More Awesome Than You!

Yes, ladies and gents, National Novel Writing Month is approaching. Officially, it stretches from November 1st to November 30th.

What is NaNoWriMo, you ask? Simple. 30 days, 50,000 words. And massive amounts of caffiene.

This is, as you can see, completely insane, which is why I might just have to do it.

Oh, and my name anagrams to "A tenable ninja tenet." Nifty.

On the bright side, that's only about 1667 words a day. A good writer can do that while standing on their head.

I'm going to be doing it for the fourth year in a row, but unlike the previous three years I'm doing something purely for random, silly fun. I really enjoyed working on stories that I had had brewing for years, but since I'm now doing that the rest of the year, I'm reserving November for writing absolutely ridiculous things on purpose.

Dizzy-two, that word count is not necessarily indicative of a 'good' writer.  ;) Okay, nitpicking aside, the 1667 words a day is writing at a pretty good clip, and a truly impressive one for anyone who writes longhand (like Neil Gaiman!). Still, the main point of NaNoWriMo is to get people writing who keep meaning to but put it off, give them an excuse to do it. Or in my case, attempt to whip some discipline into me. Hehheh.

At any rate, I'm glad to see someone else on here doing it. It's a lot of fun and the sense of community is amazing. I don't recommend trying to register or log in or do much of anything on the boards until the middle of October, though, since every year, without fail, the organizers manage to break the site in new and interesting ways for  one to two weeks. They're great people but they're also the least together people I know.  ;D

if i have some sort of effective looking outline by november 1, i'll probably attempt it. 

Unless you write for a living, I suggest you read through these helpful pages first:

http://www.nzcal.com/hp/adk/

So that wouldn't be you, then, with the subject/verb agreement problems.

Who ever said you need good skill to be a good writer?  ::) Any great writer will tell you that good grammar only stands in the way of good writing.

Creative writing (writing for money) is different from writing for a grade in a class.  The object is to communicate, and certain grammatical ... um, differences ... add to the feel and flavor of the words.  Some rules are inviolate.  Others less so.

It's a real hoot to date an English teacher and get your love letters back with spelling and grammar errors marked. :D

Hook

No, I don't think any great writer would. Great writers are great at the sentence level as well as in terms of things like plot and characterisation. When writers who are good break rules, it usually is, as Hook said, that they are playing around with style, and not that they don't understand grammar.

I know of an editor who, if they didn't compeltely disagree with that statement, would have a few cavets (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004641.html). (It's a long post with a lot of comments, but it's all worth reading for anyone at all interested in having work published or simply how the process works).

As far as that creative writing link goes, I laugh in its general direction. That may be a lovely process for a kid in school who generally bothers to string words together when s/he writes thank you notes to relatives (I say as a former example!), but is not necessarily very good for people trying to write stories for other reasons, or who have been out of HS for a decade or more. ;) Some people do find that some amount of planning before writing is necessary; others, like myself, find that we're better off jumping in and writing without copious notetaking beforehand. After I have a draft, I let it sit for a while, then read through and mark all of the places that need changes, fleshing out, or cutting down, and then I rewrite. And rewrite.

Sure, I'm still a wannabe, but that process isn't without precedent. I know it works for Neil Gaiman, for instance. I don't think Stephen King makes tons of notes, himself, but it's been about a year since I read On Writing. At any rate, the best writing advice is to sit down and DO it, never mind all of the rules of how you should plan. Definitely keep in mind grammar rules - until one knows them inside out to change them, they're more helpful than hampering - but don't hem yourself in with musts about making an outline or worldbuilding notes or character profiles or whatever. If it helps you, wonderful, but if it makes you choke up, forget about it and just write. BIC, or "butt in chair", is about the best advice I've ever had.

Also, listen to people like the folks on here (http://absolutewrite.com), as there are some actual professionals there with credentials you can research for yourself.

Oh yeah, this just occured to me - using 'their' to mean one person, while not traditionally correct, is becoming more common and less seen as an error. Since English lacks a decent non-gendered pronoun that still means a person, and the use of 'one' can end up sounding convoluted and pretentious, people have shifted to using 'their' instead. Some editors and whatnot will get tetchy over it, but it's becoming more and more acceptable. So dizzy-two was not completely out of the grammar ballpark. :P

Using "their" after a noun like "everyone" is becoming more acceptable, but "their" after "a person" or other clearly singular word is still defined as an error by most college/university English departments.

What dizzy-two *should* have written was:

"A good writer can do that standing on HIS head."

Unless you'd rather he used one of the made-up abortions that the overly-liberal, overly politically correct college/university English departments has foisted upon us all.  I've been using "their" as a non-gender-specific pronoun ever since I first saw that other crap in print.  Mostly just to prove I could use non-gender-specific words without totally butchering the English language.

Gawd, don't you just LOVE pedantic bullshit?

Hook

As a writing "hobbyist" and an avid reader, I'm a little ashamed I have never heard of this before!  Thank you for mentioning it on here.

I have no comment on the grammar vs. good writer issue as I am far from an expert on the subject.  The way I handle writing though is to write from the gut first and edit out any grammar issues second.  And always have a proof-reader; if you made the mistake once you will likely not pick it up as an error in future drafts.  To fall back on a writing cliche to further prove my non-expertise, I was always told that you have to know the rules before you can break them.  Well, I guess I did have a grammar comment lol! 

none of which really matters that much in nano.  except maybe the part about stapling the pages together, something to think about while waiting to register.  50,000 words that more or less make sense and at least point toward the telling of a story, or a sincere intention to do so.  critical approval and publishing are only concerns if you choose to make them such.

Personally, I would have written "A good writer can do that standing on HER head." Which, I am sure, would have been equally acceptable.
Its quite possible to use "their" as a non-gender-specific pronoun, just not a singular non-gender-specific pronoun.
I am paid a handsome hourly rate to love pedantic bullshit, and so I do. I have been to meetings where this particular grammatical issue was argued for more than an hour.

When pedants forget to type their apostrophes, it makes Jesus cry.    :'(

So contributing to the conversation makes me a pedant, but making a snotty comment about a typo is useful. Yeeeeah.

Since English is a magpie of a language I would be happy if we'd take something from Finnish and adopt their third-person pronoun, although it would require butchering it slightly as we don't have the right vowel.

To bring the topic kicking and screaming back to the orignal, more interesting subject - Myrddin, definitely give the website a look. Even if you don't participate in the event directly, it can be fun to hang around the message boards and participate in the spirit of the thing - it's one of the best kicks in the pants I know of.

Oh wow. If I believed in him I might be worried that sometimes when I am typing in this web thing, my keyboard misses some key strokes.

I did NaNoWriMo last year, for the first time. I bought an Alphasmart 3000 (http://www.alphasmart.com) (sort of like an electronic typewriter thing - cheaper than even a second hand laptop, and only capable of wordprocessing, which reduced distractions slightly) last October specifically for it, as I'd heard them recommended for NaNo in particular.

In the end, I 'only' wrote about 15k words. Admittedly, I'd never written so much on one story, but I still wasn't quite satisfied. This year, I'm going to try writing several stories at once, since I discovered that I tend to jump around a lot, and hopefully have a total of 50k combined.

Of course, if I don't succeed this year, I'll simply try again next year! :)

Unfortunately, last year, there were only two other people in my city doing this, and for three weeks around then I was out of town (one week travelling by car with mild car sickness, and the two weeks in between those trips staying with family and actually doing things instead of writing) so I didn't actually get to 'meet' anyone else face to face to discuss our progress. I think that might've helped around the second and third weeks, when I was beginning to wonder what I'd gotten myself in for.

You can avoid all of this by making the subject plural: "Good writers can do that standing on their heads."

And it's actually a pronoun agreement error.

/pedantry

A great solution, and much too pratical to be pedantic.  "HIS" was in all caps mostly to get in the face of the politically correct crowd.


:)  And I thought the "agreement error" was between the pedants, the politically correct crowd and the rest of us, who hold both the pedants and the politically correct morons in low esteem.

Hook

I echo that sentiment. I've never heard of this either and will certainly give it a look.

As for the grammer debate? Well, as Renatus has pointed out get the donkey work done first, and then go over your draft as many times as you need to. The grammer can be ironed out at any stage; it's the ideas that are important. Oh, yeah, loved your links.  ;D

I could probably write 100,000 words in a month. Writing isn't the problem. The problem is getting someone to read all your drivel. That part can take many many years.

laeshanin, I'm glad you liked the links! The blog and the forum both are great places to be, and I'm always happy when I can let more people know about them. The blog is good no matter who you are, writer or whatever. The Nielsen-Haydens have lots of interesting things to say and are very smart. The comments they get are great as well.



If you could, that would be awesome, but can you? If you take the leap and try it, I'll applaud you, even if you fall short. If you do it and make it, I'll be impressed, because 1500 to 2000 words a day is all I can usually make unless I chain myself to my computer. If you don't do it and just keep saying that you probably could, I'll continue to roll my eyes. Talk is cheap, you know?

I never called you a pedant.  Rohina talked of her love of pedantry, while forgetting her apostrophe.  It amused me.  I promise I'll shut up now.

Any fool can write 100,000 words a month, provided that they are literate, don't care about the quality of their material, and have a means of recording their words. There's *nothing* astonishing about it.  ::)

Don't believe me? Try checking out fanfiction.net or just peruse this wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hamilton_%28writer%29

Hey not everything on fanfiction.net is total crap.  :P I mean most of it is but people have to get their feet wet somewhere.

They most certainly do, and as a past writer of fanfiction (no slash, though), I can tell you it's a good way to start honing your craft. Some is shite, some, on the other hand, is better written than some of the so-called books that are published with regard to whichever show/film they represent... And a few fan writers have made it to the big time. True they aren't developing their own characters, but in other areas of pure entertainment and meeting the need of the public to devour some sort of material that incorporates their favourite characters, they do just fine.

As for writing at that kind of clip, I can only claim to have ever managed a thousand. Any more than that and I'd be screaming to go back and edit. It's then I'd get pedantic...  ;)

And yet, some of the best novels in English are really quite short - nothing like 100,000 words. Size isn't everything.

I'm glad you're finally agreeing with dizzy-two.


That ain't what *I* hoid!  <groucho mode off>

Hook

So... can you? It's easy to point at an archive of bad writing and say that since those people did it, anyone can, but it's also essentially meaningless - even though their writing may be really, really horrible (I wouldn't know, I don't read fanfic and now stay the hell away from slushpiles), they still have a certain level of dedication and discipline to have sat down and written that much. If you haven't done it yourself, you have no basis for saying that it is easy.

If it was ever-so easy to sit down and shit out a story in a month, NaNoWriMo wouldn't exist as no one would even think about the process being difficult or unusual. You also seem to be missing a large part of the point of it and are getting stuck on the 'quantity over quality' tagline. The reason that tagline is there is because it is all too common for writers to sit and fuss and fuss and fuss over the beginnings of stories, with the end result being that they've spent weeks crafting one paragraph. That's pretty pointless. I've personally experienced it myself that when I stopped fussing about everything coming out perfect all at once, I actually got something done that I can go back and continue working on and polishing. It's kind of like carving - you have to rough out the initial shape before you can start defining the details.

I can and I have. It's easy and trivial. Now, of course, you wouldn't expect your rough drafts to be published. That's what editors are for.  :P

It's also easy to bluntly label anything you haven't read as "slushpiles" or whatever. I read anything and everything that I can find. That's what good writers are willing to do. All in all, it's not so much your ability to output words that's in question so much as your ability to input things other people have suggested into your imagination.

Then that is awesome. You have my congrats.


Of course not. That's also what polishing a manuscript until it's reflective before it ever gets to an editor is for.


When I mentioned slushpiles, I was talking about actual slushpiles - things submitted for publication in some form (in my case, it was for Elfwood and Woodworks some years ago). I have not the time, inclination, or patience to do it again; working as editor for one friend's comic and doing serious beta reading for another is as far as I'm willing to go any more. I have my own things to write and books to read, and I do not think I am missing out. Fanfic is included in this, but for different reasons; I am generally not interested in what other people think should have happened in someone else's imaginary world. Compound this with my partial hermitage from popular culture (don't watch tv, watch very few movies, low interest in anime and most comics), and one could say I have an interest level that is a number approaching zero.

I read the back of cereal boxes when I eat breakfast in the morning and have since I started reading. So what? After a point - working full time and supporting myself was what did it for me, although now it's maintaining 6 hours of class a day, a marriage, and a household - I've lacked the time to read everything for the sake of reading it. I have to be choosy, I no longer have the free time to read a book a day. I spent plenty of time slogging my way through crap I wanted to throw against the wall as a kid to get a good idea of what doesn't work and I'd rather read things I enjoy now that my time is far more limited.

I find it doubly important that I be choosy now that I am trying to write seriously - one is what one reads, and I find that when I read silly, fluffy, stupid stories, my writing comes quickly... and is silly, lightweight, and stupid. On that note, I have to limit how many classics I read in a month or I start writing prose that is painfully purple. Dickens is the worst for this - you might think that I am wordy now...

It's like chocolate. It's important to sample a variety to know what is good (or simply to one's taste)  and what is bad (or not to one's taste), but life is too short to waste on indiscriminately eating the bad stuff, no matter how cheap it is.

NaNoWriMo rules OK!   (And I prefer "A good writer can do that upside-down".  ;D)

I'm planning to do my fourth NaNoWriMo novel ("novel") this year (although not my fourth in a row; I skipped 2003.  In case anyone's run out of cereal boxes to read, here's my link: http://www.davidchess.com/nanowrimo_foyer.html (http://www.davidchess.com/nanowrimo_foyer.html).

NaNoWriMo has a very freeing feel; being able to write without any expectations at all is great.  Not something one'd probably want to do all the time, but once a year it seems like very good exercise...

DC