Please deflower a NaNoWriMo virgin

FIrst of all: Welcome!

Second, you mention that you want your experience to be "beautiful and not embarrassing." Hmm...I think it'll probably be a bit of both, if your experience is anything like most of ours :)

Writing 50k in 30 days is exhilarating, no doubt about it. If you manage to cross the finish line at the end of November, you will feel great about it! But writing 50k words during NaNo that aren't mostly junk is...well, you have to be very lucky or very talented. So you'll have to check your ego at the door when you make your first attempt here. You may write a masterpiece. You'll likely write a bunch of gobble-de-gook with a few gems hidden in the goop. But either way, you'll have accomplished something magnificent.

My biggest tip for anyone having pacing trouble is NOT to try to write a certain number of words every day, but to try to write at least one scene/event/chapter/scenario/etc. every day. Sometimes I write a 800 word scene, and call it a day. Sometimes I write a 3500 word chapter and spend the evening soaking my hands in a bucket of ice. Either way, if I accomplish a goal that's driven by the story, rather than an artificial word count, I consider my job done.

Other quick advice: get in a word count challenge with someone, go to write-ins, find a writing buddy, accept a plot/character challenge from the NaNo forums, write (actually write, not type) a chapter during one of your writing days, and finally, never (EVER!) give up, even if you think you've fallen behind the pace to the point of no return. You CAN recover.

Hope some of this helps! I'm looking forward to seeing you around town in November!

After reading the messages here, I've decided to jump into the pool after all. There's nothing to be gained by holding back. Ted's advice to the virgins was great, and I figure if I did it last year, I might see what sort of "novel" I can spawn this year. Those numbers are important to be sure, but when you are on a roll, you can write far more than 50,000 words divided by 29. I always allowed that extra day in case something came up that kept me away from the computer. Last year in the middle of November, I had to leave town for three or four days to go to Denver (rough, huh?) to see about my mother who was having trouble adapting to a nursing home. We had a great visit; her attitude was changed and now she has some "buddies" and is doing great.

Ted, would you speak about NaNoWriMo buddies? I really didn't use any last year and didn't get acquainted with any in the Lawrence group until November ended, and Ted kept a small group of us communicating for a few months beyond. I have no idea how many in the group started but didn't reach the goal, but this older lady felt so good when the word count went over the 50,000 word goal. Just believe in yourselves and don't give up. As Ted mentioned this is not a competition for winning the Pulitzer; it's just a personal goal to hit that magic number. You can edit later -- I've only done a little of that so far. My novel had so much information about the era when I was growing up, I decided not to edit it as a novel but as a memoir of my life fo rmy grandchildren. If I get that done, I will have copies made for all of them. And this time the word count doesn't matter -- it's all personal history for a special audience. No writing effort is ever in vain.

So, sz and others who are virgins, just get into the deep end of the pool with the rest of us (I'm often in over my head). Enjoy the exercise and see where the words lead you.

SunflowerSage

SunflowerSage aka Grandma Marge

Hello and welcome! Nanowrimo is my favorite month of the year, glad to have you join us this time!

Last year I created a post of tricks and tips to make it to 50k. I will see if I can dig that up from somewhere. If you go to the main Nano forums, I think they have an entire forum dedicated to sneaky (and non-sneaky) ways to boost your word count.

The hardest thing of all is to make yourself write when you don't feel like it, you're sick of it, you hate your story and yourself. But the past couple years I've done this, I have found that once I get into a rhythm, and if I write every day, the characters take on a life of their own and they tell the story to me, I don't have to write it myself anymore. That's the beauty of Nanowrimo: when you're not worried about how good or bad it is, the words just pour out. It doesn't matter. It will probably be embarrassing, so don't go into this thinking it won't be. But we'll all be right there with you, that is the awesomeness of joining a community. I whined more last year during November than I did probably the whole rest of the year, but people were here for me to tell me I could make it. Even though I still pretty much loathe most of what I wrote last year, the experience itself was beautiful, and I can't tell you how incredible the feeling is when you submit your word count at the end of the month and get the Winner's screen.

Before Nanowrimo I hadn't written anything over 5k words either. There is something magical about this month and this contest and these folks. Even if you don't make it to 50k (which I did not my first time), just plan on participating the following year and make your goal to beat your previous year's word count.

Most of all, just have fun with it. And get used to Ted's pep talks, because he is wonderful at them :) Although when pep talks stop working he starts bullying and threatening to hit people with laptops, hehe ;)

Great to have you, szpark!

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."
~Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)

Great to have you back SunflowerSage!!! :)

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."
~Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)

As for buddies, I think it's just another great way to motivate yourself to keep up the writing. Find other people that are in your region, or writing in your genre, and continually encourage each other to keep up the writing! In addition to buddies, I spend lots of my writing down-time perusing NaNo partcipants' profiles, reading novel excerpts, chiming in on plot and character issue requests, etc. Basically, I immerse myself in nanowrimo.org for 30 days (which drives my wife CRAZY, she is NOT looking forward to November).

So, yeah. Stick with us here in the forums, and we'll get you through it, no problem!

Hey szpark! I promise you'll have fun doing this!
That's what NaNo is kind of about, after all.

Noveling is absurd.
Writing 50,000 words in 30 days is simply insane.

At the same time, anyone here who has done NaNo will tell you that after it's done, you'll feel like you've completed a psychiatric therapy program. NaNoers on December 1st are easy to pick out because they have big grins, droopy eyes and twitchy fingers. :)

Don't worry about not ever having finished anything. NaNo is for those who have never written more than a page as much as it is for those who crawl out of their writing shelters every couple weeks to stock up on junk food and continuing on their quest of writing obscene amounts of at least marginally suitable literature.

NaNo is what you make of it. Myself, I've got WAY too much going on already...so why am I doing nano? For the community, for the drive and for the excitement, because I can also promise you that if you really LIVE nano, it will be one of the most exciting things you've ever done and one of the most memorable that year.
If you're like me, you might, in fact, start measuring years by which NaNovel you did which year and how long it's been since November.
Of course I might be the odd-ball out in doing that, but it's a real possibility.

Anyway, the point of that rambling speech was that you've nothing to lose, everything to gain and if you manage to lose some of your sanity during the NaNovember, you'll be more than happy to have traded it for the creativity and enthusiasm you'll surely gain.

Best of luck!

-alex

-There's no excuse not to dream-

So totally true :)

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."
~Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)