National Novel Writing Month Thread: We're Smarter, More Artistic, and Lazier Than You

General Discussion
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Status update: 315-ish words in. Well, more than that now, but last time I checked. I just wanted to get a little bit done right at midnight to commemorate the start of things.

I only succeeded for the first time last year, and that book will never see the light of day. It will probably end up getting cannibalized for ideas. I’m still glad I did it, because once you’ve proven that you can accomplish the relatively menial aspect of the task (getting a story out to 50,000 words), then you can work on more important stuff. Like quality.

I have better hopes for what I’m working on this time, but I don’t know if I’ll try to get it published or not.

There are two sides to writing: there’s the “output” side, which focuses on getting ideas and words out on the page, and the “critical” side, which focuses on whittling those ideas and words down for quality.
It is the critical side that hamstrings a lot of writers, because they end up second-guessing what they’re doing. They slow down, lose interest, become generally frustrated that none of their projects ever comes to fruition, and so on.
Nanowrimo is an exercise in shutting that critical side down long enough to crank out enough ideas and words to fill an entire book. It will be first draft quality for sure, and some of it might not be any good, but the whole point is that you’re not concerned with those things. You’re setting your filter aside and just writing.

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I have been complimented on my writing several times before. My visual arts professor had stated that he saw more skill in it than my artwork, but seeing there is a writing thread, and you guys are critical, I would like to see what you all think of my work. This is an old piece from earlier this year that I’ve never finished, based on my life and the people in it.

The Musician and His One Woman Audience

Spoiler

Apparently, some foolish individual though it would be a magnificent idea to set the ladies’ restroom ablaze. What a moron, having the entire school evacuated into the chilly, spring breezes. Teachers barked at students to get them to maneuver over onto the football field, only to have the majority of them circle the field itself while some resided onto the bleachers.

Hands buried to the bottoms of my jacket pockets, I tried to coat my body with as much warmth as I could obtain, and the arms of a female companion wrapped around my waits, beneath my coat made sure of that. It was all in being a gentlemen, however. With the wind increasing in strength, pounding at my face, I could only make out my surroundings to an extent as I witnessed my fellow schoolmates converse while hurdled into tiny mobs of five or six, with each individual having their own hands deep in their own pockets. The fact that they were all visibly shivering indicated that the tactic was only starving off the cold to an extent.

That was when fate passed me by. Arms wrapped around herself, it was confusing, yet unfortunate to see such a beauty have no one to defend her from the freezing gusts, someone to take the weather’s abuse in her place. However, the most baffling thing about this girl was that no matter how many times she would watch me toy with my guitar during band practice, I had never seized the opportunity to find out her name, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

“It’s over.” Was my final goodbye to my companion before I drove my foot into her solar plexus and broke into a sprint. I did not acknowledge nor cared that she was left dumbfounded on the concrete. Dodging the obstacles which were the mobs of students, I soon caught up with her, and after my introduction, I finally asked her, albeit in an exhausted manner.

“So, what’s your name?”

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count me in. i’ll do this. i will, i will, i will!!! if you read this later, please do this ben, you’ve slacked for too long

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I’m still far behind today’s end goal of 3,333 (or whatever it is), but I’m brewing up a cup of coffee and getting ready to go. I already have multiple scenes started from throughout the book, so I’m thinking I might draw up some outlines at the scene level and see if that works better for me than a whole book-level outline.

Standout scene so far: a guy vomits, passes out on the floor, and wakes up an indeterminate length of time later. Write what you know.

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so is the point of this that we all share them with each other when we’re finished, or we show each other our progress as we go along? i’m kinda shy about sharing my writing because it’s pretty execrable (esp. compared to some of writers on here) but i’ve NEVER finished a novel, ever, and that’s one of my goals before i die.

since i haven’t quit smoking yet, i’d better get started soon.
anyone have any luck last year?

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You don’t have to share anything if you don’t want to. I tend to think of this as more of a progress report/mutual support thread.

RHYMES ALL DAY ERRDAY

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(Ugh, I’m already three days behind.)

To be honest, given all the other shit that’s fucking up right now (because of me, of course), I’m even sure if I want to attempt to do this last year, especially since Elementary from last year is still unfinished, though I at least know where I’m going that; Change on the other hand…

The only reasons as I might do it this is year is because I’ve done it for the past three or four to the best of my horrible recollection and because I literally have over a dozen ideas even if we’re just limiting to “original works” and not other writing stuff I never get around to like fan-fiction or essays.

Kinda having a difficult time deciding what to pick since I don’t want to do either of the sequels of Elementary yet or the other, now-related series Change. I suppose I could do that prequel that I’ve been thinking about, but I still know jack-shit about South Africa at present, so it can wait.

For some reason, I’m currently leaning towards some type of Night Before Christmas-esque holiday thing. I blame both finally finishing Kingdom Hearts II and those Rise of the Guardians ads. I think I might just random-select from one of the following:

  1. Female Vietnamese-Australian protagonist superhero in a world that’s way more fantastic than the other “superhero” stuff I want to write presently.

  2. Male magnetic supervillain in what’s more or less the “real world”.

  3. An interpretation of “Sandy Claws”.

  4. Some random quest in a vaguely throughout medieval-esque fantasy world that I’ve only thought out the basic, if extensive, magick system for. (“Pretentious” k not necessarily going to be utilized throughout, just like how magic[k] wouldn’t dominate everything.)

  5. Making a “screenplay” of that fake Thanksgiving movie that played between Grindhouse’s movies that basically seemed like a parody of Halloween.

Of course, that last one wouldn’t really be original considering. I could maybe swap it with Kwanzaa, except a) no one has any idea that the fuck that is and b) with that many black people around in a horror comedy, my cast would pretty then before the end of the first 25 pages.

Decide the destiny!

If by “have any luck”, you mean “finish it”, then yes. I think goodm0urning and I were the only two people in the thread last year to actually finish though, at least in the sense of getting past 50,000 words.

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I’m kinda sorta doing a superhero/sci-fi genre thing myself, but that stuff’s more of a backdrop than a front-and-center part of the narrative. So I would have to endorse that.

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(Hmmm…I suppose I can’t just keep saying I can’t write women if I don’t try [to write anything].)

Similarly, I don’t exactly want to do holiday stuff since I hate this upcoming season enough as it is already, so focusing on it for 25 extra days probably isn’t for the best. I also really never read any fantasy, medieval-esque books (surprisingly), so what relatively moderate (read: little) knowledge I have of medieval life would probably bug the hell of me.

Aussie Kat it is.

Now, I just need a tentative title. Well, that and deciding if I should (try to) include (known) extraterrestrial aliens or not. Hmmm…

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I’m also doing sci fi, so fuck it, why not? my writing style is childishly fanboyish (fanfics anyone?) so sci fi is a natural fit for that nonsense

I was doing pretty well, I was about five pages deep and then I read it the next day and hated every word, the entire way I went about it, so I trashed it all (even though I know that’s flagrantly against the rules) and I’m starting afresh today. So in a sense I’m behind everyone but I think I can tackle it more.
word count: 0

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So the site is basically made to help you shape the stories you write?

Sounds interesting, I’m gonna look into this now. I love writing, but it just seems like something I never have time for anymore. Gotta dust off some of my old concepts and see what I can do with them.

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(It’s more to help you write stories at all rather than shape them, The Martian. However, it does have forums to help you with that too. I’ve never interacted with anyone on those though.)

Hmmm…I’m now unable decide if I want to do the aforementioned Australian thing. The alternate now is to do a sequel to the story from last year since I knew/know how that’s going to end and I tell myself that working on the sequel would “force” me to finish that too, even if there’s probably no way that I’m doing more than 100,000+ words for both of them together. This knowing that another 50,000 words isn’t going to be enough to finish either.

With 50,000 words, I could, on the other hand, at least get through a “six issue” arc of the superheroine one…

Oh well. I’ll try and decide by Tuesday night when all this election bullshit is over with.

Actually, “childishly fanboyish” probably fits into any fictional category save Horror and maybe Comedy. If you want to write something that’s easy to write with lax quality standards, then I’d sincerely say to try Romance (for a laugh) or “Action” considering it’s a lot less stringent than Sci Fi. (And, hell, if we’re making comparisons to the [bad] fanfiction, like 90+% of that is poor attempts at “Romance” with shipping and what not.)

Then again, when I think Sci-Fi, I tend to think “Hard” Sci-Fi that tries to explain its concepts or their impacts “realistically”, which isn’t necessary of course.

Regardless, just make sure that if you’re doing Sci-Fi that you try to keep consistent about your internal structures and “don’t cross the streams” by causing some disastrous logic fuck-up due to some horrible and egregious inconsistency. Of course, that again rather applies to anything, even (and I argue, especially,) stories with “magic(k)” in them. “Magic A” needs to remain “Magic A” after all. (Then again, a “stupid plot” is still more memorable than a “boring plot” most of the time, unfortunately, so…)

No no no.

Do NOT edit or backtrack on anything if you can possibly avoid it, which you usually can no matter how shitty it is. I mean, you can get away with it in the beginning or just fixing mistaken words, but in general, you’re not supposed to be doing editing this entire month, even if you end up changing your story completely mid-way through. You can also go back to edit later (or so you tell yourself you will).

Regardless, you’re still ahead of me at least presently, so don’t worry about that either.

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yeah, i think part of my problem writing sci fi is i want to try and make it as realistic as possible (kind of star trekky) but i’m not smart enough to do that in an interesting manner, so i just have to kind of ignore the details of what’s going on.

but like you said as long as your story is internally consistent it’s not a big deal

10 pages today!

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Bump.

I think I’m doing it again this year. Don’t think I’ll manage to churn out the entire thing this time either, but at least it’ll give me the jump on an idea I’ve been bouncing around in my head for the last month or two.

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Why not I have a ton of story ideas just sitting around. I’m in.

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What do you guys do with the finished products?

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I’m still working on mine from two years ago, I plan to pitch it or self-publish when I finish.

I’m also going to work on this one pretty hard once I get it fleshed out.

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I usually make love to mine, put a little personal stamp on it before sharing to the masses like a literary whore.

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I will be doing this again next year. Is there a new thread for it?

If not, then I will create one if there is interest.

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No new thread, we’ve just been recycling this one every year. I may do this, but I’m going to start late. Doubt I’ll make the deadline, but I have a couple of ideas for books that I would like to get off my butt and start working on.