NaNoWriMo 2008 in less than 12 hours
Oh man, am I ready for this? I have a story with a decent plot and some nice twists, I have characters I really like, the summary actually ENDS well. Three levels of climax. Water, water, food. Hot pads for when my arms ache, a note and writing progam. The excitement and nerves! I WILL win this year. I am in a better place than last year's failure. I will bring my love of these characters to life. I will have fun and I will hit at minimum, 50,000 words! Yeah I think I'm ready.
- Login Or register To Post Comments
- Send To A Friend
RSS- Bookmark With:
Abraham Mertens says:
Sounds like you've done this before
Hello Scott,
Since you've done this before I wonder if you'd be willing to give a first timer some hints. I have a rough outline but nothing concrete yet. Is this a recipe for disaster?
-Abe
Abraham Mertens, General Counsel, Red Room Omnimedia Corporation
Scott Couchman says:
Nanowrimo blinders
Hi Abraham. Sorry I didn't respond to you until now. How did you do at Nano? I haven't been to RedRoom before, and am not much of a blogger, so when I signed up here, I wrote a little then totally focused on my novel and didn't hit a forum or a blog for all of November.
To (reeeeeaaallly belatedly) answer your question, I don't think it matters, depending on how well you can fill in from the outline in your head. It is totally individual. I'm coming to the realization that the books ABOUT writing (how to get that manuscript done) are generally just that writer's method. I think every writer has their own. My own has become a total amalgam of like 5-6 methods. Nanowrimo was great because it got me out of the "I want to write a novel" mode and into the "I wrote a novel now... How did I really do that?"
When I won in 2006 I didn't even have a decent outline, I had no clue what to write in the middle of the book. And looking at that novel, it does show. It was an incredible experience and got me into the "How the heck did I really do that?" section.
For me, if I have the time for it, the rough outline is fun because it tells you kind of where you have to go, but doesn't depress you where the story is weak and make you think about how horrible your plot is, and any kind of depression is a killer for writing it in a month.
For this year's nano, I kind of ran out of time getting a more structured outline in place with summaries, etc. The sections of the story where I did have all that were super easy to write and read decently. The parts where I did it more seat of my pants show a lot more struggle. This year, I knew, though I wouldn't have the time to do a lot, so I had to opimize as much of my time with a semi-detailed outline so any time I started writing, I could see exactly where I was and pick up my writing at speed within a couple minutes.
I felt so relatively good about those first few chapters and the end (the parts I had more detail on) this year, that I am going to try the same approach for other books to write.
This year I am totally in the "writer's high." I want to either start outlining/summarizing a new novel, or edit my 2006 one then the 2008 one.