that, and then a picture of my typewriter.

Winner!

Writer's Corner

Writer's Corner

Tom

Dust Some Cobwebs

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Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve been here. I have a great excuse, I promise. I’ve been busy.

No, really.

It’s called Nano Wrimo, and I’ve talked about it here before. And I know Brandon has mentioned it. We’ve been attempting to write a novel (each) this month. I’m up almost at 32,000 words, and Brandon is somewhere, but I don’t know his actual word count. You’d have to ask him.

The novel’s going well. Better than the previous two years, that’s for sure. When I started this back in ’07, I fell horribly behind, and had to crank out 30,000 words in a week (somewhere around 9,000 the last day, I think). It was nuts. Last year was a lot better, but I still fell behind a few days, which is both very easy to do and very dangerous to do. This year, the most I fell behind so far was one day, and I caught up the next day. I did get ahead by entire days once or twice, which was nice. At the moment, I think I’m ahead by about 12 words, but it’s all good. The plot is insane, the characters are all nutjobs, and I’m not sure some of what I write makes any sense.

So I’m obviously enjoying myself a lot.

The only other news is that I still have the completely used roll of film from the old school camera sitting on my desk, waiting for processing. I have to ask around and find somewhere that’ll do it, because I would love to see how (badly) those pictures turn out. I promise, soon as they’re scanned, you’ll get to see them. Until then, though, you’ll just have to wait.

In the meantime, have some fall pictures from me.

Playground

Freshen the Outside Air

Tom

Shadow of a Ghost of an Idea

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November is, oddly, not that far away anymore. Well, sure, okay, it’s far enough away so that we’re still in the summer, and technically have two and a half months to get through (give or take a week).

But!

If you’re a Nano Wrimo writer like I am, it’s not too far away (frighteningly). This time last year, I was beginning the process of collecting notes and thinking about the novel that would become Divine. I was working out character sketches, piecing together the story, and wondering how the villains would push things along. In short, I was beginning the process of being prepared, so that I would be ready for the event. This yeah, I’m in a bit more of a pickle.

I think my problem is that I have too many ideas, but nothing’s really jumping out at me. A kid who accidentally has a super power, a sequel to Divine, a sequel to Mists of Nerrivik, a thing involving poorly defined subjective gravity…just too much is running through my head all at once. It’s getting stuck in the doorway, I think, and nothing’s really getting through (sort of like a Three Stooges sketch, although with pose in place of, say, Moe).

This is a much bigger problem than you may think it is. “So you don’t have an idea? So what? Can’t you just figure that out as you go along?” Well, yes and no. Sure, I can (and I have), but I end up floundering a bit without having a solid idea of my story going into things. And I can’t think up a good story as I go along. Not to mention, there is always the fact that Nano is marathon writing, and going in without notes is a lot like going on a marathon run without training too hard or stretching first. Sure, you could do it, but do you really want to?

When I wrote Mists, I had a couple basic ideas and figured it out as I went along. It was fun, but it was slow going. By Thanksgiving, I was 20,000 words behind, and ended up averaging 6k a day until I finished (on a 9k day, if memory serves). Last year, when I went in with Divine, the most I fell behind was 5k, I believe, and I recovered fairly quickly from that, ultimately writing a novel that hits somewhere around 67,000 words start to finish (and that’s just the first draft).  Everyone I’ve become friends with through this event seems to agree that knowing what you’re going to write for a story before you write it is a great step to actually completing the damn thing on time.

Which brings me back to my quandry. It’s not indecisiveness, exactly. It’s more…not being sure what I want to write first. Although I’m starting to lean toward the superhero kid. I think I could have a lot of fun with that idea, and write a pretty funny story.  And who doesn’t like a funny story?

I think I may be rambling now, so I’ll let you go. Below, I’ve placed a web badge for this year’s Nano Wrimo. If you have any interest in attempting to actually write a novel, you should check their site out. I’ve met some totally awesome people through it.

Nano Badge

Tom

Riad N’ The Bedouins

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1. As of the end of the day today, I am at 47,181 words. Which means that I am 2,819 from winning Nano Wrimo ’08. Expect to see me in the winner’s circle by dinnertime.

2. Chinese Democracy sounds incredibly like a Guns N Roses ’80s album. In other words, Axl Rose spent 13 years to sound exactly the same.

3. I may not officially be a hobo, but I’ll have slept in my bed once in a 6 night period. So: hobo-esque.