September Draws to a Close, and the WriMo Cometh
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It is October, ladies and gentleman. Do you know what that means? Anyone, anyone at all? Fine, spoil my fun. Turkey and hallows aside, October is the envoy of November. Now, to the layman November is a fairly inconsequential month, wedged as it is betwixt Halloween and the various religious holidays of December. But to the literary Illuminati, November is much more than that. Forsooth, it is the time of National Novel Writing Month, appended to the more wieldly NaNoWriMo. 30 days, 50 000 words is the name of this game. As anyone who checks my blog during week-long droughts may have noticed, a NaNo participant badge has appeared in the sidebar. Not only does it have a monkey (which car commercials tell me is a selling point?), but I set this badge to link to my Author page instead of just the main page like last year.
On that note, this is my second year of NaNoWriMo, following a failed, 20 013-word attempt last year and an instance the year before in which I signed up and then wrote 0 words so I don’t really consider it to count. But this year, I’m going to try to go all the way. Shoot for the moon, and then fall short and suffocate in space. IN SPACE, people. It’s gonna be awesome. I would link to a post from when I was attempting it last year, but my blog archives tell me that I made no posts in November ’09, and a single post on each of October and December. Basically what I’m saying is that the droughts around here may intensify. Stay out of the sun, and lie down if you get too dizzy.
One of the things I tried last year, which I think helped my ultimately doomed attempt at writing a novel, was to get other people to write their own novels, so that I would feel pressure to complete my own. In the end, one of my recruits accomplished what I could not, but she’s crazy smart and organized so I’m not really surprised. I hope to see many of the same people again this year(you can see them on the ‘Writing Buddies’ list on my Author page). In addition, my recent acquaintance Thaumaturgist seems to have made an admirably proactive move and decided to novel outside of the designated month of November. Ryan also seems like the type to partake in this, if he isn’t too busy. I was intrigued as to what Matsu might write, but she told me that she likes art more than writing. I’m pretty sure that covers all the people that comment with any frequency on here lately, and most of anyone who has ever commented. Yay, comments!
As for the novel itself, I have a few ideas. I was originally considering rebuilding my novel from last year from the ground up (as Thaumaturgist has sadly had to do with her entire novel), but I have found of late that the pieces of a new idea have been quite swiftly coming together in my mind. An old idea, actually, but one that had long been content to live as a mere conceptualization rather than a robust world of its own. Although I have no idea why my long-dry well of writing ideas has so abruptly sprung forth anew, I am far more content to drink of its inspiration than I am to look a gift horse in the mouth. If I feel like it, I may add pages here about my previous idea and about my current one. Heck, if I’m feeling really into it, I may bring forth some of the short stories that led to the first novel which were posted here before I damned them to oblivion in fear of their safety. We’ll see, readers. Anyway, ’till next time!
Shard
Man, I was really feeling writerish today. Illuminati, forsooth, robust? It feels good to get back into this. Also, the first paragraph is kind of colorful. You can blame Thaumaturgist for making me realize that colors and fonts can be played with in a blog post.
Posted on October 2nd, 2010, in Books, Epic Win, General Bloggery, tl;dr, Writing and tagged NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 14 Comments.
Shards of Infinity 
It is soo cool you are taking part in NaNoWriMo! I want to but can’t because a)I have two of the biggest exams of my life then and b) I want to get over Thaumaturgy before starting a new novel.
You read my first post huh? It probably sounds lame and I really didn’t think my blog would go any further than that. I was just releasing my vent that day. You have no idea what it was like. I spent two years working on it (probably not a long time but for the first time, I think it is) and then for my vacation I packed it all up in my USB which broke! I had spent every waking minute working on it and all my back-ups were just older drafts. Craziest day of my life. But I started again and I think it is a tad bit better now…
Bummer about you “droughts” but I hope to hear some really good stuff on 1st December! Have fun and best wishes with your novel!
Your backup failed, too? Wow… I’d be devastated if something like that happened to me. But you got back to it, which is what counts!
I’ll definitely try to have fun with my novel, which shouldn’t be hard when I’m finding myself excited by the unfolding story myself. I suppose that’s what’s best, though; there wouldn’t be much of a point to writing something that I didn’t want to read!
Yay NaNoWriMo! Yay for being insane for 30 days ~
And if you’re anything like me, that insanity sticks for another 11 months afterward 😉
Regardless of how much you actually write, the fact is you wrote something. You also wrote more than you did the year before, so just keep that trend up and you’ll get to 50k in no time! Mind if I add you as a writing buddy on NaNoWriMo’s website?
Oh, and the monkey badge was my favorite one, too.
This is true. I think that 20k was more than I’ve ever written in a single piece, so it’s definitely an accomplishment. And I’ll do better this year. Getting so pumped about it is definitely going to stave off falling into uninspiration again. And by all means, feel free to add me.
I prefer the badge I used last year, but I think the monkey’s definitely the best one for this year.
hey shard, found you on writealogue. Cute entry- i like the way you say yay comments, i feel the same way. ill try and check your blog out frequently. congrats on taking the jump to nanowrimo, its crazy how many pps no of it- i signed up last year but didnt write at all and i plan on taking the plunge this year…can’t wait! I am specificaaly NOT doing an outline bec i dont want to be constricted, i just want to write.
Thanks, I’m glad you like it. I’m sometimes surprised by how many people know about NaNoWriMo, too. I didn’t write any my first year either, perhaps because I forgot, but I forget.
That’s an interesting approach to take, writing it freely. I’d be afraid to try something like that, in case I ran out of ideas to work with, but different things work for different people.
oh, i have a vague idea of what i want to write- i have a theme, a genre, a wisp of a plot, time setting, one or two characters, but im saying that im not outlinging the whole story, bec idk where i want it to go. Also, i read in one of the pep talks or sumthng that you shud just write, and deal with mass editing and organizing in december…but true story right there, dznt work for everyone.
btw, do you want to exchange links?
yah, maybe i popped the Q to early lol, but hey, wahtevs!
I figured you’d have some idea, but I’m the kind of person that needs to be more organized to get anywhere far with it, as I saw last year.
And the editing is best left ’till December or later, because once you get to writing quickly, you’ll wind up with plenty of things to fix.
Sure, we can exchange links, definitely.
cool! adding you real soon…
And yeah, do what works for you.
My stands for My. My Novel Writing Month. Not as in “my novel” (because, duh) but as in My “Novel-Writing month”. Get it?
See, I told you I’d be commenting on old posts?
It’s too early in the morning for me to accurately puzzle out what you’re referring to, but you ended up writing in November in the end!
You weren’t sure what the My in MyNoWriMo stands for, right? *hover over the link on “designated month…”*
Ahhh, well played. But in MyNoWriMo, everything else is short for something! That’s what I meant by that.
Then I’ll call it MNaNoWriMo…