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Eek. Life and my innate laziness kept me away from the blog for far too long. The monthly posting of sites I find interesting hasn’t been updated in what seems like forever.
So, without further delay, here’s part 1 of what I’ve been doing online lately. Warning – no theme or rhyme/reason here.
NaNoWriMo is getting close. Essentially, it’s a challenge for yourself, a contest where the only prize is finishing. You write a novel in November. Start on 11/1 and finish on 11/30. Novel is defined as 50,000 words. I did this last year and won. Okay, I wrote over 60,000 words so I met the requirements for winning, but I didn’t finish the story and haven’t touched it since. Maybe one day. Not sure what I’m writing this year, but I’ll be blogging about it as a distraction from actually doing it. Why not join me?
So … I finished NaNoWriMo. Thanks to everyone who followed along and tolerated my word count updates on twitter and facebook. Grand total for the November frenzy was over 60,000. I won on November 24 and officially “won” on November 25 when the site started validating winners.What does winning mean? To win, writers had to upload their entire novel to the site where a macro did a word count and then deleted the file so there’d be nothing for people to steal later.1 If you had over 50K, your writer status bar turned purple and you got a link to a part of the web site where you could download web badges saying you won.
That’s it, folks. No confetti or balloons fell from my ceiling. Champagne was not popped. No money exchanged hands. This is all about the satisfaction of winning. And, unlike your grade-school field day, not everyone won. Here’s what NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty had to say about the 2008 stats:
Since I’m bragging about this in every venue….
Top Excuses for Not Working on NaNoWriMo:
- Watching the election returns is strangely captivating
- Day 2 was wiped out by birthday shopping and dining
- Work has actually required my attention during work hours
- The Internet was not this fascinating in October
- My dog’s collar keeps attaching to the Berber carpet
- Halloween decorations had to be put away
- Thanksgiving decorations need to be put out and/or purchased*
- 10 books are in the “to review” box
- I’m blogging more
- Texas Hold’em on the iPhone
And possibly the most important reason …
- I’m pretty sure my story is the stupidest story ever and is not something I would read or recommend to anyone I have ever known.
Sigh. I’m setting a new goal of 10,000 words by Sunday evening.
* Why is it that Michael’s (and probably A.C. Moore) skip over Thanksgiving? Halloween decorations have made their way to the clearance section and Christmas decorations have taken over the rest of the store. What happened to pilgrims, turkeys and cornucopias?
No, it’s not another secret command Klaatu uses on Gort. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. In a nutshell, people sign up to write a novel throughout November.
That’s right. A novel. Not some collaborative muddle with everyone else on the site. An honest-to-goodness novel written by each participant. Defined as 50,000 words.
You’ve got 2 more days to sign up if you’re the creative type. The project is about quantity, not quality. The idea is to write, putting it simply. Consider the output a rough first draft. If you churn out 50,000 words, then your Great American Novel moves out of head and into reality. It’s not just a pipe dream you tell yourself you’ll get to some day when you hit the lottery and retire early or some day when the kids are old enough or some day when you’ve stopped going to the gym because you’ve lost that last 10 pounds and are keeping it off.
I know a lot of people who say they’re writers (not professional writers, I’m talking creative writing here). Some of them actually do put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and come up with something regularly or now and then. But the majority (and I’m ashamed to count myself among them) are no better than the drunk at the club who swears he’s the best pick-up artist but never makes a move from his stool.
