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Kamikaze Novel Writing
spotmonk writes "November is National Novel Writing Month, and the beginning of this year's nanowrimo program will be starting on Nov 1st. Participants will write a novel of a minimum of 50,000 words in a month's time. Described as valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, nanowrimo takes a kamikaze approach to writing a novel - you may not get the best novel out of it, but at least you've written a novel. Sign-ups last till the end of the month."
yournovel.com
Reminds me of the "I'm sorry this letter is so long... I didn't have time to write a shorter one." quote.
In middle school we had an assignment to write an 8-page paper. After we handed it in, our next assignment was to make the same paper 5 pages.
If any of the novels turn out to be good, we'll have found another Asimov (he wrote hundreds of books, so must have been able to write this fast).
See what I've been reading.
I have participated in Nanowrimo for the past three years. There are a lot of people who think about writing something but never set any structured goals in order to get it done. You can take it as serious as you like or loaf all month. It won't make you a great writer but you might find out that you can produce a lot more than you thought. 50,000 words is a hard goal for many and reaching it can be quite rewarding.
There are municipal liaisons that cover areas throughout the country and organize writing groups. I am one in eastern Ohio and what I do is try to keep track of the people in my local area, provide a little encouragement and pass out a couple freebies that the Nanowrimo staff sends out each year. All in all it can be an interesting experience if you are into writing.
Pshaw - I'll stick to the original, classic Three Day Novel Writing Contest, started by Pulp Press way back in 1977, and now located here. And yes, entries are judged on quality, not quantity.
Three Squirrels
The 3-Day Novel Contest has run every Labour Day Weekend {CDN} for 27 years and has garnered a reputation as the cheeky and uncompromising rebel of literary forms. The world's most notorious literary marathon demands that would-be novelists produce a masterwork in a mere 72 hours.
more info
back in the day we didnt have no old school
Can I ask you a question then? What about this contest did you like enough to participate (twice, in fact)?
I'm just curious, because I used to enjoy writing, but I generally wrote short poems and a few short stories, years ago. These days, I sometimes briefly consider the idea of writing a book - but the task seems too daunting and time-consuming. The idea of spewing out 50,000 words or so in only 30 days' time and producing something I'm not embarassed to have my name attached to doesn't sound like a concept I like at all.
I always found short stories more "manageable", since you basically just have to come up with a good idea, a few interesting characters, and be descriptive about what happens, related to that "core concept" you had in your head. A novel, on the other hand, seems like it requires much more structure. Your characters are going to be described as they sequentially go through a big series of events. (Maybe even a good part of their life!)
Take a Software Engineering course. Seriously, I had a Software Engineering course where there was a team of three people, and we had to write BUCKETS of code in a quarter. The idea was that it would be so had to write it all, that you would HAVE TO cooperate, and that by following a Software Engineering practice, you could each write your code to spec, and have it all Just Work at the end of the quarter.
Well, when I took the course, I was working full time. I knew the quarter was going to be just AWFUL for me at work, but that first weekend after the assignment, I was totally free. And unfortunately, we HAD TO write our code in C++, but at the time I was kind of lacking in C++ skills, but an expert Borland Pascal user. So, I told the two guys on my team "If I write it all this weekend in Pascal, will you translate it to C++?" They laughingly agreed.
They stopped laughing on Monday morning as I handed them a HUGE pile of code. They literally spent the rest of the quarter translating to C++. And they kept making dumbass mistakes like writing pointers to disk, and then reloading the pointers into memory, and as they described it "that works MOST of the time." *shudder* If they had actually literally translated my code almost word-for-word into C++, they would have been fine.
Anyway, there's my story. Thought you might enjoy it.
Education is the silver bullet.
Take part in the ICFP programming contest. It's exactly about that. And the time you have there is 72 hours.
Don't drink and sudo
To get to the point where you can write something that is well thought out, compelling and interesting to others, you need to write something half-assed, boring and uninteresting to others so that you can learn and grow. By not writing, you can't find out and learn.
Thats why your first quote of "if you can't do something right then don't do it at all" doesn't apply here. (I'm not even sure where it would apply)
Its very rare where someone trys something (writing, drawing, singing, programming, rocketry, etc) for the very first time and there is no room for improvment.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
There's a similar exercise for writers with a more visually artistic bent: 24-Hour Comics. There are a few rules, but the gist of it is that one creator produces a complete 24-page comicbook in 24 consecutive hours. That includes coming up with the idea, writing the story, laying it out, finishing the art, and lettering it. You can do one any day you like, but 23 April 2005 is going to be the next "official" 24 Hour Comics Day in which probably hundreds of cartoonists around the world will each attempt it over the same weekend. The first organised event was this past April, and I plan to participate next year.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
No one said you had to stop writing after the 30-day limit. The idea here is just to get people off of their asses and onto the word processor, notepad, napkin, whatever. Originally, the thing didn't have a deadline - it was added because of the ability of the author to come up with unique and creative solutions to problems when burdened in such a manner. Basically, Hacker Logic applied to writing. I don't see why the Slashdot community seems to be so viciously against this; haven't you ever produced a piece of code in a limited amount of time? Does time, in that sense, automatically yield bad results? Well?
What they should be doing is practicing their craft on short stories, failing and learning there, before tackling an entire novel with any hope for success.
Short stories and novels are totally different fields. That's like saying you need to practice writing four-minute pop songs before you can learn to write a symphony. You learn to write novels by writing novels, not by writing short stories.
Slash has nothing to do with Slashdot.
I still prefer "it was a dark and stormy night".
Let's be honest; most of us would-be writters and many real writters would love to be Bulwer-Lytton, one of the most prolific and well-known Victorian authors who actually made a living off his writing. It's sort of a shame he's known for that one line; of course, it beats being known for having his wife put in an insane asylum to shut her up.
But then, 95% of fiction on store shelves these days is utter crap. It's written by morons whose idea of prose style is dominated by extensive TV watching, whose plots are recycled from LoTR, Star Wars, or possibly Speed Racer. And maybe all three. You do NOT learn good writing techniques in crap-cramming marathons. You only learn to rush your thinking and self-judgement, not to think well and write well. As Harlan Ellison said in another context, these people are merely going to be 'creative typists'.
In the coding context, a tight dreadline may force your focus to be tight, but it does not guarantee good code nor learning quality. It just leads to code-spew. All I ever see from the majority of pressured coders at work is half-assed broken limping code done in death marches. Discipline and thought and a little pride in standards of quality are way better working standards than treating production like some video game you're trying to beat the clock on.
His revenge for finally being made to provide a Star Trek script (The City On The Edge Of Forever) he had promised by being locked overnight in Bob Justman's office was to eat Justman's potted plant.
Kind of makes one wonder what other things people do while writing...
I did Nanowrimo last year. I had about 40000 words written years ago, but never finished it. So I took the situation and characters and wrote a new book, different adventures. It's not great, but I got off my posterior and WROTE it!! That's the important part. And yes, I am doing it again this year. Don't have a plot yet, but it'll come to me.
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