365 tomorrows

How many of you talented writers are Nanowrimo participants? I tried for the first time last year and failed miserably. And I mean miserably. I'm going to try it again this year though. Anyone else a part of that?

I've done NaNoWriMo twice. Why? At a guess, masochism.

Seriously, the first time was to finally get a long-in-my-head novel idea out of my head and into written form. The second time was to prove that I wasn't a one-novel-wonder, and to develop some world-building ideas I had laying around.

After that, trying to use words profligately, it's been difficult to try to narrow down a tale to fit the 500-word limit here. Still, I have some ideas, and it's an interesting challenge.

Right now, though, I'm participating in NaNoWriMo's theatrical cousin, Script Frenzy! 942 words in my screenplay done, 19,058 to go by the end of the month.

And yet, here I am, typing replies on website forums.

~ Jas.

Oh man, I haven't seriously tried. The reason that I especially love this website is because writing 500-and-under word stories comes easily to me - I can't stretch things out! I doubt I could carry a story/characters for that long, and I have school as well... but I admire those who give it a good effort/succeed.

I'm with you there. I'm amazed at those who can create such elaborate and lengthy stories. I'm pretty much a short story writer myself. Not a novelist yet until I write my first one. Look out Nano, I'm on my way to fail again. Muhahahaha

I've been killing myself trying to write shorter things - most of my first stories for 365 started north of 1,500 words and had to be mercilessly edited down. I think for me to get into any sort of marathon writing exercise would just be the death of me.

is there a site with information on Nanowrimo? I don't remember what the word count is supposed to be.

I'm with Surry on this one - so much of what I write are mere snipets of scene my head throws together. I have a hard time tying scenes together. I get an idea in my head and write about 1000 words and then i get tapped out.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Here you go... I believe the word count to hit is 50,000.

Cheers! — Möe

I think it was Roger Zelazny who once described a short story as simply the last chapter of a novel. After reading a lot of the Tomorrows here, I think a better description would be that a short story is the last chapter of a novel ... or the first one.

Look at today's tale (Unexpected Consequences). I can see already a long series of events and characters that could follow that tale's "introduction", both flashbacks and where the story might go from there.

The whole point about NaNoWriMo, though, is to figure out where you start, figure out where you're going, and then have fun getting there, which occasionally includes a seven course gourmet meal described in great detail and a side trip to the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota. You write so fast, your internal editor has a meltdown and doesn't have a chance to tell you that what you're writing might be total dren.

Writing for 365tomorrows.com, on the other hand, is an exercise, for me, in letting the internal editor have a field day, cutting out unnecessary words, trying to focus the direction of the tale until it has the coherence of a laser.

As I said, though, this month, it's freewheeling time. I wonder if my screenplay characters need to take a road trip ....

... maybe to Car-henge.

~ Jas.

We have a three-day novel writing contest here in Vancouver, Canada in September. I know the person that runs it. I'm thinking of giving it a try but it's a pretty daunting thing for me to even contemplate. It would probably be a good exercise if nothing else, though.

Do you get to leave the building at the end of every day or is it one of those things where you try to psyche out the other writers with your BO?

A friend of mine tried it last year. This year we're both going to try it. We've already started arranging practice so we can spent evenings brainstorming off each other.

It's a 'no one leaves the room' kind of thing and it does all need to be done in the premises. I wrote a one-act under those condition in twenty-four hours and it sucked pretty hard. I'm not sure I'm up for it that kind of experience again.

I know most of you said you're working on short stories rather than novels, but I am definitely participating in Nanowrimo this year. If any of you decide to do it and want to be buddies, please let me know. I'm laieanna on that website too. Let me know what your name is on the Nanowrimo site and I'll add you as a buddy. Post here or email me at hodgepodgepoint@gmail.com

I know that I'm late coming to the discussion with this, but I just wanted to pull the legs off my own personal experience and drop it into the frying pan.

The year before last I threw a very half-hearted attempt at NaNoWriMo and innevitably failed to complete.

Last year, I decided I was going to *actually* do it, wound myself up, waited for October 31st and lit the blue touch paper. My completed effort ran to around 53,000 words, which I had completed and submitted prior to the deadline. Go me...

Super. But the effort of spewing all of that wordage out in so short a time - and in a way that totally contradicts my normal working practice - actually *strained* something, and I couldn't get back on track with my other writing projects until mid-January/February '07.

I vowed never to do it again, and although something in the back of my head is tickling, trying to persuade me that it would be good to use the fixed time frame as a motivator to try to have a high-productivity month, I remain reluctant to get involved again.

Geoff