Sadly, unlike last time (can I link to it again? Please?) this one slightly ran out of control... so although I reached the 50k word limit and thus am considered a 'winner' of the NaNoWriMo thing, this victory is marred slightly by the fact that I am only about two-thirds of the way through the plot... so there will be more writing. So, no, you can't read it now. Which I know you're all just gutted about. Yes, you are.
So work must continue. Urgh. Really don't have much enthusiasm for the prospect right now... but who knows, hopefully sometime in the new year I will be able to post the complete manuscript for my latest oeuvre - 'Rain over Xanadu', a trashy bit of science fiction from the people who brought you (here's the link, here it is here it is! Yay!) 'Government Joe Must Die'. This one is rather darker, though, and for sci-fi buffs, it owes more to Alastair Reynolds and Kim Stanley Robinson than... whoever I said GJmD owed a lot to, I forget. Someone slightly more frivolous, probably.
So, that's it for another year... except it isn't. Because I will finish the damn thing. Argh. I leave you with these words from our sponsors:
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.
6 comments:
Well , congratulations from me! I have always struggled with word counts. Not the actual arithmetic, but the generation of so many words. Whether it was 1000-1500 word essays at school, or 10000 word reports in Uni, or even the ???? word PhD thesis, size has always been my issue (?!). So. Respect!
More acclamation and public affirmation that size really does matter! (You da man, Moom!)
Ditto. Cranking out 50,000 words sounds easy but trying to do it while saying something is a different matter all together.
Give us a heads-up next time this contest rolls around and maybe I'll join in.
Be delighted. It was calum put me onto it in the first place, in any case, so the least I Can do is pass it along. As you say, I found the biggest stumbling block was trying to make sense and try to make sure what the characters were doing was not obviously stupid.
Yeah - therein lies a sad tale. He started off with Haiku... but he just kept seeking bigger and bigger thrills. Before I knew it he was on to full blown story-writing. Exercising his razor wit and superior vocabulary... Don't let it happen to you!
Too late for me - I'm aiming for aversion therapy now.
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