National Novel Writing Month

TGIO

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 16:23:36 GMT

Congrats to people who have over 50K.
Congrats to people who have under 50K, but tried anyway.
Congrats to cheloya for a come-from-behind, kick-that-novel-in-the-ass victory.
And congrats for every other version of almost-winning and almost-losing we have here.
…
*falls asleep at the keyboard*

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 08:11:36 GMT

In case anyone wants a ?J-sized image of the winner's icon, check out my journal.

If you'd rather not be spoiled for what it looks like, don't.

Drum-roll please…

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:21:32 GMT

For Week 2:
Cheyinka/the_omelet would've won, at over 30K, but does not count this year due to repetitive insane writing mojo.
#2 is… me… and i don't give myself prizes. Well, i do, but i call it "wasting my paycheque" and i do it every week anyway.
#3 is Cheloya/cheloya, at 21 316 words. Yay Cheloya!

I'm not going to bother re-posting the card pictures because they're the same as last year, nothin' new here. E-mail design choice and address to bubblejets@gmail.com and i'll send 'em out.

Week Two Contest

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:03:36 GMT

Okay, it's a little late, but does anybody want to try for a Week 2 word count competition like the last two years?
Basically, whoever has the highest WC, according to their NaNoWriMo profiles, on day 15*, wins a pack of Christmas cards. A little something to a) Encourage y'all to actually write during that most heinous of writerly weeks, Week 2, and b) Give you one less thing to do next month.

Anyway, i have what i believe to be a somewhat incomplete list** of who's here, based on who was here last year. I know it's incomplete because for whatever odd reason, the_omelet (aka Cheyinka) wasn't on (and if the_omelet, who actually won last year, wasn't on, then God only knows who else isn't).
Obviously, i can't check your NaNo profiles if i don't have your user-name, so if you're not on the list, leave a comment. Unless you're really embarrassed. Don't worry, i won't tease you too much.

*for clarity: I used to check at midnight, but i have other things going on in the middle of the night now. So it'll probably be about 8 a.m., US EST (GMT -5, if Daylight Savings Time hasn't messed that up too much).
**
Members 2006:
cheloya - cheloya
crashing - risky
dairysorbet - dairysorbet
kittinco - kayyam
statelines - Speedle
streetartistnyc - streetartistnyc
the_omelet - cheyinka

YAY NANOWRIMO!

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:33:25 GMT

Dang, i have been completely ignoring this community as of late -_-
And now i'm going to be even more completely ignoring, 'cause it's writing time ^_^
Anywho. Be back soon. Go be good little novelists and write stuff.

Oh, and thanks to the_omelet for shrinking down one of those damned oversized icons.

Also it occurs to me i haven't updated the members list for 2007, and we have newbies, and i don't know any newbie NaNo user names. I like to stalk you on NaNoWriMo.org, newbies. Gimme your usernames. *attempts to glare in an intimidating manner*

NaNoWriMo icon, *J sized!

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 22:14:07 GMT

This year's icons are too big for LiveJournal and DeadJournal, unless you take the tiniest one. Therefore, I offer you:

which I scaled down. I spent all of fifteen minutes on it, so if someone can do a better job, I'll happily take that one instead.

yay!

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:31:07 GMT

NaNoWriMo.org is up now… well, it was probably up a while ago, i wasn't obsessively refreshing the page. Sleep and studying and all that jazz.
Time to start planning the novelisation! *happy dances*

NaNoWriMo site

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 02:46:27 GMT

In case anyone had the same idea I did (of starting to refresh the page at midnight US/Eastern), the forums will not be back until Monday evening (US/Pacific, naturally).

Actually, strike that 'until' and replace it with 'any earlier than'¹, given that even if all the updates go through perfectly, it's going to get slammed by people refreshing it madly starting at, oh, noon US/Pacific ;)

This community's pretty small and pretty sane as far as Nanoers go, but I figured I'd make a post anyway :)

¹ _{You'll notice that instead of actually erasing "until" I added extra words to serve the same purpose, and that I am now compulsively footnoting. :D}

Fade in…

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 03:02:39 GMT

Script Frenzy starts soon (or has recently started, depending on your time zone).

Anyone else doing it?

Why read books?

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 05:58:40 GMT

The latest Heard On Campus - Aurora Forum podcast from Stanford University covers the topic of why people should read books - worth a listen. They diss on-screen reading a little more than i think is strictly necessary but considering my eyes currently feel like they're about to mutiny against my skull, i should probably listen to them.

If you haven't seen the book/tech support video they talk about in the forum, it can be found here. It's only two and a half minutes long and oh-so-funny, so you have no excuse not to watch. I think it may have been posted somewhere in the NaNo forums this past year.

Now What?

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 18:16:48 GMT

If you haven't already, check out the I Wrote a Novel, Now What? page on the NaNoWriMo site. Along with tips for getting over post-NaNo blues and avoiding publishing scams, there's some more details on Script Frenzy, the screenplay-in-a-month project starting this summer. Not many details; Script Frenzy is being a tease and not letting anyone know anything major yet. But apparently, we'll be allowed to have writing partners and the WC is going to be below 50K.

I just love that new-book smell, don't you?

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 18:30:45 GMT

Okay, Lulu is definitely offering one free novel copy to NaNoWriMo winners, yay!

I already ordered Vol. I of my novel (yes, Vol. I. No, i didn't write something the size of an encyclopedia, i just left every-other-page blank for editing purposes, which pushed the book size to way over the maximum size for a Lulu paperback. Then again, i also wrote an extra 10K words and started each chapter halfway down a new page; if you only wrote 50K and start each chapter at the top - or on the same page as the last one ended - you could probably have a half-blank book that's still inside the requirements.)

I should warn you all, you have to do your own formatting and formatting these things is THE DEVIL. Especially if you leave every-other-page blank; unless you've got some sort of program to do that automatically for you, you'll almost certainly miss a few page breaks here and there. Preview your work carefully before submitting it so you're not disappointed when you get the finished product. For that matter, read the formatting instructions carefully so you don't get halfway through formatting and then realise you have to start all over because of something stupid.

THE END.

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 04:59:52 GMT

So NaNoWriMo technically ends (for me) in about forty-five minutes (east coat fo' life yo)… but i think i can safely say "the end" now. I am done!

Congratulations to all who finished with 50K or more!

Even if you didn't, screw the whole "i need 50 000 to win" mentality, you still kick ass for even trying. It's been said that most Americans don't read much more than is absolutely necessary once they graduate; that means even if you only breached 2K, you've still written, in a month, more fiction than most adults in my country read throughout their adult lives. HOLY VORPAL FORCE SWORDS, you are all awesome. Seriously, go brag. And get cookies. And milk and/or beer.

For those who are planning on publishing, and going about it the NaNoPubYe way:
Up next is Rest Month, the month we all pretend we didn't just almost explode our brains (or, in some cases, find brand-spanking-new ways to almost explode them, again.)
January is the first attempt at editing. After a month of locking your novel in a drawer and sticking your fingers in your ears shrieking LALALALAICAN'THEARYOU to anyone who mentions writing, you finally get to see just how good (or horrendous) your writing is.
February is for researching agents and publishers. Note "researching," not "letting them know you exist." Not yet. That's for after your manuscript starts kicking more serious ass. Right now you mostly want to be sure that awesome publisher actually is an awesome publisher, and not some schmuck who will try to steal all your money, or that the coolest agent you've ever heard of actually represents your genre.
March is the second revision, aka NaNoEdMo.
April is critique month - getting that book out of your hands and into someone else's so they can tell you how wonderful and/or horrible it is.
May is for query-letter-writing; yes, now you let them agents know you exist.
June is synopsis-writing-month, so you have something more substantial to show all those agents who are falling all over you and your mad skillz.
July is when you finally fix up that final draft, into something even Miss Snark would think is teh awesome.
August is for sitting back with a huge pile books and reading until your eyes bleed.
September is when you finally send off that full manuscript to all the kick-ass agents and publishers who are practically pissing themselves in anticipation of your beautiful masterpiece.
And finally comes October. When you start doing research and start the whole… thing… over. Again.
Sort of in-between September and October is NaNoWarmUp: a 25K novella in two weeks. If you slack off and don't write a bloody thing all year, NaNoWarmUp will remind you just how easy it is to get carpal tunnel syndrome.

----

Oh, something i'm doing this year that the rest of you may or may not find helpful: I'll be ordering one copy of my novel from a POD-publisher like Lulu. I don't know about other POD companies but i believe most (and i know Lulu is among them) will allow you to keep the book "private" so nobody else can buy it. I'm going to order the novel very soon - possibly even today - and use the copy i get for editing. I might set up another copy later, during Critique Month, to be semi-private (only people i give a specific URL to can buy or download it) to encourage a few extra people to look at it without the whole planet being able to buy the crappy half-edited book. Even full POD where the whole world can buy your book doesn't give up any "first rights," so even if you technically have a red-ink-covered hardcover of the book sitting on your shelf, you don't need to worry about an agent turning you down (at least, not for that).

The way i figure it, editing a hard copy is probably better than editing on screen (for many reasons, "eyesight" being not the least among them), and having an actual book to edit will be so, soooo much cooler than having a huge pile of papers to edit. Admittedly, you'll have to set it up with extremely large margins or every-other-page blank for full noveliciousness, and it'll cost more (unless Lulu is doing that thing i've heard of where they give one free copy to winning NaNo'ers, though i can't seem to find any information on that now, you know, when i could actually use it…), but just imagine the amount you'll be able to sell it for on eBay when you're a world-famous novellist!

Word Wars!

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 12:26:23 GMT

Hi everyone!

statelines and I have found that word wars are great fun, and actually as useful as the NaNo crew say they are for boosting the ol' wordcount. Who knew?

A few years ago I made a junky programme as a 15 minute timer for mny own use in 15 Minute Ficlets, but it works just as well for NaNo. (Also, it is orange. :D?) It's way easy to use, but basically, when you hit 'start' you have the option to enter a prompt (I usually do this because... sometimes it's good to have something to stare at in the brief pauses) before the timer starts ticking. When the fifteen minutes is up, a box'll pop up to tell you so, but you can always keep writing if ~~you're a dirty rotten cheater~~ you want. :)

The great thing about it is that... this is a miniature version of the kick-in-the-pants 30 day deadline. A clock ticking down is a fantastic motivator! So even if you're not using it to time word wars, you can use it to ramp up your own count. ^^

Here's the .ZIP file for the programme - there's just an .EXE inside.

I'm not against spreading the thing around, but try to drop my name if you do so, eh? It's very simple programming, but it's my simple programming, dammit! XD;

Here's hoping that's helpful to someone else. :)

Allo?

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 04:50:47 GMT

*pokes kittinco and the_omelet*
What? Do i need to come trolling your journals? *poke poke poke*
Yeah, fine. Tomorrow. After the buying and consuming of Monster/NoFear/kasha/milk/etc.

Um. To make the entry a bit more substantial than *poke*:
What are everyone's plans for December? I'm doing NaNoPubYe, but December is wide open. Okay, technically it's "rest month." There's a very good reason to take a month off from a horrible novel before diving back in with the editing pens, but it still gives me so much free time! I… i can't have free time! I actually become a functioning member of society! Sometimes i even go days at a time without eating ramen. And i do this weird thing where i climb into bed and lose consciousness for whole hours at a time. It's scary.
I'm therefore doing a twenty-four page comic book. ^_^* Yeah, i know there's a NaNoMangNo, but it's not during December. I need December time-wasters.

Anyone else?

Week Two Uber-Writers: Prizes

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 05:39:47 GMT

So there's officially two winners this year, the_omelet and kittinco. Yay!

The prize is a pack of Christmas/holiday cards. If you care more about quality than quantity, i'll send you a pack through CafePress - but they only put six in a pack. I'll print up a ten-pack for you myself if you want more, but the quality won't be quite as good (if for no other reason than because my current ink cartridges are dying and it'll be a while before i get around to buying more.

White kitty

Black kitty

Matryoshka family

E-mail me (bubblejets@gmail.com) with your addresses, design choice, and whether you want six from CafePress or ten home-baked and i'll send 'em out this weekend.

Week Two Uber-Writer

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 06:13:10 GMT

So…
If i go by which community member wrote the most so far, it's the_omelet, who isn't really… here… this year. Or at least doesn't seem to have shown up yet. Umm.
I may hunt him/her/whoever (i ran out of caffeine. Don't judge me for my lack of gender-knowledge!) down tomorrow. Or not.

You know, technically i could blow this whole thing off by saying i wrote the most, which is true but defeats the whole purpose of running a contest for making other people write. So. Moving on…

Going by the person who wrote the most so far who is here and is not me… it would be… *drumroll*
kittinco! With 21 042 words, yay!

Prize info tomorrow. Sorry to make ya wait, but, well. Sleep. The part of my monkey brain that wants to pass Sociology is demanding a certain number of unconscious hours before tomorrow's test.

Anyway, have a nice week three everybody!

Week two, yay.

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 05:57:52 GMT

I would've posted this yesterday, but, well, my internet committed hara-kiri and i didn't have time to drag my laptop to the nearest free wi-fi hotspot.
On the plus side, i got to practice my interlingual obscenities.

Anyway! It is week two, aka, "My Story Hates Me" week. This is the week in which aspiring novelists traditionally choose between sanity and word count. I've given up on the former already, myself, but the good news is that if you choose sanity, you can usually catch up on the word count during weeks three and four.

For those who choose word count (and have been too distracted to buy their Christmas cards yet), i'm going to have another little contest, basically exactly like last year's for those who were here then. Highest word count (according to the little NaNoWriMo status things) at the end of the week gets a free pack of cards (i'll post pictures of the different styles at the end of the week, since i haven't gotten this years ready yet - again - oh, and it'll be a bit better a print job this year, too, 'cause i'll be lazy and having someone else doing the printing for me. Like DeviantArt or CafePress or some other card-supplying POD place.) So if you've just been skulking around here without letting me know about you, now would be the time to tell me you exist, so i can check up on you at the end of the week.

For clarity as to "when is the end of the week" - i'll probably check the word counts at about midnight the night of the 14th (or the morning of the 15th, if you prefer), my time (GMT -5).

Now, go write some more. Go on, shoo!

pulls away from computer, gasps for air, and dives back in

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 07:59:24 GMT

Okay, it's after two AM on day four already… but… um… yeah. NaNo started, for those who may have somehow missed the beginning. How's everybody doing?

I don't feel like looking at everybody's profiles on the NaNo site to figure out for myself how well you're doing, but most folk here seem to be doing pretty good. So, here. Imaginary magic novelling caffeine-cookies.

*runs back to word processor*

Mi vivas, mi vivas!

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 04:30:37 GMT

Wow, i feel like i've disappeared from this community for a bit.
Then again, it seems everyone else has too, so…

It seems like cheloya is travelling, birthday-ing (oh, yeah, happy birthday!), and being-in-wrist-pain at the moment, so i'll toss out a word prompt in her stead.

Chase

Seeing as there's only four days left before the Big Insane Writing starts, are there any requests for last-minute things to put up here? Top Ten List of How To Procrastinate Your Novel, or something?

I'm… not dead. Wow.

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 05:06:02 GMT

Okay, i lied when i said if i wasn't back by Wednesday, i'd be dead.
Anyway, i'm putting up that podcast list i promised y'all last week. Feel free to add whatever you like listening to in the comments.
Oh, and for the record, you don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts. To some, this is old news, but to others it may come as a bit of a shock. I'll leave it to you to google "listening to podcasts with (insert-music-software-here)" if you don't already know how.

Anything from Podiobooks. It's basically a free audiobook library.

EscapePod - a sci-fi short story podcast. Okay, it's only good if you like sci-fi. But if you're at all interested in sci-fi, especially if you're going to be writing sci-fi, you need EscapePod. It's that awesome.

Holly Lisle On Writing - is, well, author Holly Lisle talking about writing (she's the one who has the one-pass editing method on her web-site. I haven't successfully completed a book using that method yet, at least in part because the novel i tried it on was too crappy to be saved by anything less than a complete major rewrite, but i've heard good things about it.)

I Should be Writing - touted as "for wanna-be fiction writers, by a wanna-be fiction writer." For something done by a self-proclaimed wanna-be, it's actually pretty well done.

Tech For Writers - half useful software for writers, half random techie stuff that most people don't know about but which you can't really write about without research, because all the geeks will riducule you if you try. The latter half ranges from sci-fi geek stuff, like cryogenics and time-travel, to stuff pretty much any writer could use, like password hacking and firearms.

Last but not least, WriMo Radio, the NaNoWriMo podcast. You shouldn't need a description for this one.

Oh, and a major thank-you to cheloya for taking over the word prompts and thereby allowing me to drop off the face of teh intarweb for a few days with a bit less guilt.

NaNoPrompt!

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 02:37:00 GMT

17 days to go! ^^

Today's prompt is arena. Spend fine minutes scribbling anything out! It'll help, come November. ♥

NaNoPrompt!

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 11:36:29 GMT

Eek, I really need to set a specific time aside for this; sorry folks.

Today's word is fortune. Have fun with it. ^^

NaNoPrompt!

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 00:23:06 GMT

Nineteen days to go, by my count... I really need to get these assignments over with so I can get to planning properly. :D;

The word for today is... tape. Whether you're talking about a casette or sticking something to something else, I want to know! :D Post your efforts in a comment, ne? ♥

NaNoPrompt!

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:21:22 GMT

Today's word is form.

As in, those dratted things you have to fill in to get your tax munnies back.

As in, to create or shape.

Link to your efforts in comments if you feel like sharing!

National Novel Writing Month

TGIO

Drum-roll please…

Week Two Contest

YAY NANOWRIMO!

NaNoWriMo icon, *J sized!

yay!

NaNoWriMo site

Fade in…

Why read books?

Now What?

I just love that new-book smell, don't you?

THE END.

Word Wars!

Allo?

Week Two Uber-Writers: Prizes

Week Two Uber-Writer

Week two, yay.

*pulls away from computer, gasps for air, and dives back in*

Mi vivas, mi vivas!

I'm… not dead. Wow.

NaNoPrompt!

NaNoPrompt!

NaNoPrompt!

NaNoPrompt!

pulls away from computer, gasps for air, and dives back in