Noodling NaNoWriMo

I’ve been thinking about NaNo since yesterday.  Back in…I don’t know, maybe February or March this year, I did some prowling around on the regional boards looking to connect with some other writers.  Sent some messages.  Never heard anything.  Well apparently I didn’t have it set to notify me when someone responded because a few folks did!  Mostly recently, as they’re coming back to their own NaNo accounts to prepare for the impending round in three weeks.  We’re trying to coordinate some write-ins.

I’m not participating in NaNo in the traditional sense.  I’ve already talked about why it doesn’t work for me and why it spurred me to start A Round of Words in 80 Days.  But there’s nothing like NaNo for bringing out the novel writer in everyone, so if ANYTHING is going to help me find local writers, it’s this.  My plan is to use the NaNo frenzy (and perhaps some local write ins) to knock out DOTH by the end of November.  As of now, that’s about 30k.  I would like it to be more like 20-25k by the time NaNo starts, given that my highest word count in a month to date is just over 22k.  Totally doable.  Then I can knock out Riven in December.   All of which puts me in good position to catch up on the 183k annual goal of WIP500 and means I’ll have written more in the last 4 months of the year than in the previous 8.  I’m okay with that.

6 thoughts on “Noodling NaNoWriMo

  1. NaNo always gave me that excited feeling about WRITING SOMETHING. There’s no question it can motivate people. I did it for two years. It’s just too stressful, though, so ROW80 was great for me. I can see where tapping into the local writing community could get people together for a fun write-in. I tried to get together with people here, and everyone ended cancelling. I was SO disappointed. That’s why I’ve never tried doing that again. I might have to look into it this year. Maybe. Write-ins could be so much fun, I think.

  2. Dubai isn’t a writers paradise, so local write-ins are none starters. I did my first NaNo last year and attained the goal in 3weeks. I’ll do it this years too. Of course, I will have a lot of work to do on the resulting novels, but thats no unusual. I need to stick to a good plan and then I find it really productive. I couldn’t maintain that word count in general though, which is why ROW80 is so good. Hope you get some great write-ins and have some fun. X

  3. That’s great! Go for it! I was thrilled when I found ROW80, because 50,000 in a month doesn’t work for me — it makes me insane. But I’m thinking I’ll write a novella in November to capitalize on all of that NaNo energy swirling around — 25-30k is doable without making myself nuts. And I already have an outline all polished up and working on me. Yay!

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