*grin*

[bladespark]

Watching all the NaNo squirming, panicking, self-flagellating, and neurotic spending of all free time going on really amuses me. This is probably evil of me. But the poor sods brought it on themselves. I will never do NaNo. It is not at all in my nature to focus on one single thing that long. Doing a speed crunch costume and having to do one single thing for just one week drives me pretty much crazy. No way I could keep it up for a month. Also the end result would suck. Although I should say that if I could manage to keep up a natural writing roll for a whole month I'd have WAY more than 50K words. When I'm going, I turn out around 5k words a day. But honestly I'd never keep it up for more than a couple of days. A week, tops. Though I suppose that a week, at 5k a day, would be long enough to get most of it done. That's 35k right there... *chuckles* But eh. That would assume that I have an idea good enough to grab my enthusiasm, and enough material to just keep running without having to stop and think about what happens next for that long, and nothing much else on my plate so I'd have time to write without stressing about work. Not happening.

Comments

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

Agreed, so much. I couldn't do NaNo even if I wanted to - I simply can't write fast enough, because I try to polish, rearrange, rework, and make it all flow as best I can as I'm writing (and I'm not very good at it). Just.. throwing words out, even if there is some kind of plot there is just so seriously not how I work, it would irritate me vastly to even attempt it.

'course, I've yet to actually see the point of torturing yourself so much to churn out 50k words in a month. I'd rather have 5k words that shine, that fire the mind and soul, than 50k words of meh.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Well, I suspect for a lot of people, they're always going to write a bit more "tomorrow" and then they never write anything at all, so the support-group/peer-pressure nature of NaNo motivates them to at least get something done. And a lot of people seem to have no problem with writing drek all in one go and then doing all the editing later. I don't work that way either, I honestly tend, every time I write a new paragraph, to backtrack about four paragraphs, read, correct, and edit with the next stuff in mind, check the flow, and then move on, meaning every single paragraph gets edited four or five times as I go, which is not counting the editing I do whenever I finish a section, or after I'm doing with the whole thing!

[rustydragonfly.livejournal.com]

Well, the point isn't to produce perfect prose. It's to get that first draft out.

I'm one of those writers who's tried being a perfectionist and found it doesn't work. I wind up dithering along, caring more about a single paragraph than the structure of the story as a whole. NaNo is more like making a big, messy sketch than a finished painting. It's nowhere near perfect, but it's something I wouldn't have if I'd spent ages revising. Of course, it will need revising later, but its a workable base.

That and it's fun! As much as people do go on about the horrible torture of NaNo, do you think I'd have come back for five years running if it wasn't? And fun means everything to me, because I'm a hobby writer. I do want my work to be good (the past couple of years I've been challenging myself to create decent a stories against the deadline), but I'm not bothered about publication. I just want to create stories and have fun doing so, and that's all that matters.

Not that publication matters either... I know of at least one published author who does NaNo, again, just because it's fun and a good break from "serious" writing.

But everyone has their own methods. I know my partner has said before that she could never do NaNo because she doesn't do that high speed writing style, and that's okay (She's still there to cheer me on, though!).

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Well, more power to the folks who enjoy it. But I'm still going to snicker at my friends who moan and wail and panic over it.

But to each his own, and all that.

[rustydragonfly.livejournal.com]

Oh, true. Of course, maybe some of us are exaggerating, like this year when I was being all "aigh I failed to reach 10K in the first two days, I FAIL!" which is of course daft, and I know it. But hey, you have every right to laugh. Doing NaNo is a good way to learn about how to laugh at yourself, too!

I think I'm going to pull out last year's story after I'm done with this and give it a nice critical look. There's a bit of promise in there.

[nicodemusrat.livejournal.com]

I think a little good-natured wailing is acceptable. I mean, the point is to push ourselves and our writing skills.

But some people do get too into it and really put themselves through the wringer. One of the purposes of NaNoWriMo is to have fun writing. If you aren't enjoying it, that's a bigger failure than not making your word count, IMHO.

[jtbeckett.livejournal.com]

yeah... for me to write something like that, i'd actually have to have a legitimate reason to do so... like a specific idea, and a specific market, and the means of publishing, marketing and distributing when it's all over. To do it just because it's that time of the month... er... year...

Well... it seems like an ineffective use of time.

[rustydragonfly.livejournal.com]

Some of us just aren't interested in sales, though. I've never thought much about markets or publishers or anything like that, I just write things because it's a nice little hobby.

And time spent having fun isn't ever wasted, I think, just because you're not making any money from it.

[jtbeckett.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that's true... but when you're self-employed like my spouse and I... and you have several mouths to feed, as well as helping to care for elderly parents... money becomes somewhat of a priority.

[jtbeckett.livejournal.com]

as well as time.

[moltare.livejournal.com]

I like to write, I have trouble constraining myself to extending a plot past about five thousand words, and it's something I'd like to be able to say I've done.

Furthermore, my entry is really taking off, to the extent that 50k simply /won't be enough/. And that's rare for me.

[shadesfox.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I am also amused by the concept of, "Your creativity begins here and ends there" that the deadline approach takes.

I'm convinced that I'm going to write a book some day, and it may be titled, "Things that I really should not put in my mouth, but did anyways," but no one will tell me how I should write it and why I should stress about deadlines. In fact, there goes a deadline on one of my school assignments there, wheeee!

[nicodemusrat.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's really the conceptual focus. Many NaNoWriMo participants write or edit year-round. This is more of a mass writing drill. It's about trying to get out a complete drafted work in a limited time, in order to push yourself and your skills. The deadline and peer pressure (and unnecessary wailing) are just tools to keep you from deferring and dithering.

[thalass.livejournal.com]

hehe. I'm one of those people who always intend to do things "later", so next year I think I'll try and do a comic-style nano. One comic per day, for thirty days! I mean, if Jeph Jaques can do one a day, so can I! Maybe. >.>