NaNoWriMo 2021

[Sandy]

November will soon be upon us, and with it comes NaNowriMo.

I'm participating this year, and like every year I'll be doing it in pen.

Anyone else planning on participating?

I'm Sandy_Fyfe there, if anyone want to buddy up there.

Or we could come here and boast or moan about how we are (not) doing.

I'm writing a thriller set on the Costa Del Sol. A reattempt at a previous failure, which I think I've since lost (oops).

[Bibliophile]

I'm participating. This is the first year I'll be writing with fountain pens for it. My goal is a tiny fraction of 50,000 words, because there's no way I can pull that off at this point in my life. I don't friend people on the NaNoWriMo website because, when I first started participating in the CampNaNoWriMos, I realized that if I joined cabins or chatted with people while on the website, I got a lot less work done. So between that, and how much I despise the layout of the site redesign (and what they did to the forums) I only use the NaNo website exclusively for personal tracking. But I'd be happy to chat about our experiences with you here, if you want. I always like talking with other writers. I'm working predominantly on nonfiction this year -- memoir and a series of essays.

[Sailor Kenshin]

I'm trying, though I don't have a word count and I'm not sure of the rules. A lot of my notes and Progress Report, however, are being done in fountain pen and ink.

[scrivelry]

I did not count up words every night as I went along and now have lots of them to count wish me luck, everyone.

[Sailor Kenshin]

I did not count up words every night as I went along and now have lots of them to count wish me luck, everyone.

Good luck, scrivelry!

Wait, is this NaNoWriMo a mere word count-test, or a coherent draft?

[scrivelry]

Thank you!

It has to be a draft. I have never heard anyone say it has to be coherent.
The whole point of NaNo is supposed to be to do the thing you've been wanting to do, no matter how badly you do it. You can't edit what you never wrote. So you write 50,000 words. Some years I am not at the end of the novel at that point. One year I had the protagonist reading the posts I'd made in a knitting forum, on his lunch hour, to get my count to 50,000, but it counts - all written in November.

So in my case it is going to be 50,000 words of novel(s) draft. But we have lots of NaNo rebels.

This is my seventeenth year doing this, and I have always finished. I've never even tried to edit anything to publishability for numerous reasons - not the same reasons all the time. I could write a thesis on what NaNo has and has not done for me.

Now, off to count...

[Sailor Kenshin]

Well, I failed. No finished draft but close.

Still gonna continue writing this anyway.

[scrivelry]

Well, I failed. No finished draft but close.

Still gonna continue writing this anyway.



No. You did not fail.

There is no failure in NaNo.

Since the whole point is to get you to write and stretch and do something maybe you would not have done otherwise, if you wrote one word more than you would have, you have succeeded.

NaNo is the only thing I have ever done where the terminology is not "Win or lose" but "Win or not finish."

My novel(s) are far from done, but I am soooo happy with my work this year because I wrote in two genres, one of which I have never tried before, and because for the first time, after 17 years of doing this every year, I am at a point where I can see possibly getting one or both of these things to a point where I could submit them.

If we allow "failing" in NaNo, then we are going to have to allow crying in baseball, and where's that gonna take us?

ETA: I did finish. It took me hours to count all my words and add them up, and I was only short between two and three thousand words, so I wrote a bunch more and got my 50,000.
I will admit, though, that in order not to be counting feverishly at 11:49 on the 30th I did the last few thousand on the computer, which could count them for me. I have not figured out yet if I write differently on a keyboard than I do by hand.

[Sailor Kenshin]

Well, I failed. No finished draft but close.

Still gonna continue writing this anyway.



No. You did not fail.

There is no failure in NaNo.

Since the whole point is to get you to write and stretch and do something maybe you would not have done otherwise, if you wrote one word more than you would have, you have succeeded.

NaNo is the only thing I have ever done where the terminology is not "Win or lose" but "Win or not finish."

My novel(s) are far from done, but I am soooo happy with my work this year because I wrote in two genres, one of which I have never tried before, and because for the first time, after 17 years of doing this every year, I am at a point where I can see possibly getting one or both of these things to a point where I could submit them.

If we allow "failing" in NaNo, then we are going to have to allow crying in baseball, and where's that gonna take us?



Nowhere good, I imagine. 😜

Thanks. And congratulations! I have no idea how many words I've got, but all that's needed now for a complete, actual draft, is three 'bridge' chapters. Already have the end and next-to-end chapters written.

[scrivelry]

Well, I failed. No finished draft but close.

Still gonna continue writing this anyway.



No. You did not fail.

There is no failure in NaNo.

Since the whole point is to get you to write and stretch and do something maybe you would not have done otherwise, if you wrote one word more than you would have, you have succeeded.

NaNo is the only thing I have ever done where the terminology is not "Win or lose" but "Win or not finish."

My novel(s) are far from done, but I am soooo happy with my work this year because I wrote in two genres, one of which I have never tried before, and because for the first time, after 17 years of doing this every year, I am at a point where I can see possibly getting one or both of these things to a point where I could submit them.

If we allow "failing" in NaNo, then we are going to have to allow crying in baseball, and where's that gonna take us?



Nowhere good, I imagine. 😜

Thanks. And congratulations! I have no idea how many words I've got, but all that's needed now for a complete, actual draft, is three 'bridge' chapters. Already have the end and next-to-end chapters written.

I am a pantser - working on the theory that sometimes you write to find out what you have to say, I lurched - and it was lurching, not launching - into NaNo this year with one book which was a murder mystery in which the victim did not die and one of which is an odd book about aliens that the protagonist of the first book was reading. I had vague hopes of making these books bounce back and forth between each other in some profound way. (Falls on floor laughing at self)

What I now have is a lot of stuff that is what most people would only consider prep work. But who cares? If this is how it works for me this time, this is how it works for me this time. Maybe next time I will start off with an outline and character sheets and all that...

ETA: Duh, and congrats to you too!!

[FredRydr]

I can't keep up with these internet acronyms. What has Estimated Time of Arrival morphed into?

[Jon Szanto]

I can't keep up with these internet acronyms. What has Estimated Time of Arrival morphed into?

Commonly put as an afterthought: Edit To Add.

[Sailor Kenshin]

I am one of those pantsers myself (which seriously needs a better name) but started typing in my Bridge chapters today. From all the rough, hand-scribbled in fountain pen notes.

Not sure how to describe the book. Semi-supernatural, semi-suspense character study?

January 20, 2022: Draft finished. Revisions begun. This has taken on a life of its own.