As Stargrace reminded me on Twitter, NaNoWriMo is only two months away.
Now last year I decided to join on the second day. I had no outline or story idea, done no preparation, and was already a day behind. It didn’t turn out well. Still, I don’t regret it at all and I do think that I learned somethings.
So, this year I’m going to give it another shot, only this time with some actual preparation.
NaNoWriMo in November
I won’t be able to do it this year. I’ll be busy up to the 16th of Nov. I don’t think I can bang out 50,000 words in 1/2 a month.
I still can’t believe that not only did you do 50k last year but you did it on your fumoggin iPhone. You are crazy.
I sorta-kinda want to participate this year but with my job I just don’t see having the time to complete anywhere near the 50K word goal.
While that is the official goal, that doesn’t have to be the only one. I only got about 1500 words last year, but I’m still glad I gave it a shot because of some of the lessons learned.
I did buy and read the novel about NaNoWriMo that the founder wrote. Are you prepping yet?
I bought that same novel, haven’t actually read it yet. I’ll have to add that to my prep list.
Yes, I’ve started prepping. I am brainstorming two different ideas, very roughly, not even outline level stuff. My goal is to have a specific idea outlined and any background work done before November 1st, to give myself a good shot at finishing this year.
I’ve had a basic idea / backstory I’ve been tossing around for over a year but still don’t have any fully defined characters and more importantly, no specific conflict yet. No story without conflict. Well, in the big picture there is good vs. bad but it’s amorphous and I haven’t thought of a specific way in which the “bad guys” are “bad” so to speak.
If I attempt NaNoWriMo this year though I will drop that and try something new and more basic since I haven’t actually done any fiction writing in nearly 20 years.
Conflict is always the hard part for me. I come up with new worlds/settings all the time, but I always have difficulty with adding a conflict. I guess I just don’t want to mess up the perfect world that I’ve built.