Wow, another year has passed and it's time to gear up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) once again. This year I have a few writing buddies in town, which will be cool for the bonding, sharing, competition aspect of it all.
I'm thinking for this year to finish the book I started for last year's NaNoWriMo. Which means I'll have to read the 50,000 plus words I wrote last year (shudder) to prepare myself for where I left off.
Our first prep-meeting is Monday, woo!
I'm pondering doing another NaNo myself. I have two novel ideas that I've been mulling over for a while now. Trying to decide which one to work on. Maybe both. If I do 25k words on each, do I still win? Or would I need to find some way to merge the two ideas together? What do you think>
ReplyDeleteI think writing is better than not writing. Exploring 25,000 words of each idea sounds like a good plan.
ReplyDeleteIt will probably be clear within the first few thousand words which idea is the better one.
If I were to try this sort of thing, the best ideas are the hardest to write - if I started two ideas, I would be more likely to continue the easy/fun one.
Which would I learn more from - the easy or the challenge? Of course, it's a challenge just to finish something.
The last time I did a NaNo, I got to about 35k words and ran out of steam. Essentially I finished writing everything that I had to say. I had about a third of a novel done. Going in, that's what I planned to write, a third of a novel, that's all of the story that I'd worked out in my head, but I assumed I could stretch it to 50k words. I was wrong. So I made up the rest by writing out scenes that didn't have much to do with the first third and could have, possible, gone into the second two thirds. Maybe. Anyway, it was 50k words, to be sure, but not a novel of any sort. That last 15k took me the majority of the month to write because I was completely blocked as I was trying to write them.
ReplyDeleteI read an interview with a writer many years ago who, when asked how he fought writer's block, answered, "I always keep more than one novel going at a time. If I get blocked on one, I move to the other." Now, this guy isn't a great writer by any stretch, but he is prolific. I've kept that with me all these years as a novel (pardon the pun) approach to writing. Why should I just have one project going at any given time? Right now, if I lean back and count, I have 6 ideas in my head that I keep mulling over. Of course, the downside to this approach is you may never start or finish any of them if you keep moving on to the next one any time you get blocked, which is the case here. But I digress. Maybe this could be my answer to writer's block in the month of NaNo.
If my novel title is something like "The Lonely Farmer and the Succubus" you'll know I'm working on two ideas at once.
Great title! I look forward to standing in line at B&N to have it autographed one day soon!
ReplyDeleteI've been working on the choose-your-own-adventure project, which I think has a great future in e-books, since the page-flipping is the most laborious part for the reader.
There are always 5 ideas I would like to be writing at any one time. If I could somehow learn to actually work on each project each day, I might eventually get something done. I'm worried the characters might blend together if I tried such a thing.
The ideas come easy, but for some reason actually completing something is like pulling teeth.
Right now I'm looking at NaNoWriMo like a flight to New Zealand - it's a pain in the ass to get there, but no way I'd miss the opportunity.