Just Your Average Novel All The Way Around

This is certainly an odd sensation. Ordinarily I want to hop right off of writing to write about it over here. Tonight since I'm finally at the point where the building catches on fire setting the protagonists (that's what I need, I need an antagonist, no wonder my story sucks this year - person v. nature just ain't working when nature isn't that fierce so far) "free" into the streets of New York City.

It's not like I know what's going to happen once they get there or anything but at least now something is happening that will keep the fingers flying for somewhere between 3k-5k.

Well if the fingers have ever really flown this year.

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I did a calculation of the veterans on Team Chicago (sadly there are only 10 of us) and their word counts last year trying to discern some sort of pattern and there definitely is one.

Those of us at the bottom of our city's word count were toward the bottom of last year's final count as well (though we all reached our 50k).

Currently those involved in our inter-city word war for the second year running shake out as follows:

1. Dieundonne - 35,500 words (2005 total: 67,086)
2. Peter S - 24,897 words (2005 total: 58,356)
3. Squirrelgirl22 - 22,611 words (2005 total: 61,767)
4. Dawaterrat - 20,005 words (2005 total: 65,204)
5. Bre - 19,555 words (2005 total: 54,742)
6. Panstygia - 16,668 words (2005 total: 70,282)
7. Dispalacedbeatnik - 15,071 words (2005 total: 53,229)
8. Vegas658 - 11,269 words (2005 total: 53,726)
9. Jlizak - 8,980 words (2005 total: 50,094)
10. Scud-O - 8,425 words (2005 total: 50,079)

So it looks like almost everyone propping up the table of the experienced writers (except for Panstygia) are those people who just try to pace themselves out to the 50,000. This maybe isn't the best of news as we're still quite a bit behind Toronto (60,000 at last count) but are gaining rapidly.

I chose a Toronto one v. one buddy recently and it looks like I made the right choice.

Greensong from the "city to the north" (though Toronto isn't north of us so much as Winnepeg is) did a calculation on the Ontario::Toronto board and she came up with the following:

"Subtracting last Sunday's numbers, we've written 132,053 words this week so far, but Chicago has written 183,360, and that's 28% more than us. We're still leading, but we've got to keep that energy up :)"

So it doesn't look like a 750,000 word demolition like it was last year (and it is fun that it's this close at the one-third point) but it looks like Chicago may pull this out after all - even with those at the top of our city word count list not participating in the competition.

It will be interesting to see tomorrow night once the official week two count is in how each person matches up with their direct counterpart. I'll laugh if Greensong is in 20th place or so like I am. Right now, we're within 1,000 words of each other.

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Speaking of Chicago, there's another member of Team Chicago named Axmxz who is right around me in the word count.

There's a thread on the Literary Fiction forum called, "No dialogue" in which a fourth year named jedisquid posted that he had written 8,500 words without using any dialogue and that he might write the entire novel not using any.

AxmxZ had the following to say about that:

"To be honest, it sounds dreadfully dull. Okay, James Joyce could write hundreds of pages without dialogue - but you aren't James Joyce. I'm kind of guilty of writing the same way, and as dream-like or whatever that may be, a whole novel of that would put anyone to sleep."

Methinks he's taking NANOWRIMO a bit too seriously (though to be fair the original poster did ask for feedback on the writing style).

Here's my response to the OP:

"I have to part ways with my fellow member of Team Chicago 2006, Axmxz. I think the way he's writing it sounds absolutely fascinating.

Certainly the end result might be boring but as has been said before, if he pulls it off it's going to completing a very difficult challenge. And it's going to be the kind of unique challenge that NANOWRIMO is all about.

This month isn't about writing great novels unless that's what you set the month out to be. This month is about pushing yourself to whatever limits you see fit. For most people just writing 50,000 words is that challenge but for others it's more - especially since I notice jedisquid is a fourth year participant.

I think his novel is going to be special out of the whole bunch that we all turn out because it doesn't follow conventions and I think he should actually try to write all 50,000 words, or even complete the novel, without a single word of dialog for that reason alone.

This is the kind of thing that is special enough to end up in the Q&A section for sure."

I actually wish I had thought of a challenge like that. After last year's genre busting, I didn't set a very high bar for myself. It was like I stepped backward into my comfort zone (though the action-adventure part could prove to stretch my boundaries for sure) and now it's costing me word count in boredom.

A no dialog challenge might have been just the kick in the pants I needed.

Or maybe more to the point a no inner monologue challenge. I'll have to put that on the back burner. I definitely want to come up with something unique for 2007.

I realize that my experience of NANO-ing has always been just about average (besides retentivewrimo of course as very few people blog their every NANOWRIMO emotion) these past two plus year (well, three plus if you count my 2003 mis-start). Next year, I want to do something different.

There's my goal. To end up in the Q&A section!

Now that's some challenge!