Tag: nanowrimo

You know how you’re looking forward to an exciting event, and the countdown to the event is just as exciting (if not more so) than the event itself?

That’s how the countdown to NaNoWriMo is. Sure, midnight the first is really exciting, but counting down the time until you can write and watching as others in time zones ahead of you start is what makes the event really exciting. I was on the forums this afternoon as writers in Australia and New Zealand were already beginning to write and update their word count. One writer already had nearly 7500 words! (FluffySilver, I commend you.)

Then there’s watching fellow Twitter followers get excited and start. I follow NaNo Twitterers from around the world, from India to Britain, and watching them get excited and start writing only served to get me even more excited. Since some of us follow each other, we piggybacked on each other’s conversations, creating an atmosphere of capslock and NaNo excitement.

Me? I’m taking advantage of the extra hour that living in the U.S. and the end of Daylight Savings Time provide and aiming for ten thousand words before going to bed at the end of the day. Sure, I’ll lose time on the way to and from an evening write-in, though I can handwrite on the way and type in my words. However, last year Daylight Savings Time ended on the second, and I hit 10K by taking advantage of that extra hour. Perhaps I can do it within twenty-five hours this year instead of twenty-seven. Time shall see.

Oh, and two hours and twenty-four minutes to go!

As National Novel Writing Month participants everywhere know, NaNoWriMo begins less than a week from today–five days from the time this will be read by anyone besides myself. Some will argue four, but that’s just a different way of counting, sort of like the story of the mathematician who began counting with zero instead of one.

Besides celebrating the recent discovery of a plot for this crazy noveling challenge, I’ve been taking in the community and noticing how the dynamic has changed yet stayed the same since I joined in 2002. Obviously, there are a lot more people now than there were years ago. When I was new, I was one of the younger people on the forums. In fact, I remember bemoaning all my high school activities and wondering if anyone would know what I was talking about. (A few people did, actually, but of course, most people were adults.) Now there are more young people coming in, and suddenly I feel old. I shouldn’t feel old in the 20s forum when there’s a teens forum right above me (something that didn’t exist when I was new)! That’s just not allowed. Seeing all these young NaNoers–especially college freshmen–complain about how hard NaNo and school will be prompts me to reply and give myself as an example. You will survive. You will thrive. You will finish. We’ll ignore the fact that I finished NaNo with five and a half hours to go on my first year and wrote half the novel in five days.

From experience, I had a lot more spare time in college than I did in high school. High school really is a job just from the time it takes out of your day. Sure, college is as well from the studying and paper-writing and problem sets (and trust me, I had both–that’s the price I paid for being well-rounded), but you can be much more flexible with your time. Besides, one day these young NaNoers will be old NaNoers like me and wonder why the young NaNoers of the future are complaining about their oh-so-busy schedules. It’s the circle of NaNo. It’s beautiful.

Unless an amazing idea befalls me between now and November first, I will be writing a novel based entirely on dares from the NaNoWriMo forums.

What’s a dare, you ask? Remember playing Truth or Dare at a slumber party, and if you were at the slumber parties I was at, no one wanted to do truth or dare because revealing the guy you liked was too painful for a ten-year-old, and the dares were absolutely ridiculous. Tame, but ridiculous all the same. We listened in on the guys once, though. One of their truths was whether they had urinated on an electric fence. That’s an easy answer, I’d hope.

Dares work the same for NaNoWriMo. You’re dared to put ridiculous things in your novel. Since no one’s going to read your novel without your permasimmons, you’re making a fool of yourself only in front of you. If you can’t bear that, then what can you bear during NaNo? NaNoWriMo embraces the exuberant tomfoolery.

I once heard that a good author can make a good story out a bad idea. If I continue with this idea, we’re going to see if that’s true. Who knows. There may even be excerpts.

We’re creeping up on two weeks until National Novel Writing Month, and as usual, I am currently plotless. So far suggested ideas and points for my novel include:

* unicorns and handcuffs (courtesy of this LiveJournal thread)
* a trebuchet, courtesy of the Trebuchet club on the NaNoWriMo forums
* Mr. Ian Woon, a character whose name is an anagram of NaNoWriMo
* bananas in Iceland, courtesy of syaffolee

I could also write a young adult novel for the possibility of entering the young adult novel pitch competition. However, as Lime of Caffeinated Creativity pointed out, it wouldn’t be NaNo if I did have a fully developed idea this early. She’s right, by the way. I’m the type to wing it and still finish.

Besides, if I still don’t have an idea come the first, there’s always the idea to write a novel entirely based on dares from the forums. Or about Mr. Ian Woon, a unicorn trainer in Iceland who builds a trebuchet to fling bananas. He uses handcuffs to keep them in line.