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Gosh! It's THAT time of year again!
Last year Nanowrimo was lost due to other stuff - operations, writing retreats, general OMG business, so I am really pleased to be in a position to do it again. I've been a part of Nano since 2004, and have really loved to see just how big a thing Nanowrimo has become.
Nano is a funny thing. It has so many aspects to it that I delight in seeing the ways new members learn the ropes, and the steep learning curves ahead. There's always something new to learn, and every time I've done it I've learnt something amazing. The first time I did it, I didn't finish. I learned I wasn't ready! I was about to fall pregnant, and was busy running around selling an awful lot of lingerie and learning more about running a home business than I did about writing. I also fell pregnant at the end of November, which drained an awful lot of my energy! I also went to Margaret River, and Sydney all in November that year!
2005 is really the year when I wrote and wrote and wrote. I was worried about my wordcount, and started off including *everythign*, uncluding long email posts and LJ posts too. But in the end I blitzed it at 70K, so I could have worried a bit less and been fine. Most of this was my original Book One of the Phat Phantasy I originally wrote in highschool. Key thigns I learned: I could write. I could write fast. Writing with friends is more fun than writing without. I could produce words by the truckload.
And I just didn't stop. 2006 is littered with the remains of wordcounts, and I just kept going. I didn't do Nano again, but that year I think I clocked up about 300K of writing, so I wasn't really all that worried. My trilogy ended up being a quintuplet, averaging about 90K per novel. I learnt that I can write a loosely structured novel of about 90K in 6 weeks, and did so twice.
And then I stopped.
I started editing instead, which is a completely different skillset, and unfortunately does not include any funky wordcounts. It could, but not when you're deleting large swathes :-) So anyway, I spent some time rewriting novels, and then in 2008, I did Nanowrimo again, and completed much to my happiness, dead on 50K for an intended e-book market.
2008 is the Selkie novel, which I am currently editing again. The selkie porn was a huge learning curve, thanks to some extroardinarily generous help from chaosmanor. I've also come into a writing group, a subset of the KSP. We all had novels to crit, so we did so. Four points of view per novel gives you some very good thoughts, ideas, and problems with work with. I've been concentrating very very hard on craft for the last two years. I have learned a stunning amount.
And this brings us to this year. This yeah, I want to throw aside all the rules and regulations and expectations, and just write. I want to work in the creative flow, and just see what happens. I'm not worried about form or structure, plans, crisies, highlights, dialogue, anything. I just want to see what happens when I let the creative slow strike me. I want to splash colour, slash canvas, create and delete and scribble and scrawl, carelessly and hurriedly, and see what shapes appear.
And at the end of day 1, I'm at 10% of my goal.
Daily Round Up:
Today: 5220
Yesterday: 0
New Words: 5220
To goal: 44,780
Last year Nanowrimo was lost due to other stuff - operations, writing retreats, general OMG business, so I am really pleased to be in a position to do it again. I've been a part of Nano since 2004, and have really loved to see just how big a thing Nanowrimo has become.
Nano is a funny thing. It has so many aspects to it that I delight in seeing the ways new members learn the ropes, and the steep learning curves ahead. There's always something new to learn, and every time I've done it I've learnt something amazing. The first time I did it, I didn't finish. I learned I wasn't ready! I was about to fall pregnant, and was busy running around selling an awful lot of lingerie and learning more about running a home business than I did about writing. I also fell pregnant at the end of November, which drained an awful lot of my energy! I also went to Margaret River, and Sydney all in November that year!
2005 is really the year when I wrote and wrote and wrote. I was worried about my wordcount, and started off including *everythign*, uncluding long email posts and LJ posts too. But in the end I blitzed it at 70K, so I could have worried a bit less and been fine. Most of this was my original Book One of the Phat Phantasy I originally wrote in highschool. Key thigns I learned: I could write. I could write fast. Writing with friends is more fun than writing without. I could produce words by the truckload.
And I just didn't stop. 2006 is littered with the remains of wordcounts, and I just kept going. I didn't do Nano again, but that year I think I clocked up about 300K of writing, so I wasn't really all that worried. My trilogy ended up being a quintuplet, averaging about 90K per novel. I learnt that I can write a loosely structured novel of about 90K in 6 weeks, and did so twice.
And then I stopped.
I started editing instead, which is a completely different skillset, and unfortunately does not include any funky wordcounts. It could, but not when you're deleting large swathes :-) So anyway, I spent some time rewriting novels, and then in 2008, I did Nanowrimo again, and completed much to my happiness, dead on 50K for an intended e-book market.
2008 is the Selkie novel, which I am currently editing again. The selkie porn was a huge learning curve, thanks to some extroardinarily generous help from chaosmanor. I've also come into a writing group, a subset of the KSP. We all had novels to crit, so we did so. Four points of view per novel gives you some very good thoughts, ideas, and problems with work with. I've been concentrating very very hard on craft for the last two years. I have learned a stunning amount.
And this brings us to this year. This yeah, I want to throw aside all the rules and regulations and expectations, and just write. I want to work in the creative flow, and just see what happens. I'm not worried about form or structure, plans, crisies, highlights, dialogue, anything. I just want to see what happens when I let the creative slow strike me. I want to splash colour, slash canvas, create and delete and scribble and scrawl, carelessly and hurriedly, and see what shapes appear.
And at the end of day 1, I'm at 10% of my goal.
Daily Round Up:
Today: 5220
Yesterday: 0
New Words: 5220
To goal: 44,780
