The Entirely NaNo November First Entry
It is definitely November 1. One can easily tell by looking at the bloodshot nature of my eyes due to both the makeup I was wearing yesterday (no pictures) and the late night that I had to start out NaNoWriMo. I have no idea how people stayed up late enough to write over 1,500 words since after a little over 400, I was ready to pass out.
I had planned to actually watch a movie yesterday night to kill the last few hours of anticipation before the start of November. But instead I ended up spending from about 9:30 p.m. on sitting in the NaNoWriMo chat room and watching as the east coast people began at 11:00 central time.
NaNoWriMo Eve actually closely resembles the Y2K countdown of a few years back.
As each new time zone begins, the message boards heat up with a fresh group of writers posting "I've started" messages. I made the joke in the chat room that the main NaNo site should have web feeds of a group of writers in each time zone kicking off.
But the reason that October 31 each year resembles December 31, 1999 is that the writers seem to be speaking of some sort of impending disaster. While everybody goes into NaNoWriMo expecting to win (except for the people who hang out on the "I Hate Myself And I Want To Die" boards of nanowrimo.org from October 1 on), in the back of everyone's minds are the road blocks that will inevitably pop up.
So to be the huge cheerleader which I'm really not, I wanted to post this link to some research that was done for last year. The full findings are available at "The #1 reason people fail NaNo" thread on the Reaching 50,000 topic of the forums.
Good luck trying to find it without using my link. That forum, like the others has gone insane and will stay so until people start dropping out around the 10th. :) Hey, what are us bloggers for? Save your brain for writing.
Anyhow, the stats are as follows (and I'm not sure if a similar study has been done for 2004):
Of those who started NaNoWriMo in 2003, 31% won.
Of those who reached 10,000 words in 2003, 56% won.
Of those who reached 20,000 words in 2003, 74% won.
Of those who reached 30,000 words in 2003, 87% won.
Of those who reached 40,000 words in 2003, 95% won.
Pretty encouraging.
So, the key is to just get those first 10,000 words as quickly as possible without discouraging yourself by writing such crap that you want to throw your computer out a window.
Once you're in, you're in for the long haul but don't procrastinate. Trust me. As it gets further into the month, the energy and enthusiasm levels does begin to waiver a bit. It takes a village to make a NaNo through encouragement and even word wars.
---
Speaking of word wars, I'm pretty jealous that Texas::Houston has a challenge going on with Texas::Austin to see who can produce more prose. I'm trying to plant the idea in the Illinois::Chicago moderator's head for us to start up a word war with New York::New York City (or Michigan::Detroit or Illinois::Elsewhere). They seem ripe for the pickings since there are separate boards for the outer boroughs so I'm guessing the NYC forum is mainly for Manhattan so their numerical superiority isn't that great.
Perhaps I can twist the Chicago ML's arm tonight at the kickoff party.
---
Finally, here's a cool little application that I use to track my novel writing progress. I've looked at a few but the Darkscapes Nano 2005 Report Card is definitely my favorite (I also used their report card in 2004).
It contains so many useful features like tracking your actual progress against your personal goals, tracking how many words you're averaging per hour, and a little section for notes.
Two little NaNoWriMo icons way up!
---
I'm not going to post my first chapter yet since it's not finished, but here is my first paragraph. It's no "night trains were the worst," but I think it's acceptable. Acceptable for writing it at 12:00 a.m. on November 1 anyhow.
"Liam felt his breath hot against the layer of electrical tape that covered his mouth. But beyond that he felt every pulse as he surveyed the basement that had become his prison. He looked to his right and saw the members of the John Harper Society."
Happy noveling everyone.
|
I had planned to actually watch a movie yesterday night to kill the last few hours of anticipation before the start of November. But instead I ended up spending from about 9:30 p.m. on sitting in the NaNoWriMo chat room and watching as the east coast people began at 11:00 central time.
NaNoWriMo Eve actually closely resembles the Y2K countdown of a few years back.
As each new time zone begins, the message boards heat up with a fresh group of writers posting "I've started" messages. I made the joke in the chat room that the main NaNo site should have web feeds of a group of writers in each time zone kicking off.
But the reason that October 31 each year resembles December 31, 1999 is that the writers seem to be speaking of some sort of impending disaster. While everybody goes into NaNoWriMo expecting to win (except for the people who hang out on the "I Hate Myself And I Want To Die" boards of nanowrimo.org from October 1 on), in the back of everyone's minds are the road blocks that will inevitably pop up.
So to be the huge cheerleader which I'm really not, I wanted to post this link to some research that was done for last year. The full findings are available at "The #1 reason people fail NaNo" thread on the Reaching 50,000 topic of the forums.
Good luck trying to find it without using my link. That forum, like the others has gone insane and will stay so until people start dropping out around the 10th. :) Hey, what are us bloggers for? Save your brain for writing.
Anyhow, the stats are as follows (and I'm not sure if a similar study has been done for 2004):
Pretty encouraging.
So, the key is to just get those first 10,000 words as quickly as possible without discouraging yourself by writing such crap that you want to throw your computer out a window.
Once you're in, you're in for the long haul but don't procrastinate. Trust me. As it gets further into the month, the energy and enthusiasm levels does begin to waiver a bit. It takes a village to make a NaNo through encouragement and even word wars.
---
Speaking of word wars, I'm pretty jealous that Texas::Houston has a challenge going on with Texas::Austin to see who can produce more prose. I'm trying to plant the idea in the Illinois::Chicago moderator's head for us to start up a word war with New York::New York City (or Michigan::Detroit or Illinois::Elsewhere). They seem ripe for the pickings since there are separate boards for the outer boroughs so I'm guessing the NYC forum is mainly for Manhattan so their numerical superiority isn't that great.
Perhaps I can twist the Chicago ML's arm tonight at the kickoff party.
---
Finally, here's a cool little application that I use to track my novel writing progress. I've looked at a few but the Darkscapes Nano 2005 Report Card is definitely my favorite (I also used their report card in 2004).
It contains so many useful features like tracking your actual progress against your personal goals, tracking how many words you're averaging per hour, and a little section for notes.
Two little NaNoWriMo icons way up!
---
I'm not going to post my first chapter yet since it's not finished, but here is my first paragraph. It's no "night trains were the worst," but I think it's acceptable. Acceptable for writing it at 12:00 a.m. on November 1 anyhow.
"Liam felt his breath hot against the layer of electrical tape that covered his mouth. But beyond that he felt every pulse as he surveyed the basement that had become his prison. He looked to his right and saw the members of the John Harper Society."
Happy noveling everyone.
posted by incendiarymind at 7:26 AM
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