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I still haven’t done the challenge you set me on Fb, so the chance of me writing 50,0000000 words in the space of a month is quite slim 🙂
Is there a version for NaNoFiMo? (National Novel Finishing Month) I really must get moving on the WIP, but I’ve stalled with everything else going on and I cannot get motivated to write at all. Keep knitting instead…
@squidge They’re a lot more relaxed these days about what qualifies – it’s pretty much 50k words of anything. I just find the discipline it gives useful over the course of a month
So does that mean we have to come clean on our daily word count? Oh Lord, I really WILL have to buck my ideas up!
Am I allowed the 1st November off? Interview day for candidates for the new vicar…and guess who’s one of the interviewers? 😉I’m doing NaNo this year. In process of planning new novel ready to start. I’m on there as ThrowingCopper if anyone wants to buddy up? ?
(Think I’m already buddies with you, Ath and Daed.)
If you take notes during the interview Squidge you can totally count that towards your totals 😉
It’s not ideal to miss the first day, but NaNo gives you a running daily target based on what you’ve already done. It’s quite addictive chasing the targets, I find
I might do it. Even if only to get some stuff on paper as I’m nowhere near ready to actually write anything new. Plus I’ve got my sister coming for a long week in the middle of November… When do you have to commit?
Tempted. I don’t think I’d hit the target what with, yanno, issues. BUt I do have a new wip that I need to get a move on and actually start, and it would be good to have an excuse not to edit for a while!
Never done it before – do you post your actual text or do you just input your word count each day?
Just done the maths – assuming no writing over the weekends, that’s ~ 2,270 words a day. *preemptively dies*
I didn’t really enjoy it the one year I did it. I stopped using Strava for cycling for the same reason, namely that it becomes, for me, about word count and targets than actual enjoyment of the activity, and that can affect quality. But that’s just my take. People do produce publisher-ready material from it. I probably should do it again. I quite like #100wordsaday – that’s a bit more my speed. 🙂
EDIT: or was it #100daysofwriting? That one. No targets, no stress, just a small and regular commitment to oneself and one’s WIP.
@raine I made it 1,666 words a day – 50K over 30 days. Have the counts changed?
Edit: ah, never mind – you did say excluding weekends – I’m half-asleep today!
😀 @jd73 Although 1,666 isn’t much less daunting!
So I am signing up, but making myself no promises. We’ll see. I need to do some serious planning before it kicks off. I think I’m raine_clouds on there.
It’s not my cup of tea but I’m supportive of anyone who does it. I know someone who sets her own word count for the month and that works well for her.
NaNo generally works for me because I am patchy about my output the rest of the time, and my biggest challenge is just getting enough words down on paper to work on. That said, I can totally understand why it doesn’t work for some people, and in fairness there have been years when it worked brilliantly for me and other years when I churned out 50,000 all-but-useless words. And other years when I missed the target and felt bad about it, but still wrote something worthwhile
@raine – you just post your word counts for each day, but towards the end of the month you can ‘validate’, which is to say, you paste all your written words into NaNo’s special word counting window, and it counts it and confirms your totals. This is so you can prove you’ve written what you say you’ve written, and also makes sure everyone is comparing like with like, as every word processor counts words in a slightly different way.
Can’t say I’ve ever felt tempted. I find rigid targets counter-productive, and I fear that if I were concerning myself with the number of my words rather than the quality I’d churn out crap. And I can’t bear to write crap, even temporarily. Quality over quantity for me, any day. Yes, I’m slow, but I usually get there in the end.
I’ve never had a problem writing crap, but I do have a problem allowing myself to. That’s one reason I find it useful sometimes. Focussing on a goal other than perfect sentences stops me getting tied up in knots and losing all interest in what I’m doing. There is a view that all the polishing should be left for the editing.
I completely understand, and I tend to have the same issue. For me, the fact that NaNo is only a month means I can feel a bit more comfortable turning down the quality filter. I do like to construct first drafts carefully (I don’t really know any other way) but that’s far from the main reason I don’t write much. For me, the main challenge is in getting the words down by writing material that is likely to be useful, rather than falling into the trap of writing stuff for the sake of it. The second time I did NaNo I had so little inspiration I ended up writing unmitigated dross which I effectively binned as soon as I got over the line. It was a good lesson in how not to do it. It can be a good way to get over yourself as well. there’s no time to muck about so you just have to get stuck into that pivotal scene you’ve been avoiding writing or whatever
I might sort of do it from the sidelines… use the general impetus and ground swell to push on with book 2. Very much doubt I’ll be hitting those targets, but I’d like to get some more chapters written.
Maybe we can have DeNoWriMo (Den novel writing month)
Yes, there’s something to be said for leaving all the polishing until the editing, and I’m sure it works for some, but not for me. If something I’ve written doesn’t satisfy me, it niggles at me until I’ve put it right.
Ditto @Richardb
Niggles like an itch in a sensitive spot. Impossible to leave.😀 @seagreen. Perhaps December could be a Den SloMoWriMo, because December and writing do not appear to ever co-exist anyway!
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