The Elmwood
OOC => Announcements => Topic started by: Trellin on
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This is a reminder for those who are in the know and for those who are not, National Novel Writing Month is upon us again. Every November from the 1st through the 30th NaNoWriMo is held. Basically its for anyone who loves, wants to try or has always wanted to say, "I have written something." Rather than me ranting on and on about something that countless others have already described much more eloquently, I have provided the link below for anyone thats curious.
http://www.nanowrimo.org/ (http://www.nanowrimo.org/)
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...I was totally typing out this post today and then got distracted. And then I log in and I'm like: "Did I not actually get distracted? Am I secretly split personality?" but nope it was you. Thank you kindly sir!
Have you participated previous years? I've done the last two. Failed both *sighs* Third times the charm right...?
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I understand exactly how that works, the distraction thing, I mean. This will make the fifth year I have participated. I have made more and less of a showing but never completed the word count for the month. I am attempting to learn from my previous years and am going to make a stronger effort to attend write-ins with the old lady's support, which she was extremely vocal and enthusiastic about tonight. In fact, she is going with me to the first regional meeting this weekend. She wanted to take the detour on our weekend bike-ride bar-hopping event to attend so I am very hopeful that I will get it right this year.
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Yeah, I attend the meetings and write-ins, it's always alot of fun, though I'm quite sad I'll be out of town for my city's kickoff...But I haven't been able to get the 50k, I got half way one year and just...Stopped, and then last year I don't think I even broke ten. And I'm of course in with a bunch of people who are going for like 200k and other ridiculous numbers! Very intimidating. But I will persivere!....Though I still don't know what I'm writing.
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I highly recommend the book, "No Plot, No Problem", written by the founder of NaNoWriMo. If you haven't read it, it is both an outstanding book and entertaining. At least, I found it so. I do understand the intimidation factor. I suffer from it every year. Over the past four years of participation, however, I have moved closer and closer to the attitude that it just doesn't matter how many words I get in. This may not be the optimum strategy for finishing but I have found that I enjoy my work a great deal more. And each year, I find myself getting closer and closer to finishing a complete novel. YMMV, but it helps me get over my biggest hangup which is continually re-writing each sentence I put into words. Which is one of the prime roadblocks to finishing that is pointed out in the book, not surprisingly.
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They are quite adamant about not rewriting as you write, as I recall. I keep having work interfere with my attempts. I am also in the two failure club and as I also recall, I was talking to someone about twinning our cities to increase the challenge....
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QUITE adamant, in fact. Could you clarify what you mean by twinning cities?
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Hamilton is actually paired with two cities...and I can get a hold of the Hamilton NaNoWriMo people and check which cities. What happens is it is a challenge to see who writes the most words who finishes the most novels etc .
Yes you are not allowed to rewrite spelling errors etc stand because in March when you can look at the months frenzied madness again you edit said novel. That is another crazy month. Yes i intend to be doing it and maybe with the fact I will not be so distracted by RL I will actually finish my novel something i have yet to do.
Hey we all have our goals.
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Didn't even know March was edit month.....
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Yeah they pretty much have a month for everything, though after November it's just a loose guideline. I'm curious to know how many Publisher's love/hate the couple months after as I'm sure they get a flood of manuscripts.
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I wonder how many of them just don't even look at a manuscript that arrives in December?
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Apparently they don't look at half of them on a regular day anyways so : p
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Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, Laura K. Hamilton.
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she got her start from NaNoWriMo/?
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I want to talk to her agent.
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I doubt she got her start in NaNoWriMo as it didn't exist when she started publishing her books. I was citing it as an example of what you get when editors stop reading and start using some random statistical sampling as a selection method. I realize there are a lot of Laurell K. Hamilton fans on the forums here but I am not among them.
Speaking of writing, what happened to everyone in the Vampires game?
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Lady J and Maxx moved this week so they haven't had the computers on for a bit. They are starting to get settled so it won't be too much longer. Don't worry, I've been prodding them. Post!
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Groovy :)
And glad they are getting settled into the new place.