[writing] NaNoWriMo: The Two-Time Winner

2893.It is my pride and joy to say that I've won NaNoWriMo 2012, making me someone who's won every year I've entered.

I first entered in 2011.

So, you see, I sometimes do not have a handle on my own PR. Because if I really wanted to impress you, I'd have left that part out.

Anyway, in case you happen by the blog and don't know the stardard of National Novel Writing Month, which at one time I rather lampooned, it's to either complete a novel of at least 50,000 words, or complete at least 50,000 words of a novel that's going to be longer than that … one way or the other, get 50,000 words down … by November 30th. The contest starts November 1st. That means you have to averages 1,667 words per day, one way or the other.

Having done this, I am entitled to let my lit flag fly, which, this year, looks like this:

Because I did. And I can be truthful about that, because I verified the novel's word count using their handy-dandy interocitor-based word counter, which is about 200 or 300 words ahead of my live in-editor word counter.

As last year, I came with the barest sketch of an idea. It's encouraging, to me, that I can finally have ideas. I'm coming out of a time which was creatively barren to me. It's affected everything I've done artistically, and took my own job search into the grave. I don't know if I can get that resurrected, but if I do, as guys at a certain point in their lives find themselves, it will probably be in some non-standard way. But now I'm losing the thread … the point is, and it took me 2 NaNos to figure, I'm still capable of having ideas.

And that's a great gift.

There's a great and fun culture that's grown among the NaNoWriMo tribe. Some of us call us NaNos, most of us call us WriMos, and if you're lucky enough to have a schedule that allows it, you can go to these adorable meetings. pound out words with a bunch of like-affected people and maybe be a winner that way too.

My schedule precludes a bunch of that, and I lack a laptop. While the schedule has no way of changing any time soon. Am considering some FreeGeekery for that laptop, though. Just something modest running Linux and OpenOffice is all we need here.

Here, then is my trajectory during the event:

 

… and this impressed a few. That slanting gray line there is the relentless pursuit of the goal; 50,000 words spread out over 30 days. 1,667 words/day, as I said. Now, the first day, I figured I'd break it open and get some words on the ground, and got it just above the daily averages but then left off on it for two large distractions, one being OryCon 34 and the other being the Presidential elections (something I've been addicted to, the spectacle thereof, near enough my entire life).

While I continued to produce, I did so at a rate that seemed to suggest I had no prospect of completing before November 30th. But I plugged, aided and abetted by a The Wife™ who, I'm sure, put off things we should have done so that I could write.

Coming into the home stretch, I was still below 30K, then did that 'reaching deep down inside' thing that you sometimes have to do, and closed the over 10,000-word gap in a mere 3 days.

And the ms itself? It's pretty lame, actually. Since I come up to NaNo with nothing but an idea to start off with, it happens in a haphazard way. A nemesis for my main character didn't happen as I'd thought … he proved a spur but not a huge villain, but the arc of the story followed more or less the trajectory I'd figured for it. There was a twist, a surprise at the end that made everything as it looked but not as it seemed at first … I did take some care to make it credible at least to myself.

What I have here, as I had with last year's, is a plowing of the ground, a placing of markers and laying out of rows to grow better things out of. For me, NaNoWriMo is an endurance test, a working of the soil so I can come up with better things later, should I choose to chase this crazy thing. I think what I have are two good ideas for larger stories, or broken down could (and probably ought to) become even better shorts (Raymond Carver and Chekhov and Harlan Ellison taught me something about taking short incidents and making them into stories).

I, in short, love NaNoWriMo. I was supposed to be some sort of artist, either with words or images, and my incessant diarizing certainly keeps the literature flowing from some sort of pen. And, if the 'novels' I cranked out so far are crap, I am reminded that manure makes the best fertilizer, and I have taken all that time to plow up the ground there.

See you in 2013, NaNo.

[liff] What I Learned At NaNoWriMo 2011

2720.The culture that's sprung up around NaNoWriMo is your atypical typical Intertube social culture, with history and customs that're all its own.

Herewith a brief list of customs and cute terms I learned whilst submerged in NaNo culture, in no particular order:

• NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month, aber naturlich. Obvious from the brouhaha, but I thought that putting this up first would set the table for what follows.
• NaNo: What WriMos (which see) call it for short.
• WriMo: What members of the NaNo tribe call themselves and each other. I'm a WriMo, you're a WriMo, he's a WriMo, she's a WriMo … wouldn't you like to be a WriMo too?
• NaNoMail: Every social website has their own internal messaging system. Did you think this one would be any different?
• Regions: Activities in NaNo are organized geographically, as are the forums on the site. Portland has one, Salem has one, Vancouver has one.
• Pep Talk: Regional coordinators and national team members send out emails of encouragement to WriMos each week. These are Pep Talks, and any of them can be useful. They're not so long that I'd kill you taking a few minutes to read each one. One of them helped me a ton and generated an interesting sub plot.
• Winning: There's just one condition for 'winning' NaNo: produce a novel, a prose work of 50,000 words or more, by midnight, November 30th. Since you're participating in NaNo to test your mettle or just to have fun, the biggest prize is bragging rights. Other prizes include knowing you can do this thing, increased creativity, a slightly limbered imagination, the desire to go create something else. You get this even if you don't cross the 50K Rubicon, but completing the victory conditions is just … so … satisfying.
• WriteIn: When a group of WriMos get together to work on their novels in a social setting. Since everyone is together for the social, many times, not a lot of actual writing gets done, but a lot of bonding does. In the end, it's all good.
• TGIO: Thank God, It's Over … the sigh of relief when NaNo is finally over, whether or not you get that novel done. TGIO parties ensue.
• OLL: The Office of Letters and Light, the group of crazies who push this stuff, year-after-year. Big on teachin' y'alls how to create, n'stuff.
• WordWar: When two regions go up against each other in order to produce even moar verbiage. Works great as a group motivator. I don't know how PDX stacked up against others, but the graph I just saw indicates that PDX area WriMos produced, in the aggregate, nearly thirty million words. If I had a nickle for every one of those words I'd have … well, I'd have a whole lot of money!

That's just a smattering of it. I enjoyed the hell out of it. It's my serious intention to try to write a short story now, to see if I can sell it.

Yeah, I loves me some writins.

[liff] A Winning Score In NaNoWriMo 2011

2719.I had always fancied what it would be like to write an actual book.

Now, I have some idea.

Over the past 25 days, I've taken the NaNoWriMo challenge, which is, as you know, to write a novel within 30 days. Novel, as NaNo defines it, is a document of 50,000 words or more. My "novel", The Way Of The Courier, clocked in at 50,712 words. As witness my stats page as of today, this day, like, right now:

The levelling-off means, of course, that I quit expanding at at that point.

As a person who hit the goal, I am entitled to display this badge:

… and ere shall I do so.

NaNoWriMo … it does a body good!

[liff] NaNoWriMo Holding Post

2717.Thanks to the cadging of a very good friend, I decided to take the plunge and do NaNoWriMo this year. Web badge!

Posting will therefore be more erratic than usual. This is a public service message. In the meantime, I leave you with this:

Funnay! Larf!

PS: On NaNoWriMo I'm SJKPDX_Diarist.