NaNoWriMo!

[Oddysey]

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.

[dizzy]

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

[Renatus]

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. 

[kim]

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

[dizzy]

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

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

[rohina]

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

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

[dizzy]

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.

[Hook]

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.

Hook

[rohina]

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.

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.

[Renatus]

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.

I know of an editor who, if they didn't compeltely disagree with that statement, would have a few cavets. (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, 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.

[rohina]

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.

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.

[Hook]

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

[Myrddin]

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! 

[kim]

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.

[rohina]

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?

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.

[dusty]

Its quite possible to use "their" as a non-gender-specific pronoun, just not a singular non-gender-specific pronoun.

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

[Renatus]

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.

[rohina]

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

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.

[Faizah]

I did NaNoWriMo last year, for the first time. I bought an Alphasmart 3000 (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.

[clem]

What dizzy-two *should* have written was:

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

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

[Hook]

What dizzy-two *should* have written was:

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

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

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 it's actually a pronoun agreement error.

  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

[laeshanin]

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! 

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. 

[dizzy]

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.

[Renatus]

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.

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.

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?

[dusty]

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.

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.