NaNo Worksheet: Get Yours Now

Every month I make a writing goals worksheet, and NaNo month is certainly no exception. I also have transformed it into a PDF version which is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByKmSBhOQ1FSSDE3T2Izb25yRDQ/edit?usp=sharing

The rules I went by: NaNoWriMo has a goal of 50000 words in 30 days. I planned on taking the Sabbath off. Subtracting the 4 Sundays you'd need to write 1924 words every writing day. (If you keep a Saturday or Friday Sabbath, there are 5 days off which means you have to write 2000 words each working day.)

The work sheet has a column in which the total word count for the day is given. The next column is to write each day's actual final word count. The wider 3rd column is for jotting down the word count after each writing session, since one often has several writing sessions a day during NaNo.

It's actually fairly easy to make up a worksheet like this with your word processing software, but not everyone has learned to do this yet and so I thought I'd share my version.

Questions: Do you have any system, like my worksheet, to keep track of your daily word counts? What's your method like? Does it work well for you?

My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt

NaNoWriMo: Challenge Accepted!

Peggy Eddleman: Will Write For Cookies: This NaNoNewb wants to know: Are you in?
I came across the link above while scanning through the blogs I follow. (Please click on the post and read the link.) I myself am not a newb to Nano, but I had already decided I wasn't going to participate this November.

But in the past couple of days I've had the idea of doing a major change-of-pace project to outwit my chronic writers-block problem. I've had the idea of writing a gothic romance novel.

I know. EW, ICK, romance! It could lead to KISSING! But as a kid I read Jane Eyre, sort of the forerunner of the modern gothic romance. And I read Victoria Holt's Mistress of Mellyn when I was a teenager or thereabouts. (Victoria Holt also wrote under the name Jean Plaidy, writing historical novels about British queens under that name, and I loved Jean Plaidy books when I was young.)

My idea, which is more as a treatment/cure for my chronic writers-block than anything, is to outline Jane Eyre and Mistress of Mellyn, and from that create my own 'typical-gothic' outline complete with an orphaned-and-threatened heroine and a brooding, secretive man as love interest.

And then, I'm going to put the story in outer space. Specifically, in the Terran-empire-type setting I've been creating for my Starship Destine project, on a planet bought and settled a few generations back by an eccentric family, whose descendants now are that world's aristocratic caste.

My strategy will be to NOT reveal any details of the work save the brief outline I've already put up on the Nano web site (my profile at Nano), and some character names when I've devised them. I will be interacting on the NaNo forums on a daily basis as well as posting updates on this blog or on my Facebook page. My nickname at Nano is Ilsabein, which seemed like a good idea nearly eight years ago when I first joined that site.

Are you participating in Nano this year? Why or why not? If so, what is your project this year. More importantly, do you have a strategy to get the most out of your participation this year? And what is your goal for this year's Nano?



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July Summary, August Goals

At the beginning of July I set for myself a number of writing and other goals. This is how I did with them.

1. I planned to finish my June Camp Nanowrimo novel, Esperanza/Zombie Dawn. I added some words, but then decided the whole thing needed to be reimagined yet again. I had only a few good working days the whole month.
2. I planned to work on learning Korean, particularly how to read the Korean alphabet. I have learned 144 words using BYKI (free language software). I also took up learning a bit of Latin as a break from the Korean.
3. I planned to get more exercise. I got a pedometer and write down my number of steps every night before I go to bed. I think I am increasing my activity level.
4. I planned to work on housecleaning and barn cleaning daily, and also to read Bible and Catechism more frequently. I did not do very well on these goals at all.

It was kind of a disappointing writing month, perhaps post-Nano letdown. The good news is that this morning I had some fresh enthusiasm for a writing project, and signed up for Camp Nanowrimo in August. My nickname there is nissalovescats, if you participate you might be able to request me as a cabin mate.

For July I had two worksheets I used to keep track of my many goals, one for writing goals and one for other goals. Given my poor performance, I decided to reduce my goals for August and keep track of them all on one sheet. Here are my August goals.

1. Work on Camp Nanowrimo with my novella, The Song of Making People Die. I got the idea from a TV show which mentioned a 1933 Hungarian song, Gloomy Sunday, implicated in a number of suicides. After I finish the novella, I will begin another novella or short story featuring the same main character as the first, a young woman who owns a spaceship and runs a transport/trading business among the planets. I plan to continue my ritual from last time of posting my word count daily at the Nano site, and also on a word count meter here, to keep me motivated.
2. Continue to learn Korean words, reaching a goal of 200 known words. 
3. Learn Latin words--- goal of 100 words total, and listen to the ecclesiastical Latin audios I've downloaded for my chosen Latin book, Lingua Latina.
4. Continue with the exercise thing, recording my daily paces and trying to keep it up to a good level. (I hope that my desire to keep my number of paces high will motivate me on the whole house and barn cleaning thing.)
5. NOT worry about daily blogging and other internet distractions.

So, what about you? Have you met the goals you set for July? Are you planning goals for August? How do you keep track of your month's work and how do you keep yourself motivated?

Remember, a zombie apocalypse does not excuse you from meeting your daily word count goal!

July Summary, August Goals

At the beginning of July I set for myself a number of writing and other goals. This is how I did with them.

1. I planned to finish my June Camp Nanowrimo novel, Esperanza/Zombie Dawn. I added some words, but then decided the whole thing needed to be reimagined yet again. I had only a few good working days the whole month.
2. I planned to work on learning Korean, particularly how to read the Korean alphabet. I have learned 144 words using BYKI (free language software). I also took up learning a bit of Latin as a break from the Korean.
3. I planned to get more exercise. I got a pedometer and write down my number of steps every night before I go to bed. I think I am increasing my activity level.
4. I planned to work on housecleaning and barn cleaning daily, and also to read Bible and Catechism more frequently. I did not do very well on these goals at all.

It was kind of a disappointing writing month, perhaps post-Nano letdown. The good news is that this morning I had some fresh enthusiasm for a writing project, and signed up for Camp Nanowrimo in August. My nickname there is nissalovescats, if you participate you might be able to request me as a cabin mate.

For July I had two worksheets I used to keep track of my many goals, one for writing goals and one for other goals. Given my poor performance, I decided to reduce my goals for August and keep track of them all on one sheet. Here are my August goals.

1. Work on Camp Nanowrimo with my novella, The Song of Making People Die. I got the idea from a TV show which mentioned a 1933 Hungarian song, Gloomy Sunday, implicated in a number of suicides. After I finish the novella, I will begin another novella or short story featuring the same main character as the first, a young woman who owns a spaceship and runs a transport/trading business among the planets. I plan to continue my ritual from last time of posting my word count daily at the Nano site, and also on a word count meter here, to keep me motivated.
2. Continue to learn Korean words, reaching a goal of 200 known words. 
3. Learn Latin words--- goal of 100 words total, and listen to the ecclesiastical Latin audios I've downloaded for my chosen Latin book, Lingua Latina.
4. Continue with the exercise thing, recording my daily paces and trying to keep it up to a good level. (I hope that my desire to keep my number of paces high will motivate me on the whole house and barn cleaning thing.)
5. NOT worry about daily blogging and other internet distractions.

So, what about you? Have you met the goals you set for July? Are you planning goals for August? How do you keep track of your month's work and how do you keep yourself motivated?

Remember, a zombie apocalypse does not excuse you from meeting your daily word count goal!

Are you really cut out to be a writer? Some common symptoms

Ever encountered a would-be writer that was plainly not cut out to be a writer? There are the ones who've seen a report on TV about the advances paid to a top best-selling author and decide writing is easy money since you do it sitting down, and so they sit down at the keyboard and bang out something for those fools with nothing better to do with their time but read books.

There are also those who don't have the unrealistic money motive, but who think being an author would raise their status, or make them cool, or whatever. Some of these even read books, if only Harlequin romances. But what they write tends to sound like a rehash of their latest fight with their boyfriend or boss. Or else it's something that sounds like pre-teen fan fiction all about getting Harry Potter or Captain Kirk to notice a character who is suspiciously like the author.

Sometimes I think Nanowrimo brings these hopeless non-writers out of the woodwork. The premise of Nano is that anyone can write a novel. The truth is that while most people can bat out enough words or attempted words to meet the word count goal, the result may not be recognizable as a novel. And even if it turns out to be recognizably novel-ish, it may not be anything that another human being would ever care to read.

This brings out some real fears in those of us who dream of being real writers--- even those who've met with some success. It's not that these attempted writers are clogging up the publishers' slush piles or flooding the self-publishing market. It's the fear 'What if I'm one of them? What if I am in denial about the quality of my writing? What if everyone who's said something nice about my work just pities me?'

How can you tell if you are a writer-with-potential rather than a hopeless non-writer? Here are a list of symptoms that can help distinguish the real-writer from the writing-attempting non-writer:

Symptom 1: Lifelong history of making up stories One of my childhood memories involves watching a favorite television program in the afternoon--- Star Trek, Dark Shadows, Batman, Hogan's Heroes--- and then going out of the house, taking a walk, and making up stories based on the television show I'd just watched. I made up stories in my head all the time. Sometimes my real-life environment showed up in the stories, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I did mash-ups--- a number of Star Trek characters were thrown back into time to visit Stalag 13, the prisoner-of-war camp in Hogan's Heroes. This mental fiction didn't always follow the rules for story-telling--- I'd jump around from interesting bit to interesting bit, go backwards in the story, or replay the best bits endlessly. And it was heavy on non-original characters from television or books. But it was a seed for the more original stories I make up as an adult. (My current head-story involves fighting zombies in Mexico.)

Symptom 2: Compulsive reading If you have nothing else handy to read in the morning, do you read breakfast cereal boxes? Bookcase assembly instructions from an already assembled bookcase? A 2006 goat artificial insemination catalog? The fact is, people with the potential to be writers read, all the time. They read more than one category of book, and when nothing better is available they read whatever is to hand. If you have a history of compulsive reading dating back to childhood, if you read a great deal to this day, that's a sign of writing potential.

Sympton 3: Language awareness You don't have to have had top marks in English grammar class to be a writer. But writers do have or develop language awareness--- an interest in words, their meanings and spelling, their use in comprehensible English sentences.... When you were in grade school, did you ever read the dictionary for fun? Did you ever learn to spell interesting words that weren't going to be on any test? And today, what happens when you encounter an unfamiliar word in your reading? Are you able to cope, or do you put the book down. Not all writers are the kind of people who win spelling bees and know how to diagram sentences with confidence. But the writer's tool kit is full of words and grammar and spelling patterns. If you don't know the tools, aren't interested in them, and aren't willing to learn about them, you won't be able to function as a writer.

Symptom 4: Detachment If you were popular in high school and part of the social whirl, you probably didn't observe things very well. You were too much a part of things to be objective about them. Someone who wasn't so popular, who was often an observer rather than a participant, could probably tell you a lot of things about that part of your life that you were too busy to notice. Observation is an essential skill for a writer, and accurate observation requires you to be a bit detached from the subject. This doesn't mean you have to be a lifelong social outcast (though it helps). You just have to be able to not always be at the center of things, the focus of everyone's attention.

So--- how many symptoms do YOU have? Are there any symptoms that ought to have made the list but didn't?

My Nano novel isn't failing badly enough.... yet

My nano novel Bakoun has been stalled for some time, as readers can see from my lack-of-progress meter. But that level of failure isn't good enough. If I'm going to fail, I want to do a good job of it! So I have the following plans:

1. Everything I have written so far is to be junked. Yes, there is a character or two I can keep--- well, one character, anyway. But all the actual word count is to be zeroed.

2. I'm changing the time in which the story is set. Well, actually, the story starts in the Victorian era and then goes to 1984, 1994, 2004 and so on until the actual near-future invasion starts. I'm thinking of setting the whole thing in the Victorian and or Edwardian era.

3. The setting gives me the chance to go all steampunky. Though anything I write could never be true steampunk. According to my sources (random internet sites) steampunk has to be correctly punk by being in rebellion against a prescribed list of things. I never rebel against the correct things in the correct manner.

4. My new plans require me to write up a brief timeline of Esperanto history, and of the eugenics/euthanasia movement. There are lots of cool quotes about the need for 'lethal chambers' which I can work in.

5. Another research requirement: I must throw together an outline of an alien invasion novel (Worldwar: In the Balance) so that I can see how a real writer handles a global story with multiple groups of characters, including alien ones.

6. The Korean characters I was planning to introduce will now be living in the American West, and running a Chinese restaurant (which serves Korean food, since Americans of the time can't tell the difference.)

7. There will be a boy named Alf from Linz, Austria who might be Hitler. There is a man who may be a time traveler who wants to kill him.

8. There will be robots. Big ones. And steampunky computers. Perhaps the result of alien technology being leaked? Perhaps also a steampunky 'blood-reader' machine that scans DNA?

9. Given these plans, by the end of NaNoWriMo, my word count should be around zero. Is it too early to think about National Novel Finishing Month???

GothNoWriMo is creeping up on us.....

GothNoWriMo, or Gothic Novel Writing Month, starts the first of October. It's dedicated to the writing of Gothic/Horror/Creepy or Vampire-related fiction. The related message boards are at: http://gothnowrimo.proboards.com/index.cgi?

I wasn't planning on participating. I wasn't planning on participating in any more WriMos. In fact, I had been in the process of recognizing the unpleasant fact about my writing--- that since I have never, as yet, finished a novel which I began, that at this point in time it is unlikely that I shall ever have an actual career as a writer. (Or as anything else for that matter. Having Asperger Syndrome sucks.)

But a suitable GothNo idea jumped up and bit me on the rear echelons. It's set in my own private fantasy world, Erileth, in the Northern Quintile of the Important Continent. It features the daughter of a human man and a shape-shifting 구미호 (gumiho, or nine-tailed fox).

I don't know much about the story yet except that the daughter doesn't know much about her non-human heritage but discovers it in the course of the story. I've decided not to do much in the way of pre-planning.

I've set a word-count goal of 25000 words--- one half of the NaNoWriMo goal in other words. Which means either the story will be half done or less, or else it will be more of a novella than a novel. I don't care at this point. Taking these things seriously will just wake up my failure-jinx and I want to leave him out of it this October.

So, that's what I'm doing for GothNo. Anyone out there doing GothNo? Or NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org/)? Let me know the gory details!

How Fiction Writers can Learn Story Structure

Working on Nano this year I've run across the same problem I always have--- I can think up story beginnings just fine, but what then? I've started novel after novel without completing. I've even written outlines for a few, but the only part of the outlines that seemed to be any good was the beginning.

Recently I bought a few books on story structure, outlining, and similar topics. They are:
Story Structure Architect: A Writer's Guide to Building Dramatic Situations and Compelling Characters
Book in a Month: The Fool-Proof System for Writing a Novel in 30 Days



Both of these books are written by Victoria Lynn Schmidt. The first one is most helpful in that it introduces the traditional story structure of three acts. The first act contains: a setup, the mood or tone, a hook, catalyst or inciting incident, the serious problem/goal, introduction of the villain and main characters, and a turning point. In the second act: the problem intensifies, there is a temporary triumph, a reversal, a dark moment, and another turning point. In the third act there is the final obstacle, the climax, and the resolution. (All these elements are described in a bit more detail in the book.

This was so helpful! Today I took my current work-in-progress, a steampunk story called 'The Aether Key' and jotted down some notes as to how I saw the story going going through all these steps. When I was done I had a rudimentary outline in which the story progressed nicely to a satisfactory ending, not the vague and unsatisfactory ending I had in other outlines I have written.

The second book, called 'Book in a Month' is even more helpful. It gives a step-by-step daily guide to writing a novel in a month OR for writing a detailed novel outline in a month. This is so helpful to me because I have such a hard time creating good work habits--- in particular I don't know how much is enough work for one day, so when I quit for the day no matter how much I've done I feel like a quitter.

Today--- doing day 2 of the BIAM (book in a month) schedule, I completed my assigned task--- to write 10 scene cards for the ten most important scenes in the book. In order to do that I had to do the task I described above where I jotted down how the story would progress through the steps of the traditional story structure.

I feel optimistic with this new approach. I think it might be a real help for other writers who, like me, are struggling with Asperger's/Autism Spectrum disorders or other things that might hinder them from writing success. For me, I wonder if my ASD has made it more difficult to discern story structure in the books I've read and made me get so caught up in the details I couldn't see the big-picture aspects.

Victoria Schmidt has a Yahoo group for writers following her method, called VBIAMClub. It does seem to be still active as there were 148 posts this month, but I can't see them as the moderator must approve new group members.

COMMENT PROMPTS:
Have you used Book in a Month's schedule to write a book or outline? Please comment on how it worked for you, or if you are considering trying it.
ALSO: If you are willing, tell one odd detail about your current Work-In-Progress. I'll start: in my story, set in 1868, Adolf Hitler's father, Alois Schicklgruber, along with his mistress at the time, are in the US working out some details concerning customs inspections. At the story's conclusion Alois decides to marry his mistress and stay in the US, thus preventing the birth of Adolf Hitler.

My Writing's Really gone to Hell this Nano

This year for National Novel Writing Month, I'm working on a project called 'Famine of the Heart' which is a dumb title since it sounds like a romance novel, and the actual story is a steampunk novel featuring sideshow freaks.

It's meant to be a lighthearted romp but the main theme seems to be.... hellfire. Specifically, the main character's mom is not saved (not in a state of grace) when she dies (killed while rescuing a child from a rampaging elephant.)

The main character Kerenza is quite sure her mother went to hell because: her mother had been guilty of the sin of adultery, when she is mortally injured she calls for a priest, but the priest who comes is actually an actor in a Roman collar, who cannot legitimately give absolution and also does not know how to encourage the dying woman to accept Christ.

The Christian theme of the story seems to be about forgiveness. Because Kerenza feels there is virtually no hope that her mother is anywhere else but in hell, she cannot forgive her father for having lured her mother into a life of adultery, and yet she knows that as a Christian she must forgive.

I know it's beginning to sound all boring, but there are also a lot of steam-powered machines and clockwork robots and stuff. And Kerenza is the only one who knows that an inventor's brother is Not To Be Trusted, and she really likes the inventor but they can't get involved because he's Jewish....

And then there are the conjoined twins, one of whom wants to be baptized and the other who doesn't want a drop of baptismal water touching him....

Which reminds me--- shouldn't I be working on my Nano novel right now? (I'm doing some outlining work for the next two days to figure out where the story is headed...)

My page at the NaNoWriMo web site.

Oh, No, it's Nanowrimo!!!

Ok, it's November. It's been November for a couple of days now. I've even flipped over the page of my calendar to November already. So why wasn't I aware until just now that National Novel Writing Month, AKA Nanowrimo, had started.

I'm going to do it, of course. I've never finished a nanowrimo, but during my first Nano, I did get saved.

It happened like this. I was a Norse Pagan and had been one for over a decade. I'd even edited a self-published Norse Pagan magazine until my stalker ruined that for me.

I was working at my Nano novel and had decided to pray about it. The question, as a Pagan, was which God to pray to--- Odin, Thor, Freya? As a Pagan I did not disbelieve in the God of Christianity, I just believed that He was just one tribal/ethnic God among many.

On impulse I decided to pray to the Christian God--- I gave Him a challenge. If He would give me measurable help with my novel, I would become a Christian.

I didn't really expect any help. And I didn't finish my Nanowrimo novel that year. But I did complete over 120 pages, which came out to 50 pages more than my previous best on any one writing project. And so I became a Christian.

I'm glad I did even though it meant I had to commit to a life of chastity because of my new faith, rather than being chaste in a unplanned way because of my unattractiveness.

So, participating in Nano is important to me even if I don't win. My nickname on the Nano site is 'ilsabein'. If you are participating in Nano, look me up!

Now, I must get to work naming the characters in my story (they are a family of freak show performers) and then I must start my first chapter. I have no idea where the story is going. But that's all right.

Warning: NaNoWriMo is coming!

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is almost upon us. Run! Hide! Or you may get caught up in the madness.

NaNoWriMo, for the happily clueless, is an international event where nerds get together in an attempt to write a 50000 word novel in one month. Massive caffeine intake is required, actual writing is optional. (Links to NaNo and other WriMos are somewhere in the sidebar.)

I've been doing a lot of Wrimos this year, from JanNoWriMo in January, to JulNoWriMo and AugNoWriMo, and at last, GothNoWriMo in October. It seems like I've written fewer words each WriMo, and I'm pretty WriMoed out.

So this November I've decided to do something else goofy. I'm working on not one, but two novels. One is a fantasy called Among the Lost which is about street urchins in a Dickensian environment and vampires. The other is a science fiction novel called Gems of Kolbe featuring soil-building pioneers on the terraformed world of Kolbe.

I've put up two word count meters for the novels above. They are located below the Technorati widget and before the social newt-working.

The idea is this: I work each day a little on each novel. About once a week or so I'll take the word count and put it up on the meters. It's going to be kind of like a race, only there's no prize since I don't know how to give a prize to an unpublished novel.

Since I set my word count goal at twice the sacred 50000 of NaNo, and I'm doing two, I'd say I deserve at least four months to work on it.

So--- those are my plans. If any writers out there have plans for doing or not doing NaNoWriMo, drop me a comment.

GothNoWriMo--- the spookier writing month

For fans of NaNoWriMo and the other WriMos: now there is GothNoWriMo, Gothic Novel Writing Month in October. Gotta love that!

Playing around with an old NaNo novel....

About two years ago I participated in NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) and I came closer than I ever have to finishing a novel. It gave me hope.

Recently I've decided to try to finish this novel as the central idea is one I like. The original version I kind of wrote myself into a corner; and after leaving it for a time I wanted to change a lot about it.

So this year for JanNo I started writing the story again. I haven't looked at the old manuscript, just started writing a new version.

It's been going slow..... And yesterday I kind of realized that everything I have written so far on it will be thrown out. I'm just not throwing it out yet because it will lower the word count.

But I do have some ideas: I'm going to center it more about the main character, Makie Hanuman. I've decided to make her younger--- in previous incarnations she was older and had a husband or lesbian lover (depending on which version). Now I think she is going to be college-age and suicidal. Her suicide attempt is interrupted by events in the story.

To make the story more writable, the other important characters are all going to be linked to Makie. This actually started in the first version in which the main villain is Alan Hanuman, Makie's uncle. Now I've decided that all the other characters will somehow be linked to Makie in some way.

I still don't know exactly what I'm going to do, but the next scene I write will have Makie walking over a bridge, planning on jumping, and seeing strange lights in the sky which turn out to presage an alien invasion.




nanowrimo
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jannowrimo
febnowrimo

Missed NaNo, and so: JanNo!

I confess: I didn't do NaNoWriMo last November. It just wasn't a good writing month for me. I did drop by the NaNo web site recently and found links to other NaNo-like events, which I have put into my link list.

In particular, JanNoWriMo--- January Novel Writing Month. The main difference between NaNo and JanNo is that in JanNo, you can bring an already-started novel into the game.

I'm thinking about using JanNo (which is more than half over) to work on an old novel idea of mine. I'm not going to tell what it is at this time because I don't want to jinx it. I will update this blog to report on my progress, if any.

Free Ideas for your Nanowrimo Novel

Are you planning to write a novel but don't have any ideas? Here are some plot and character ideas I had lying around in the attic of my head that you can have FOR FREE!!! Use as many as you need.

1. Main character is a blind, deaf or wheelchair-bound werewolf (vampire, fairy, elf, gaki). Extra points if your character DOESN'T want to die rather than living ('undying') with a disability.

2. Scientists are involved in a genetic study of sociopathic killers. They find a gene which causes this. A group of blood samples of prison inmates is exchanged for blood samples of preschool children. Three children test positive for the sociopath-killer gene. What happens next?

3. A presidential candidate is about to win the nomination, in large part due to her or his support of a certain issue. The candidate is visited by an actual angel who says that the candidate must switch position on this issue, and shows why this is important. Will the candidate ignore the warning to get elected? Or change her-or-his position on the issue?

4. A family finds a gateway to: a) another dimension b) fairyland or c) hell in their basement. What do they do about it? And will it lower the monetary value of their home when it comes time to sell?

5. A being with superhero-type powers fights the criminal element in a large city. The cops must find a way to capture the superhero and put him on trial for vigilante-action.

6. Panini rolls are actually alien life forms plotting to destroy the human race.

7. A vampire is appointed to the Supreme Court and makes his fellow justices into vampires too. (Remember Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, and can rule forever.)

8. A man plants trees, each one named after a friend, family member, or a famous living person. When a person's tree dies, the person dies. Some one finds out and kills the tree of a popular US president. (Does that count as assassination???)

Got your own ideas to share? Post them as a comment!



ideas for writing nanowrimo novel

Write a Novel this November--- I dare ya!

It's approaching November, when all of us less than sane people decide to write a novel in one month. In spite of the fact that November is a sucky month to do this. Don't they know November is sheep-and-goat breeding season? Not to mention deer hunting season. (It's real important not to get these two mixed up.)

Join this insanity by going to the National Novel Writing Month web site and putting up your profile. You can view my profile, which is under the nickname 'ilsabein'. And then you can get started on planning and outlining. Do post a comment if you accept this challenge and put up a link to your (non-porno) blog, if any, and to your Nano profile-page.

Don't have a novel idea? I'll give you one for free! Check back on this blog later today, or within the next couple of days, and I'll post a list of novel ideas!
Other coming attractions on this blog: a list of Korean names for those who want to name a Korean character, stuff about the vampire lore in Dracula, musings about whether Dracula author Bram Stoker met Jack the Ripper suspect Walther Sickert, and more random moaning about my own Nano-novel.



nano writing nanowrimo novel fantasy vampire

Have You Planned Your Nanowrimo Novel Yet?

If November is National Novel Writing Month, October must be National Novel Planning and Outlining Month. For comparison purposes I am giving an indication of how MY planning is going.

The novel will be in the 'contemporary fantasy' genre, set in a town not too dissimilar to one near me. The fantasy elements will include magic of various types (thaumaturgy, magic, sorcery/sourcery). There will also be supernatural creatures--- two distinct, different varieties of vampires with different abilities and weaknesses, one female gaki, and one artifact-spirit (tsukumo-gami) who is a 100 year old Japanese tea-kettle who has become alive and can take the form of a young boy (probably a young Japanese boy, possibly Korean, maybe with odd hair color that matches his tea-kettle form).

I have other character ideas but they are not firmly fixed yet, a few strong ideas for scenes from near the beginning of the story, but the bigger picture is still very dim.

The most immediate planning need (for today and tomorrow) is roughing out the rules for my supernatural creatures and magic. My main villain with be a vampire, of the stronger of the two vampire types. I think he will be a Dracula-type vampire, but I think I will also have to have him able to be active during the day, at least for some of the daylight hours--- perhaps just the later afternoon. Otherwise he'll only be able to interact with the normal world during the winter months, during the rest of the year he won't be active during the hours when stuff happens.

Also need to work on the villain's motives and actions--- what does he want to do that the other characters have to stop? What are his weaknesses, what countermeasures can be taken? And what are his good points, if any?
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Question for Readers: If you are planning a Nano novel, or any novel, right now, how are you coming? What is your novel going to be about? What aspects of planning are you working on at the moment? Let's compare notes!

Is Nanowrimo a good way to write a novel?

November is National Novel Writing Month, aka Nanowrimo, and after having tried it twice, I'm game to go one more time, but I wonder if this is a good way to work.

The idea is to write many hours during November with the idea of completing a novel, defined as 50,000 words. Actually by modern standards that's more like half a novel, or 3/4ths of a novel....

Nano-writing may produce a good word count, but I wonder.... Does it appeal more to our desire toward instant gratification and the quick fix? Is the kind of novel-writing we do during Nano the kind career novelists do? Nano-writing is kind of like taking a month off to pursue a hobby--- you leave the housework undone, eat only fast food, and some people even write on the novel at work.

But when the month is done, you breathe a sigh of relief and start doing housework, cooking dinner, and searching for the new job you need to replace the one you lost doing Nano.

A real writer, though, writes six days a week all year long. It's a regular part of their daily life. And if they get stuck at some point in their novel, they may slow down in order to be sure they are getting it right. In Nano one is more likely to plunge again madly to keep up with the word count. Which is a good way to paint yourself into a corner and get your novel stuck permanently in an unfixable state.

That being said, I'm doing Nano, but with a difference. I may be checking my word count daily, but the more important thing is steady and usable output. And of course the idea of writing a 50,000 page novel is out. That's too short to be published and I don't want to write 'The End' to something that needs 40,000 words added!

Of course, this means that I'm not going to 'win' Nano--- even if I make the word count I won't be finished--- but I'd rather have a finished novel than a 'win'.
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Question to Readers: Are you doing Nano this year? Why or why not?