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| pilfered from Gelliebean |
For myself, I'm fairly certain that 50,000 words from me in November isn't going to happen. Or rather, I will almost certainly write 50,000 words this month, but a huge percentage of that will be blog-related, ha. But I *am* working with a growing group of writers to put together a themed anthology of short stories, so I'm going to try to do that for my November challenge.
Open thread below!
54 comments:
I've been thinking about it, but apparently I just don't write stories that long. I did it senior year of high school and I had a great time, but the result was so messy and clunky and awful XD This year might finally be the chance to revisit it though, make the fantasy magic make some more sense, cull out unnecessary characters and forest-wandering. The story at the core of that clunker was pretty good, but it was probably less than 10k words of good
Yeah, 50 000 is more words than I can reasonably expect of myself, though I am going to try to write coherently. I figure if I can do half that, and do it across all the stories I'm working on, it'll have been a productive month.
I went back to my old old ff.net account and discovered that 50K was just barely longer than some of my favourite fics that I had written. So now instead of thinking 'Oh god, pages and pages SO MUCH WRITING' I'm thinking 'Hey, if I really pushed at it, could I have knocked out One-Stringed Harp in a month? Sure! Easy!'
I have a huge amount of backstory and planning for my NaNovel, which I've written about twice already on my blog. Presumably I'll do so a third time this weekend, and then provide occasional updates as the month progresses. I wouldn't want to steamroll this thread with My Stuff, but in short, it's speculative fiction on the 'fantasy' side of things. The evil overlord has been overthrown and the heroes responsible are kind of expected to fix the busted country, hindered somewhat by the king's total lack of social skills, the queen's terrifyingly deft use of social skills and pop culture, the traumatised knights, no one trusting anyone, and then the overwhelming plot-sidetracking of a serial arsonist who has decided to end death itself.
I am totally excited both for November 1 and for the NaNo kick-off party I am attending tonight.
WTF WTF WTF WTF
Okay, 'ff dot net' was supposed to be shorthand for fanfiction dot net, and I didn't put in any link code, but it has instead turned itself into a link to some kind of softcore anime pr0n site. Ana, respectfully requisitioning that the link be defused before someone gets entirely the wrong idea and/or clicks a link they really shouldn't.
Haha, sorry, I know I shouldn't laugh. Thanks for the heads-up, Will -- I put spacers around the period and I think that broke it. Good catch there. :D
I'm really excited about NaNo this year - I have a concept all ready to go and everything! :-D
I've been plotting out a dystopian story based on the presidential election if it were conducted as a TV series that's a cross between American Idol and Survivor. I'm not promising it'll be outstanding :-p but I do want the satisfaction of completing it.
The plan is for me to do it. I've tried to gather my thoughts in this Stealing Commas post and had already writen quite a bit in a thread here.
So that's more words on the topic than anyone could ever want to read.
The short version: there's a supervillian who works very hard to make sure no one gets hurt, a superhero who is convinced that whatever he does is justified, a city that's basically come to terms with the fact that their architecture is routinely demolished in fights between the two, a system of underground bunkers to keep everyone safe while that happens, and a rat named Benjamin. Then a love story takes place.
Or something like that.
I'm thinking probably not, though the plan *is* to knock off the last 30K of my current project before December. Which should give me a couple months to let it rest, read it over, slam my hand in a drawer a few times because what the *hell ass balls* was I thinking with that scene and that is not a sexy word and ARGH I COULD CLEARLY ONLY DO THIS ONCE AND WILL NEVER WRITE ANYTHING GOOD AGAIN HAVE SHOT ENTIRE CREATIVE WAD AT 29 and then, y'know, revise the thing.
....aas you do.
and ARGH I COULD CLEARLY ONLY DO THIS ONCE
I thought you'd already had two things published.
Actually that's somewhat understating the process. A few days ago I was thinking about the fact I'm not convinced I can write a competent love story and at some point the thought popped into my head, "If I had more time I could grab Izzy's book and see how she did it in hopes of inspiration," but then somewhere I read you talking about your book and it was nothing like what I thought it was, being, as it is, set in a boarding school. (Not that that in any way precludes there being a good love story, it's just that it wasn't what I was thinking of.) Then I scoured the internet trying to find an answer to the question, "So what the hell was I thinking about?" finally bumping into your facebook page, for we are friends, and saying, "Oh, I was thinking of Izzy's other book (that I likewise have not read.)" (Haven't been in a reading mood in a good long while.)
But the point remains, I thought you'd already made it passed, "I only had one of these in me," though I somehow doubt, "I only had two of these in me," would feel any better.
I seem to have signed up in a fit of optimism, or something. I haven't written really for years now, but I really want to write, so it... seemed like a good idea at the time? (And might I add that writers forums and creative writing classes were, for me, the end to my writing. I know they're supposed to be a good thing, but I don't think it's a coincidence that I wrote less and less the more of those I attended.)
I'll either be writing an extremely altered take on Beauty and the Beast or some sort of adventure novel. Okay, both would be adventure novels. It's just that one actually has some vague idea of the plot and the other is still in search of a plot and a world.
I'm doing it! I've done it several times in the past and failed every time >.> but this year feels lucky!
Really, I'm more of a short story writer, but it's nice to have a goal.
I think I write at least that many words every month, so for me it is kind of redundant.
I'd love to do it...but I know with my five-year-old son and his entropic aura, I'm afraid I'm not going to have that kind of time.
Although if I get ambitious I could try to finish my pirate story. The premise is that between all worlds there is this no-place called the Waters, which is like an endless ocean. The concept is similar to Narnia's Wood Between the Worlds, only, you know, with water instead. The protagonist is a girl who, while working as a mess mate on a Maine windjammer, accidentally crosses over into the Waters and now has to get home somehow. She gets picked up by a 300-year-old pirate named Alex (who looks about 20, because you don't age on the Waters), and is forced into servitude on his ship. He's a jerk at first, but they end up falling in love. Also, the story has Amelia Earhart as an antagonist. Oh, and steampunk. (Earhart pilots an airship).
Izzy, you crack me up so much. Thank you. :D
I LOVE the ideas in this thread. Especially Benjamin the rat. Poor Benjamin.
I'm in. It's my 11th year doing it and I need the words to finish a novel that's been lazing around like a fat plot-bunny and not getting out of the hutch.
I wish I could write. Sadly, the only things I've ever managed to complete are two prologues, one for a Pokemon fanfic and one for a rather bizarre Sailor Moon thing. (Good aliens recruit humans to defend Earth against invaders, basing their power-ups on a well-known anime - so there are several hundred very public Sailor Senshi scattered all over the world. The hero is a forty-year-old office worker who gets turned into a Sailor Saturn - complete with being permanently stuck in a twelve-year-old body.)
Aw, thanks! And thank you for providing so many awesome blog entries!
I was thinking specifically of romance novels--I'm in Oh God It's Time To Write a Sex Scene mode*--but that's actually pretty reassuring, remembering that I've repeated the "actually writing a publishable novel" experiment at least twice. So thank you!
Hickey actually doesn't have much in the way of romance plot, now that you mention it. That may show up in sequels, though.
*Which: I don't *dislike* writing sex/kissing scenes, but it's the thing about my current writing that I've done least of in my life, plus having to decide whether and how much to mention tongues pretty consistently throws me for a loop.
This is my fourth year doing NaNo, third year as ML of our region. It may very well be my last, though I'm not sure yet. I've learned a lot about my writing habits (and lack thereof) through doing NaNo, I've gained self-confidence that I can:
a. finish a novel
b. hit 50,000 in ten days if I need to (not saying I recommend this)
c. hit 50,000 words at the end of the month even if I'm flying by the seat of my pants and the end product reeks (I don't recommend this, either)
I can write! I can encourage others to write, and I can do it almost while standing on my head.
Everything surrounding NaNo has just become super busy though, with holidays and life and whatnot. So this may be my last year so that I can really focus on being a good writer, not just someone who shows up to get their word count. But, I don't mean to sound negative. NaNo has been a great kick, and I've gained some excellent friends through our region.
Get an artist (unless you are one) and turn that into a web comic! It sounds awesome.
Other people shared a lot more than I did, so... let me correct that. My Beauty and the Beast idea came from a discussion of how the story can be viewed as okaying domestic violence and the not good idea that love can change a violent man. So... what if the Beast were simply beastly looking but didn't act beastly. No kidnapping fathers, girls, or anyone else, no being mean and scary. How would it work then? Of course, very rapidly Beauty became average looking, because, really, there are enough beautiful maidens in books already. Also practical, because that's how I like my characters. And, while true love is a classic way of breaking spells, its a little... eh. I'd rather see love or caring prompt people to do something. Which leaves us with a practical, average looking woman (possibly a herbalist, possibly a hunter or trapper) who meets a scary looking but perfectly nice man living in a hidden valley (he has to be self sufficient, since he can't exactly go in to town for supplies... or maybe he has a faithful servant? but that can get into all kinds of wrong) and decides that they need to break his curse. (He'd given up.) And so they set out to do so. There's some possibility of him being a reverse werewolf (man by night, beast by day). And he won't be spectacular looking when freed, either.
My other idea amounts to characters I've got floating around that I can't seem to get the right world for. I was writing space adventure, but I switched to mystery, only to discover I can't write set in the "real" world. So I may have to come up with an alternate world - possibly having to do with Tesla - for them. I've got a private detective who went into private detecting because she grew up on PI fiction. I've got a young man who's kind of at lose ends but who knows a little about a lot of things, having gone to college for a number of things and never really finished any of them. (I admit he's slightly based on me.) I've got a science fiction writer. An antiques dealer. A security consultant. And the people at her firm. I have vague adventury ideas for them. I just need a reality for them.
(he has to be self sufficient, since he can't exactly go in to town for supplies... or maybe he has a faithful servant? but that can get into all kinds of wrong)
There would definitely be a lot to explore in that relationship since at this point the former servant would essentially be the one with all the power, and the former master would have become a dependent. Even if both of them are for whatever reason clinging to the way their relationship used to be they both have to realize that it's been turned completely upside down from what they new before.
Sadly, I didn't have any solid ideas of how to proceed past the opening scenes. As a webcomic, it would be one of those that lasted maybe twenty strips before being abandoned.
Indeed. I'm having trouble thinking of any ways of handling it that don't end up being deeply problematic. But at the same time, I have trouble believing that it would be possible - even if one had a garden plot and hen house, small farm, whatever - to be completely self sufficient. Even if I went with the reverse werewolf idea, he'd have to have help because I don't know of any pre...er...pretty damn modern times society that wouldn't have made it pretty impossible to go into town for supplies at night. (I think you'd have trouble as recently as thirty-forty years ago, especially in the summer. If sunset's not until 9ish and the grocery store closes at 9...)
It occurs to me that one of the best ways to get the Beast the things he couldn't grow/raise/hunt/make himself would be if he had a deal with criminals. Except then we've got the question of why they wouldn't just kill him and take his stuff. (Superstition?) Unless we're talking minor criminals - maybe the hidden valley opens onto the King's forest and he gives a poacher a safe place to poach from in exchange for supplies. Though there are still problems with that.
How in blazes did the Beast manage in the actual fairy tale!?
Aw, too bad. It's a great idea.
I've attempted NaNoWriMo several times and gave up before I reached 2k words each time. If I was to try again, I would have to first work on my tendency to write two paragraphs and delete everything because it's not perfect the first time around. I'd also probably have to take most of October to plan things out, because jumping into NaNo with only the beginnings of an idea is a sure recipe for writing yourself into a corner.
I have signed up for NaNo this year. Because obviously, I am insane. And a story idea grabbed me a few weeks ago and said YOU MUST WRITE THIS. NOW.
It's a bit less than 1700 words/day; that can't be too hard, right? Right?
How in blazes did the Beast manage in the actual fairy tale!?
Oh! Oh! I know this one! I have a copy of the original tale (in English, not the original French) at home thanks to my friend Teli.
In the FIRST "The Beauty and The Beast" official tale, the Beast has a good fairy looking out for him with magic. And I mean, she does EVERYTHING. She even arranges for Beauty to be the one to show up because Beauty is a fairy princess (no really).
I tried to get around the food problem with a siper-short timeline, a stockpile of food from the winter, magic, and OH LOOK A PUPPY!
I'm liking the idea of self-sufficiency. Maybe the "Little House In The Big Woods" model? They very rarely had to go to the store at all. If your forest is VERY dangerous, the Beast could get clothes and goods off of folks who died in the woods from mountain lions or whatever?
Ah, man, now ALL the cool kids are doing it. [...] Maybe I should try to make it happen [...]
Come on, Ana. You know you want to.
Everybody's doing it.
LOL. Maybe just this once... I can quit any time, right? :P
"And might I add that writers forums and creative writing classes were, for me, the end to my writing. I know they're supposed to be a good thing, but I don't think it's a coincidence that I wrote less and less the more of those I attended."
Not surprising to me at all. I had the absolute worst experience in creative writing class. Where I learned that "poetry doesn't have rules", so I was being closed-minded and old-fashioned to say that the excessive punctuation in a Dickenson poem was confusing me about her meaning, that it's elitist and snobby to want people to use quotation marks for quotations goddammit, that all Literary Fiction is about sex and that "suspension of disbelief" is a phrase unheard of outside the scifi/fantasy community. I was the only fantasy fan/writer in the entire class, bar the girl whose favorite book was Twilight.
Still undecided. I know it'd be stupid to try this year - I have a ton of studying for grad school, a job, a blog, a fiction side project, and a social life, most of which I did not have in previous Novembers - but I'm a five-year NaNo vet and I love the thrill of the thing. And I actually have a cool idea and some characters I am totally in love with, which is more than I had this time last year... but I just don't think I can squeeze it in. Unless I deliberately set myself a lower wordcount from the start.
that it's elitist and snobby to want people to use quotation marks for quotations goddammit
In one of my classes we're working on Herodotus. Whoever did the Greek refused to use quotation marks. It is worth remember that the lowercase letters, periods, commas, question marks (which look like semicolons), semicolons (which look like levitating periods) and, in all likelihood, SPACES were editors' additions to the the text. But apparently quotation marks were just too far. Can't be adding those.
I like quotation marks, and lowercase letters, and the letters v and j. These are innovations that are to be celebrated. (Spaces even more so.)
If you have an opportunity to use punctuation to make things easier to read, my feeling is: Do it. For the love of God, do it.
I'm doing NaNo this year... like Sarah, I'm strongly leaning toward making it my last year doing so. I do recommend that everyone try it at least once, though -- 1,667 words per day isn't as much as it sounds like, particularly when you're shooting for quantity over quality.
For my story, I'm ripping off the Power Rangers/Super Sentai concept and making it more grownup and dark (i.e. I'm keeping the super-powered team and basically nothing else). I'm looking forward to playing with it.
@depizan -- That sounds amazing!
If any of you who are participating need a writing buddy, I'm stanmanx... That tidbit would be more useful if the writing buddy feature were up :)
Remember: there's no penalty for signing up & not finishing. And there's a whole community of people to help support each other to get done--right down to word-counting tricks to make something squeak by. (Because how *else* would you justify grabbing a free "NaNo 11: I WON!!" banner. Look, with prizes like that, you have to expect some rules-bending.)
I've looked at it for years, and was too nervous to sign up. I'm still nervous--Yuletide nominations & sign-ups start soon, and that comes with lots more pressure. But this time, I got a plotbunny that's officially too weird for any fandom I write fanfic in, so I'm trying to novelize it. (There's this spaceport brothel where aliens pick up human hosts for their eggs, and...)
I made it last year, and I'm shooting for 100,000 words this year.
My story's going to be about steampunk-powered circus-performing freedom-fighters. I'm excited.
Hmmm. Maybe I should try it this year. I really want to finish the other things I'm working on, but there is the horror story about paper dolls that niggled into my backbrain and I hatehateHATE horror stories.
If I concentrate on it for a month, maybe I can get it out of the way for all the fluffy sparkly stuff I *want* to write....
Gelliebean, Amaranth and Jeremy, I wanna read yours when you're done!
I'm not doing NaNo because I already have a project going. I picked up a notebook for my Winx Club fanfic, 100 sheets, wide ruled so each page is only about a paragraph typed. So 200 paragraphs... I bet I could FILL EVERY PAGE! So that's my writing challenge, coming up with enough fairy adventure to fill this notebook. Then I'll type it all and my two whole readers on DeviantArt will be very happy.
Because everyone else is talking up their plots: Winx Club is a cartoon about the adventures of the six most superpowered fairy princesses in the magical realm. My story is about their average-powered, commoner classmates having slightly less exciting adventures and living normal lives in this universe where magic is common. It stars the one nice witch who broke the Always Chaotic Evil stereotype in the show, and I adopted her 'cause she was such good ficbait what with the "so why ARE all witches evil?" baggage hanging off her. Ah the joys of sewing up the plotholes in cartoons!
It's not the Great American Novel but... maybe I'll write that next. =P
If I actually do it--and the outlook is good--this will be my first. While I have several stories kicking around, the one that feels more promising at the moment is about a world in the midst of a zombie apocalypse-ish event (it's -ish because they're not really zombies--they're regular humans that are being memetically made violent). It stars a girl in her late teens--the child of Iranian immigrants--who is traveling across the U.S. at the behest of [Insert name here], a faerie-type being who saved her life and granted her fire-based powers, and who wishes to find his human former lover.
I'm actually really optimistic about this. I usually don't have the focus for something like this--as evidenced by dozens of unfinished blog posts, but I recently realized that I can eliminate most distractions by exiling myself to my mother's office.
(Let me know if you want an e-copy -- it's public domain.)
Sure. I've read a few versions, but if I'm going to do this, I'd like to read as many as I can get my hands on. Also similar tales, since there are rather a lot of cursed people fairy tales. (Which is where my thought of possibly having him be a man part of the time came from - some of the other cursed people tales, they do get to be human under some conditions.)
Er... now how do we go about that?
There's a direct download here:
http://www.archive.org/details/fourtwentyfairyt00planiala
I'm working on getting a cleaned-up copy that I can upload when finished. :)
Be warned: the original tale is SUPER long. There's a good write-up here:
http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/forbewty.html
Thanks! :D
Oh! If anyone else NaNoing wants to add me as a writing buddy, they're welcome to. I'm depizan over there, too.
I'm still getting used to the interface over there -- how does one add writing buddies? I'm AnaMardoll over there.
The only way I've found is to search for the user and once you're looking at their page, you can click on "add buddy". It's to the left of the user picture. I think there's another link there, too, but I've forgotten what it is.
What exactly does writing buddy mean? I mean, what happens when you add one? How is being a writing buddy different from not being a writing buddy?
I understand the whole "make words, count words, you win if there are enough words" part of the process, but everything else for me is sort of, "We can be writing buddies? What does that mean?" incomprehension.
Aha! Found and added, thank you Dezipan.
I'm anamardoll, if anyone wants to friend me. I feel lonely without friends. :P
And, like Chris, I've no idea what the point of the friends is. An easy look-up list to see what they're writing?
I'm torn on what to write. I've got anyone fairy tale novel in my head, but on the plane ride home I got so frustrated with the novel I was reading that I got this idea for an Everything I Don't Like About YA These Days novel told in parody form. I'm fairly certain I can bang that baby out with sheer adrenaline, but I've no idea if it would be GOOD.
I"m going for it, although I don't think I'll sign up at the official webpage.
The basic premise of my novel: a computer scientist thinks he's found an analytic solution to the game of chess. He recruits a young genius at mental-math to play games using his formula (since the formula requires things like integrals and Fourier Transforms, which would have to be approximated in the player's head and under standard time-controls). As the two progress through chess tournaments, their relationship becomes more and more contentious, with the player feeling like the scientist is increasingly restricting his life to guarantee his compliance. Their main opponent is the incumbent champion, a brilliant chess prodigy who loves the game, but who is starting to worry that he's seeing visions and delusions that aren't there. The other two important players are one that is just in it for the prize money, and one who wants to beat her country's reputation as being insignificant in terms of chess.
I'll be trying to consider a few questions in the novel: what would a solution to chess mean for the game? Is love of chess the only good motive someone can have for playing it, or are others -- money, national pride, even wanting to finish off the game -- valid? Is modeling and analyzing chess mathematically less valid than current methods? Might a player be morally obligated to take a dive and forfeit in order to support the game? If one person comes up with a 'solution' to chess that another implements, who exactly should get credit for the wins? When the scientist rants about the injustice that everyone knows who Garry Kasparov is, but no one knows who Feng-hsiung Hsu is, does he have a point?
More information at: solvingchessnovel.blogspot.com
Depizan, and Ana, I sent you both buddy requests. :-) Now that it's getting down to the wire, I don't feel ready to start writing at all! :-p
If chess is solved does that mean we'll all have to play Nemoroth from now on?
(Or Jupiter?)
I've been meaning to update my rules to my version 3d Chess for ... oh god, maybe a year now? Maybe longer. Let's see your scientist solve that. And if he does, jokes on him because it's scalable I can update it be 4-d chess no problem.
I'm actually not a very good chess player at all. Do need to update the rules to 3d Chess though because the ones I've got up there now are kind of crap.
-
Somewhat more seriously than just randomly throwing around links to insanely complex variants, have you looked into Bobby Fisher's stuff about the problem of openings? Not being much of a chess player I don't know much about it, but I know that he thought that we'd reached a point where openings were solved to a certain extent which meant that an average player who'd read up on openings could defeat masters of the past by rote alone. (Or something like that.) He thought, as I understand it, that that was ruining the game. Fisher's Random Chess was his proposed solution. Probably more important for you than the game itself is the argument he used to justify it since you might want people to make similar arguments. So you might want to look that up.
One more link of a thing trying to bring more complexity into chess.
I'm familiar with a bunch of the grandmasters who were worried about chess being solved, and the methods they came up with to avoid it. Fisher in particular fretted about chess undergoing a "draw death," where the game is basically solved and grandmasters just draw each other forever. So he came up with Fisher Random chess (now called Chess960, because there are 960 possible opening positions), Capablanca came up with a 10x8 board with two new pieces, and so forth.
Personally, I love the idea of kriegspiel -- chess where you can't see your opponent's pieces. All moves are sent through a referee, who tells you if you're moving illegally (such as through an enemy piece). I also like bughouse chess, where two teams of two people play two games, and when you capture a piece, you give it to your partner, who can then play it.
Since it's apparently physically impossible to solve chess by brute force (more storage space would be needed than there are atoms in the universe) [1], I'm letting the scientist have an analytic solution... which has the additional point that it too could possibly be scaled and changed for different chess variants, by simply adjusting initial conditions or the model itself. Perhaps it's just because, in my research, I love finding analytic solutions to things. So much better than numerical approximations. :)
[1] Some people think this problem can be solved by quantum computing, which lets us use other universes. Anything with the phrase 'other universes' tends to make me a bit skeptical, but I'm willing to be convinced if I see a good proof.
If you're interested in making chess more complex, there's always Knightmare Chess.
I hadn't really considered doing NaNoWriMo this year. Some day, I'd like to write a novel where the Rapture is really caused by aliens and the Antichrist is a descendant of their genetically engineered former slaves who's heading up the resistance now that they want to reclaim the Earth. I just don't feel like I've got enough of the plot figured out to tackle it this year.
Now, I may try to do a World of Darkness riff off Twilight, but I don't think I have the experience necessary to write a real romance (then again, that didn't stop Smeyer), so once I get started, it'll probably go in a completely different direction.
Ana, Depizan and Gelliebean, I've added you all as NaNoWriMo buddie--I'm DoKnowButchie, and my picture is one of a guy wearing kickass blue eyeglasses, trying way too hard to look cool. ^_^
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