TheBanyanTree: NaNoWriMo

[Dave]

This is my second NANO since joining the local writing group here in town. 
They are big into NANO and goaded me into it last year. I succomed to 
pressure and signed up the last day of October. One of the ladies agreed to 
shoot for 25000 if I would join with her. Well I ended up being the first to 
break 50000 in our region and ended at 65000. We had three others finish 
succesfuly to. One guy who only has one hand.

I think what helps me is friendly competition. And that we all meet to work 
on our NANO projects together throuout the month. Yesterday there were 
thirteen of us in the cafe up the road typing away. After two iced red-eyes 
I had broken 10000 words. I'm trailing today in second place. But this 
morning I upped the ante to 13091 words. My name is dseaman on the NANO 
site.

It's all in the ability to just go turbo without a care for spelling or 
grammer. I know woman who has won four years in a row. Revised one novel and 
actually got an agent interested. Then she balked out of fear of submiting 
the chapters. So she made me a deal that if I NANO this year she would 
submit three chapters. She went with a friend of mine to the post office who 
even took pictures so I'd have proof. So we are off and running again. On 
young guy who competed with me last year is at school in another region now, 
but that didn't stop him from throwing down on the NANO forum! :)

Bonnie knows so many people who do the NANO every year and are sitting on 
four or seven unrivised novels that she forced me to have a readable 
revision before I could do it this year. So I got that finished and printed 
it out for her on October 30th. I took pieces and character from that story 
and put together a short story earlier this year that I got published on an 
online literary journal. It was just accepted for print the other day also 
but had to be refused because it was previously published.

Type as hard as you can and write as much crap as you want. Eventually the 
flow starts and pieces of true writng come out. That's when the story falls 
into place.

Dave



> I've been failing NanoWriMo for 5 years now. :)
>
> My first year, I was really ambitious, a children's story featuring
> dual protagonists who get trapped in each other's time periods, one a
> modern slacker, the other a child laborewr in the coal mines of
> eastern PA.
>
> That got 1100 words, if I remember correctly.
>
> I don't even remember 2004's plot, but I do remember it got to about
> 10,000 words before I got stalled and quit.
>
> 2005 was a spy story.  Yes, it was the story of a retired spy being
> blackmailed into one last job.  Fizzle after about 2500 words, if
> memory serves.
>
> 2006 was my best shot yet.  Based off a short story I liked that I'd
> written, I poured into it and probably got to about 15000 words before
> quitting.  I would like to finish it sometime.
>
> This year, 770 words and no real desire to keep moving.  I have
> written little to nothing all year, and I think my days of spinning
> fiction may be over.
>
> At least until 2008. ;)
>
> -Rob
>
> On 11/3/07, Dee Churchill <deechurchill at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 11/3/07, Margaret R. Kramer  wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > OK, I'm a whiz kid after two days of writing.  Can I continue to be as
>> > optimistic and excited about this endeavor for the whole month?  That
>> > remains to be seen.
>>
>>
>> I'm chuckling, here, because I'm telling myself the same thing. Keeping 
>> up
>> with the word count is no big deal after only two days, I tell myself. 
>> Let's
>> see how you're doing a week from now, ol' gurl.
>>
>> But this makes me curious. I wonder how many Banyanites are signed up 
>> with
>> NaNoWriMo this year? Sometimes we're quiet about it because we don't want
>> anyone to know if we fizzle out and don't make the magic 50,000 mark. But
>> the world doesn't end when that happens. I've been in the "hunt" for the
>> past two years and never got close. A combination of outside distractions
>> that took more of my energy and just the simple fact that I was not
>> successfully shutting up my Inner Editor. Not finishing the course has 
>> not
>> left an indelible stain on my forehead and the experience has given me 
>> clues
>> about what to avoid this time around.
>>
>> Anybody else having fun giving it a try? Because it really IS fun, even 
>> when
>> you're banging your head on the keyboard.
>>
>> Hugs, Dee ...
>>
>