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writethisfanficDay three is over, at least where I am. Were the muses kind to you today?
What did you do today?:
- Write
- Edit
- Send to beta
- Post
- Plan/daydream/research/write scenes in your head
- Procrastinate
- Something else I will describe in comments.
Today's question: Since Camp NaNoWriMo's just launched, I'm curious whether any of you have done NaNoWriMo before, or have signed up for Camp NaNo? If you've done it before, did you write fanfic? Did it ever end up posted somewhere? Or is it still sitting on your hard drive, never to see the light of day? If you haven't done NaNo, would you ever consider trying it, or is 50k words in a month too daunting, even for fanfic?
(For those unfamiliar with National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo - it's a writing challenge that runs in November and the goal is to write a 50k word novel in a month. Camp NaNo just launched this year and plans to run July and August. They also have Script Frenzy in April for script writing.)
What did you do today?:
- Write
- Edit
- Send to beta
- Post
- Plan/daydream/research/write scenes in your head
- Procrastinate
- Something else I will describe in comments.
Today's question: Since Camp NaNoWriMo's just launched, I'm curious whether any of you have done NaNoWriMo before, or have signed up for Camp NaNo? If you've done it before, did you write fanfic? Did it ever end up posted somewhere? Or is it still sitting on your hard drive, never to see the light of day? If you haven't done NaNo, would you ever consider trying it, or is 50k words in a month too daunting, even for fanfic?
(For those unfamiliar with National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo - it's a writing challenge that runs in November and the goal is to write a 50k word novel in a month. Camp NaNo just launched this year and plans to run July and August. They also have Script Frenzy in April for script writing.)
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Date: Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 16:53 (UTC)I signed up for NaNoWriMo last year, but totally froze and wrote no words. (It was just as well, since I had no plot).
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Date: Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 17:16 (UTC)The second time, I was trying to convert a story idea I had been developing as fanfic to original fic and stalled pretty early on. I didn't finish that year. Too much self-inflicted performance pressure, I think.
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Date: Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 19:12 (UTC)The first one might count as Bible fanfiction, but the second one was truly original.
I do recommend NaNo, but I also recommend having a good outline ready before you start. Otherwise you risk writing yourself down a dead-end path you'll just have to delete later, as I did.
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Date: Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 19:17 (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 19:24 (UTC)I've done Nano before, & won twice (possibly 3 times? I think only twice). Never did anything w/it, & it was before I started writing fic. I don't know if I would do it again for fic, just b/c most of my storylines are not the 50k type. ^^;;;
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Date: Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 19:51 (UTC)I've never participated in any NANOs what-so-ever. Never felt the need.
But I'm off to shoot tons and tons of fireworks in a little bit. And when I say tons, I mean it--about $5K worth!! (We own a store and can't sell this year due to a ban. So we're going to shoot instead--in a different county where there is NO ban!! :))
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Date: Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 19:58 (UTC)I've at least started NaNo for the past five years: made it the first year with a horrible, self-indulgent therapy fanfic (in which I projected all of my issues onto my poor main character and let him deal with it). Never, never shall it see the light of day, but writing it was pretty cathartic! The next three years didn't go so well -- I was in grad school, and November was the height of term paper season -- but I succeeded last November! Well, in spirit, anyway. Instead of one 50k thing, I wrote a bunch of short stories, one of which is an AU fic that I'm very, very slowly working on cleaning up enough to post. I'll be trying again this year, I think, for I have characters! (No plot yet, of course, I'm okay with that. ^^)
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Date: Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 20:17 (UTC)I've done nano twice and failed both times. First time I tried writing original fic but I got sick of my characters around 800 words. Second time I tried writing fan fic but life got in the way and it was stuck at less than 500 words.
The camp nano thing looks like a good idea, will have a look another day.
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Date: Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 23:11 (UTC)I mostly procrastinated today, but did write a teeny little bit, which is at least a Start.
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Date: Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 23:50 (UTC)I've done NaNoWriMo a couple times, but I've always been really disappointed with what I come up with. It's fun if you fly by the seat of your pants and are good at it, but if you're a slow writer then it doesn't work out so well. (I prefer "methodical" to "slow", though. :P) I find that with the stuff I produce for NaNo, I have to do so much editing at the end to make it even readable enough to send to a beta reader that it's just not worth it. It's too disappointing and frustrating to look at what I've written and know that I can do better than that. I also don't always have the time to write gobs on a daily basis -- that "REAL writers find time to write EVERY DAY" thing is ever so much beautiful bullshit -- so NaNo is a poor choice for me.
My previous years' NaNo novels are sitting on my hard drive, waiting to be finished and edited into submission. I have shared sections with my friends after I've edited them a bit. I got good feedback, at least!
Since I also did not answer the last two days' questions, this month I'm working on the same novel-length thing I worked on last month, which I am pecking away at approximately at the speed of glacier. But every word is a word closer to the end, right? It will not write itself!
As for canon, I usually end up getting pretty speculative and writing off the beaten path, so I kind of just make up what I need in a reasonable fashion. I try to stick to the nature of the characters and the tone/nature of the original work, but if there's something missing or the world isn't kind of sparsely constructed, then I work with what it's the canon and construct what's missing for my needs.
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Date: Monday, July 4th, 2011 02:07 (UTC)Yeah, some people do NaNo better with plots, others (like me) just ramble on and hope a plot emerges eventually. XD
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Date: Monday, July 4th, 2011 05:10 (UTC)Antyhing's better than nothing, though! And sometimes you need to procrastinate a bit while the story sorts itself out. Here's hoping for more words tomorrow. :)
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Date: Monday, July 4th, 2011 05:17 (UTC)NaNo isn't for everyone, I'll grant you that. And you do need to stick with it. Doing some planning or research beforehand does help though, because then you're not just going in blind. It did take me four years to finish my first NaNo fic, which I started in 2006. I am weirdly persistent at times.
I don't have any time/inclination to do Camp NaNo this time round, but maybe when I have less to do. I've got a pile of fiddly projects to get done before uni starts in August, so no time for big single projects atm. It sounds like a good idea though. The NaNo forums are always a good resource.
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Date: Monday, July 4th, 2011 05:26 (UTC)Congrats on finally winning! :D I've seen a few people now writing collections of short stories for NaNo instead of one piece. 2011 will be my sixth NaNo, and apart from 2008, I've won every year. But I've ended up writing two novels in the process. The first was written for NaNo 2006-2007 (with some work in the middle), and it was a dystopian fanfic AU that took me til 2009 to finish writing, posting and editing. It ended up being about 130k all up. The second is still a WIP, written for NaNo 2009-2010, and it's a Georgian/Regency steampunk AU fanfic that's at about 110k atm? Not sure when it'll get done, though. Maybe this year, except I have an idea for a gangster AU fic instead. So IDK.
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Date: Monday, July 4th, 2011 05:29 (UTC)Fair enough. NaNo isn't for everyone. :) Have fun with the fireworks. Don't go setting anything on fire. :D
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Date: Monday, July 4th, 2011 05:40 (UTC)Yeah, I can understand that. It does take a certain kind of idea to stretch that far, but I've seen more people choosing to do collections of short stories too over recent years, so that can be a way to avoid having a single 50k plot. I haven't tried it though. My ideas are long enough as it is. I think I am far too prolific for my own good.
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Date: Monday, July 4th, 2011 05:42 (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, July 4th, 2011 07:14 (UTC)I signed up Nano a couple times, but LOL couldn't even pass a 1000 words. I think the thing is I need to think up a bit of where I want the story to go before I'm able to write it. I'm considering going for Camp NaNo for August and write both my Big Bang ficand help_japan fic. I actually think the wordcount for both stories wion't be 50k, but this will let me focus on getting a chunk of writing done for both projects, at least. Most likely I'll have to do massive edits when Camp NaNo is over, but I'll at least know what needs fixing and I have time to polish both stories.