This isn’t limited to writing, either. How many people have a list of a ten or twenty or fifty or even a hundred things they want to do (or places they want to see) before they die, yet years go by and that list never gets any shorter because there’s just no time to do it all or because the things on that list are hard to do.

Now along comes November and NaNoWriMo with its challenge: write 50,000 words in 30 days. You can certainly argue that there’s no financial incentive to do so, but there is the very public challenge, and sometimes that’s just the sort of motivation we need to tell ourselves that yes, we can set aside 30 minutes or an hour of our day to sit down and write (as I just did on my lunch hour), and we can get those ideas that we’ve wanted to write about out of our heads and see how they look on paper (or in a word processing document).

And so we do it, and maybe—just maybe—at the end of November we’ll be able to shorten that list by one item, and maybe we’ll have realized that we have a little more time to do the things we want to do after all, if we really put our minds to making that time.

At the end of November, thousands of people around the world will have a first draft of something that might or might not become a novel someday, and they will have created that first draft in thirty days (of the nearly 60,000 people that participated in 2005, nearly 10,000 won). Perhaps they’ll spend the next year editing and rewriting their first draft, or perhaps they’ll drop it in a drawer and move on to something else, but they will have written and by the simple act of doing so will better writers.

Because I don’t believe anyone ever became a better writer by not writing.

I can only say what Stephen King and numerous other authors have said about their writing: you do it because you WANT to or you feel you HAVE to write. If you’re doing it simply to complete a contest and you don’t really care about the end result enough to edit it, polish it, and try to get it published, I’m not sure why it would be worth doing.

Of course, entering a contest for the fun of it is perfectly fine and I hope everybody ENJOYS it. Writing should be fun. I just think that if you’re actually counting words and trying to write a certain number of words per day regardless of the QUALITY of those words, you’re not really writing. You’re just counting to 50,000 using words instead of numbers.

Again, good luck to everybody and have fun. I really mean that. I’m just offering a different perspective, having completed one novel and working on a second. I urge you to write because you have a great story to tell and you want to tell it. Write to the story, not to the number of words in it.

Here is another really good collaborative web-based mind mapping tool that might be worth looking at for outlining stories comapping.com.

Comapping looks interesting, but it’s not quite cheap as free. Still there’s a 30-day free trial and it could be a good tool to utilize through November.

I don’t enter the contest because I’m a very SLOW writer and I know it. I am curious and perhaps somebody here knows the answer: has the contest led to any published novels that were any good? I’m talking mainstream, here, like a book that most of us would have heard of in some fashion. It would be interesting to know just so I could check one out and see what I think.

I don’t think this is entirely the point of the exercise. While creating good, marketable fiction is certainly a fine goal, I know of many participants who just want to get themselves into the habit of writing.

Good luck to all of you. My advice is a bit different: fewer words, better sentences. Write something you won’t have to spend the rest of your days fixing up, ha ha. I can’t wait to hear how everybody’s doing.

Thanks - it’s my first foray into this, so I’ll take what I can get.

Last year’s effort, on the other hand, contains a lot that I really enjoyed writing, and I will probably revive it in another format sometime in the future, though probably not a novel.

Yes, 50,000 words is quite short as novels go (more of a novella), but 30 days is a very short time in which to write those words, especially for the amateur writer. I’m not looking to get a full-length, workable manuscript out of NaNoWriMo; I’m not even looking to write good fiction. I’m looking to write, and maybe eventually to develop a writing habit, so that when the good ideas eventually come to me I’ll be able to move them from my head to paper.

If NaNoWriMo proves nothing else, it proves that I am resistant to changes in my routine. In four years of doing this every November, I’ve yet to develop any real writing habits or routines. I don’t sit down for an hour every day or every other day or even once a week just to write. I should, but I don’t. NaNoWriMo at least provides some motivation to write every day, and if I can turn that into a habit that extends beyond the month of November, then it will be worth it.

Well, I’m signing up for NaNoWriMo 2007 and the website seems a bit . . . harried (to use a non-technical term). Whatever you choose, I’m sure you’ll finish in style!

Just read on Unquiet Desperation that Chris has decided to commit to NaNoWriMo this year (after a pass on it earlier). Here’s to all those writers out there!

-more words, better words-

The website is certainly slow in the weeks leading up to November 1st, but they’re supposed to add at least one server to their cluster once the event kicks off, or so goes the rumor.

Either the software they’re using this year isn’t as efficient as what they’ve used in the past (I’m certainly not thrilled with the forum’s seeming inability to properly track when the last message was posted in each individual forum) or they’ve got a ton of new participants this year. Given how much the event has grown in the five years I’ve been doing it, I wouldn’t be surprised if its the latter.

Yes, Mr. Miller is joining the fray, which came as a pleasant surprise to me. I was tempted to call the whole thing off last night after a particularly nerve-wracking slog through recording my first NanoMonkeys essay, but the fact that folks like Chris and Gerall and Wesley and Charley are doing it helps to keep my spirits up.

By the way, the hard part about the contest is not the 50,000 word limit. That’s really not that hard; it’s the time limit that does most people in. 50,000 words really isn’t a very big book at all. (Just for comparison, my book — which isn’t really that long — is 106,000 words.) When you put 50,000 words in true published format, you’re probably looking at a 110-page novel or thereabouts, depending upon the size of the final font and the size of the book. Definitely not a “big” book; nothing wrong with that, just pointing out that the number of words required by the contest doesn’t really lead to what most publishers would consider a decent-sized book.

My main beef with this contest at all is that the point is to just spew out as many words as possible. I know, I know: they’re hoping to light a fire under people who want to write but need some additional impetus to get going. But the “spew out as many words in a rather short time frame” method of writing doesn’t lead to very good writing. I know, I know: you’re going to go back and edit all that when you’ve finished, right? Yeah, sure you are.

I don’t enter the contest because I’m a very SLOW writer and I know it. I am curious and perhaps somebody here knows the answer: has the contest led to any published novels that were any good? I’m talking mainstream, here, like a book that most of us would have heard of in some fashion. It would be interesting to know just so I could check one out and see what I think.

Good luck to all of you. My advice is a bit different: fewer words, better sentences. Write something you won’t have to spend the rest of your days fixing up, ha ha. I can’t wait to hear how everybody’s doing.

Just read on Unquiet Desperation that Chris has decided to commit to NaNoWriMo this year (after a pass on it earlier). Here’s to all those writers out there!

-more words, better words-

Can you sustain the pace with a plot you already put some tracks on last year? Familiarity might breed contempt, or more details for the setting and background of the protagonist.

“Proulx” - where did that name come from? Etho/Geographically speaking, that is?

I’m writing using Linux as well - OO.org is the only real option for me. Google Docs is nice, but doesn’t *feel* right to me.

I’d love to hear what you choose!

The prospect of doing a complete rewrite of last year’s superhero story—or even a mash-up of my 2005 and 2006 efforts—had crossed my mind, actually. I still have a day and a half to decide, I guess, but I should really spend some of that time outlining and plotting. I suck at outlining and plotting.

I can’t speak to the ethnic or geographic origins of “Proulx”, I’m afraid. I stole it from Annie Proulx, who wrote Brokeback Mountain and The Shipping News.

EDIT: A couple of Proulxs (wow, that just looks weird) on WikiPedia seem to be of French-Canadian origin, so that may be a possible source of the name.