Spontaneous stupidity

[vaneramos]

From the NaNoWriMo website:

Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.

I'm considering registering for National Novel Writing Month, and writing a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. roosterbear and manhattan have done it before. Anyone else?

I keep dabbling at an old novel I started in my teens, but I don't think I'm ready to tackle it yet. I take the characters too seriously. It's too intimidating.

I need to write a different novel, any novel.

The wonderful thing about making myself write it in a month is it's doomed to fail anyway. It will be crap. It's only when I allow myself to write (or draw, or photograph) crap that anything happens. I'm already spending enough time at my desk every day to write 2,000 words. All I have to do is focus on a single project for one month.

Comments

[quillon.livejournal.com]

I watched roosterbear first hand go through NaNoWriMo last year. This year, I'm jumping in with two feet myself. You're not alone my friend!

To get myself ready, I've got a stream-of-consciousness word processing document always open in the background that I type in whenever I get an idea or some interesting thought.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I have set aside three hours a day for creative writing, so I'm going to spend a couple of those sessions this week writing about potential characters and story ideas.

[halation.livejournal.com]

the thing is to just do it. it takes a lot of pressure away and you find yourself doing things innately, without weighing every word, every action. just write. it doesn't have to make sense. this is how i've written both of my novels. i'd encourage you to forget everything you ever thought you learned about writing and pour anything out. get groooooovin'. ;-)
good luck!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty good about working that way except when I try to write fiction; I guess because I spent so many years working with those characters in a particular way, I have trouble relaxing and just writing. I'm going to throw myself into some completely different story ideas and see what happens.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I wonder, when you start writing a novel, to what extent do you know where it's going?

[halation.livejournal.com]

i don't! i never have any idea.
with prose.
with poetry, i wait until i feel i've written enough poems, and then i see how they work together, it's like 54 pickup sort of
don't plan things too much
surprise is the best thing, i think, for an author and for a reader!
the book you will write comes out of you when it is ready, and it is often not the book you thought you would write.
those are my thoughts.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advice. When I was working on a novel years ago I had a thorough plot outline, chapter by chapter. Now I know I prefer reading character-driven novels, and that's how I want to write. I'm feeling a little nervous about the novel I've been working on the past three days, because I don't know where it's going. I can see one chapter ahead and then I'm stumped. I guess I'll see where the characters take the story.

[ghostsandrobots.livejournal.com]

I did one last year. If memory serves, it was horrible. Mostly enforced freewrites was how I did it. Works out to about six pages a day, which was a big deal for me. It was a good thing; learned a lot. Unfortunately, spontaneity such an easy thing to unlearn over a year. I'll probably do it again, if I can think of a starting point in time.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I'm going to try to work out a few things ahead of time: characters, situations they will encounter, a rough outline. If I have to write 2,000 words in a day, I would like to have a few ideas two work in.

Go for it!

[djjo.livejournal.com]

If nothing else, it will get ideas down on paper that you can use later and expand on more.

Plus it will let characters out that may not have had a voice yet. Let them talk and see where they want to take you.

Hugs and best of luck!

Re: Go for it!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'm going to give it a try. Fiction is what I want to write most, and I'm not doing any. I need a jump start.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

After my writing session today, I thought, "Do I really need NaNoWriMo as an excuse to start writing a novel?" My three hours a day is working pretty well except that it has not been very focused. But I enjoyed today's exercise, so maybe some longer fiction will start to come out of it after all.

[roosterbear.livejournal.com]

My guess is that it could help you develop a focus for a specific project. The most important thing to remember is that it's a tool, and like any tool, it can help you or harm you, depending on how you use it.

The truth is you don't "need" NaNoWriMo, but you might find some value in it.

[roosterbear.livejournal.com]

I remember being intrigued by how people were using NaNo. Some people seemed to use it as yet another method for beating themselves up, as you've noted. Some people got really competitive, obsessively comparing their word count to other people.

I have to admit I did at least a bit of each of those. Early on, though, I think I realized that no matter what I did, there were going to be people who wrote "faster" than I did, so I tried to make it more about my own goals. I managed to pull off crossing the 50k finish line, but then ended up getting down on myself because I hadn't really finished the story I set out to write, and in the race to the 50k word finish I'd made some possibly fatal errors. There was a lot of dawdling at first, as I worried I wouldn't have enough words, and then there was rushing at the end, tying up the loose ends in entirely too sloppy a manner. The bad part of saying "pencils down!" on November 30 is that I really needed to keep going, in order to finish telling the story.

Still, it ended up being a good experience. I still think that last year's effort is going to be more of a practice novel than anything for me.

The real benefit came from giving myself an opportunity to demonstrate that I can write, in volume, and I can meet a goal. I think I appreciate more now that there's no way I'll have a finished story in a month, and even if I cross the arbitrary 50k word finish line I'll be far from done. I think this year that I won't necessarily stop at 50k words, or stop at the end of the month, if (as I suspect) the story is not yet finished. Sure, I'll submit whatever I have as the deadline draws nearer for the psychic boost of having "WINNER!" next to my name, but I won't let up on myself till I'm actually done telling the story. That way, I think I'll have more to work with when it's time to edit.

NaNo is a tool, an opportunity, and as with all tools and opportunities, it works well for some people, and doesn't work well for others.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I'm feeling excited about the novel idea I started yesterday, and I think I better run with it while the energy is good. Maybe I can finish it before November, and then be ready to do something else.

[roosterbear.livejournal.com]

The good thing about this plan is that you might be able to just drift into something else, having established the habit. I remember reading something about a writer who likes to have more than one project going at a time, because when he gets stuck on one story, he can still get something done on something else, so he doesn't waste a day staring at the screen.

One thing to consider, though: if you think you might publish your story someday, you probably want to lock the entries where you post the actual content. I read somewhere that if you post a novel in a publicly accessible space, you've already exercised "first publication rights" or something like that; in other words, a publisher won't take it because you've already "published" it. Posting excerpts, like the first rough chapter or two, is okay, but more than that is not a good idea.

Of course, if you think this is just practice and you don't plan to try to get it published, it's not a big deal.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the suggestion about locking it. I posted chapter 3 today, but I've decided to make the rest of the chapters after that "friends only." I know a couple of published writers who work on their novels on LJ that way.

I remember reading something about a writer who likes to have more than one project going at a time

So have I. In fact John A. Murray, author of The Sierra Club Nature Writing Handbook, does the same thing. He wrote that he sometimes has as many as four or five projects going at once. I know what I want to do with chapter 4, but after that I'm feeling stumped. Unless I get a bright idea in the next couple days, it might be time for me to take a break and work on something else. I have one other small project (my nature column) I can work on for sure. I think, as you say, the key is to keep writing.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Vance, how many words to publishers want for a children's novel?

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Good to know. My inner egotist wants to write serious adult novels, but lately whenever I actually excitedly write anything it comes out as fairytales or children's fiction.