The Smiley Smile Message Board

Anyone doing this?

www.nanowrimo.org

I should have really warned the uninitiated earlier, but you basically have 1 month to write a 50,000 word novel. Starting today  ;D Been doing it for however long as a cup of tea stays warm and have nearly 2,000 words, so I'm doing okay. It recommends you write 1,667 words a day to get the total, so it's easy to catch up.

Bon writing! Even if it is just me  ;D

I could write 1,667 words of fiction a day for a month, no problem... but it would be pretty piss-poor stuff. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see the point of writing by the yard.

I believe it is designed to get over the lethargy that most people get whilst writing fiction without deadlines - For example, I started writing a book in the summer and got about 3,000 boring words done in about 6 weeks, and i haven't touched it since early September. I started doing this at 2 this afternoon bar a brief pause for dinner, and have already got 4,100 by just winging it with no real planning besides knowing I was going to start writing a book today. (Incidentally, it's somewhat hackneyed Chandler-esque detective fiction that I am trying to liven up by throwing as many stylistic curveballs as I can, but I have 29 more days to remedy this)

I mean, after the month is done I'll have 50,000 words of dubious quality to mould into a proper 'novel' if i so wish, as opposed to my 'grand idea' which i can never get round to finishing because there's no impetus, no matter how arbitrary the actual deadlines are....I was looking for an excuse to write a book anyway, why not this?

I once wrote two film scripts in my late teens using a similar style - zero planning and very fast. I just sat down and let the pen take the story wherever it wanted to go. One was a spoof British gangster story (Lock Stock was all the rage at the time) and the other was a comedy slasher that I wrote with the intention of me and my friends filming (we never did).
Everybody I showed them to found them hilarious. For my third effort I began writing a black comedy about "Killer Hillbillies". This time I tried plotting it a little beforehand. Guess what? I hit a block/ran out of steam roughly a third of the way into it!

OK, see your point, and yes, valid... but it reminds me of all the folk heaping praises on J.K. Rowling because "she's getting kids to actually read", and ignoring the small but important fact that what they're reading is pretty poor, badly written cliched stuff. They be much better off reading Gorey.

It's the written word version of jamming. Besides, that's what the second draft was invented for!

P.S. Am I the only person in the Western World NOT to have read Harry Potter stuff?

... and yet sometimes I'd wish I was clever enough to have thought of writing pretty poor, badly written cliched stuff like that. One can't deny she made a few extra bucks on this.  ::)

But I understand your point Andrew.

And -
Nope, me neither. I'm not much of a reader anyway.

I read the first book, just to see what all the fuss was about. My conclusion: nothing. Can't recall the guy's name right now, but I was put in mind of the musician who famously said "Calls himself a lyricist... I could eat Alphabetti Spaghetti and sh*t better lyrics !"

Oh god, you have no idea. I do English Literature at Uni (a respected London one, no less), and the amount of people who say their favourite book's Harry Potter makes me want to cry. Then again, I doubt whether some of the people on my course actually like literature.
I won't say I haven't read some of them, but I will never read them again.....
I managed to write 4,100 words yesterday. It's ropey, and I have no idea how I'm going to get 45,900 more words out of  it, but reading it back didn't make me want to die, so i'm considering it a step forward. I'm enjoying writing it as well. Have essays looming this month though, so we'll see.....

I read the first chapter of the Sorcerer's Stone back when it first came out...put it down and haven't even touched a Harry Potter book in over 10 years.

Putting in a BWesque ''mad genius' character - Yay or nay?

BTW, bar the obvious dreadfulness of what I'm writing, this is hella fun. Just creating whatever the hell you like..... Works much better than the laboured approach of the last thing i tried to write. I'll definitely mould it into something proper when Nov is thru....

Yay. And he owns a health-food store named 'The Radiant Rutabaga'....

My mad scientist character seems to be more of a Conan Doyle freak - Is an amateur Sherlock Holmes, without much of the Wilson in him. Is called Vicesimus Knox, which is a name I saw on a handout for my Romanticism course and couldn't pass up  ;D

I will write Brian in there somewhere, though. There are surfers present, as I have for some reason decided to set the blasted thing in LA.If not Brian, then Dennis. Or maybe Murry  ;D
Hit 13,000 words today. I am getting something approaching a plot, and the people who have seen what I've done so far like it. All things are good. No paranoia about it yet. It is only the first week though, so you might see a breakdown in this thread yet. Watch this space

Hope you make it!

Is there any way, when you finish, we'll be able to read any of it?

I don't know whether the site hosts finished ones, although I'd be happy to stick the doc up here.... This all depends on the next three weeks though....

I began a novel this month called "Hack". It's sort of a thriller with a cabbie (Hack) as the protagonist and sort of touches on my voluntaryist/agorist leanings. Whether or not I finish it this month, I do intend to finish it. Best of luck hypehat!

And to you too, Grillo!

My progress was stifled yesterday when I realised i was basically regurgitating Ulysses. so on 14,000.

Life intervening has made me just over 4,000 words behind schedule. eeek

Ahh, don't sweat it. One month or five, if you get a novel done, even if it sucks, you've done more than most people have ever tried. At least that's what i tell myself.

6,000 words behind schedule and Brian Wilson, circa 1967, has arrived!  ;D