Hello, and Welcome again to my vlog.
If you have been following me through blogger, you’ll know that I talk a lot about something called NaNoWriMo. This stands for “National Novel Writing Month.” NaNoWriMo (or Nano) takes place every November. The goal for Nano is to write 50k words during the month. Which works out to be 1667 words a day. I have done 10 years of Nano, and 5 camps so far. Even if you get behind, it's not too hard to catch up. You take what you are behind number wise, and divide that by the remaining days. Adding that figure to 1667 will become your new daily goal.
It isn’t hard to make it to the 50k...several of my friends have done it in one day. My record is 16 days. But that was really pushing myself, and I wasn’t finished with the first draft (though I finished it that month). Is this a complete novel? No, it’s a rough draft for one. It needs polishing until it gleams bright. You don’t want to publish it until it goes through the rewrite/revise process. As someone once said, “First draft is for telling yourself the story.”
The people who bring us that month of writing bliss/insanity, also do something called Camp Nano. There are 2 camps, April and July.
The main difference between the Camps and Nano main, is that you can set your own goals. It can be as little as 30 words (which is new, I believe it used to be 10k), or as much as a million. If anyone wants to set that as a goal...let me know, will try to talk you out of that. But also, you can change your goal up until the beginning of validation. More on validation later.
The other difference is that you can join a cabin, or create a cabin for you and your friends. I think the limit is 20, but I could be wrong. I’m bad about keeping up with my cabin, as I have a hard time being away from facebook.
Tools to help you get to that 50k (or whatever goal you set), are easy to set up. You don’t need mass quantities of time. Sprinting or Word Wars, help . What these are are timed writing. Some people go for 20 minutes, some 30, some even an hour. You push yourself to write as many words as you can in those periods. It helps if you do these with other folks, but you don’t have to. Have a timer with an alarm set (phones are good for this).
To help get those words, you can use sprinting type programs. I love “Written Kitten,” but there is also “Write or Die.” The former uses cat pictures for each number of words you write (you select what that is). And with the latter, there is one setting that I can’t take. It freaks me out, and sets me on edge. This is the Kamikazee mode (which eats words if you don’t keep typing).
There are communities of writers who do the November Nano at least. You can find out if your region has a group led by one or more facilitators called “Municipal Liaisons.” These folks are volunteers who set up the kickoff/closing ceremonies meetings, plot ins, and write ins. You can meet up with other participants at these gatherings. There is a Twitter presence and Nano has a fb page. There are a lot of groups that are out there that can help with reaching your goals.
You can write everything from a first draft, revise, or do poetry if you like. They have come a long way from being pretty strict with it being new words.
So the last thing I want to discuss is validation. The Nano and Camp nano sites start validation on the 20th day (it used to be day 25). You copy and paste your piece into the box on the validation screen. It counts the words and then makes them disappear. You can use the program Ipsum Lorem, which is creates words in gibberish latin, and then copy paste them. Ipsum Lorem has a 10k words at a time; so you have to copy and paste 5 times (plus I pad my word count some. Some word processors counts are different from the Nano site.
Once you have validated (and have reached either the 50k or the goals), then you get a bragging rights, certificates as well. But on top of that, you can get cool writing goodies like Scrivener, Aeon Timeline and various others. Usually 50% off if you make goal, though they offer a 30% if you don’t (at least November does). If you don’t make it, someone who did can give you their coupon codes.
I highly recommend Nano for any writers out there. Whether you are trying for that first novel, short story, or epic poem, NaNoWriMo, and Camp Nano, is a lot of fun, camaraderie, and making new friends too. Plus get well on the way to publishing. To close here is a list of books that were Nano novels. I’ll post the links to the various tools, and the websites below in the comments. Plus various links to my blogs on Nano 101 subjects.
There are actually 474 of them, but I’ll point out some of the bigger ones.
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Persistence of Memory
Debbie Manber Kupfer
P.A.W.S.
Erin Morgenstern
The Night Circus
Sara Gruen
Water for Elephants
Thank you for joining me. See you next time.
Thank you for joining me. See you next time.
National Novel Writing Month:
Camp NaNoWriMo: You use your Nano site login credentials to get in here.
Write or Die:
Written Kitten: (If you like dogs, horses, dragons etc...you can change the “kitten” part to dog/horse/dragons), and it will feed you pictures of that instead.
There is a lot of other good stuff on my blog, so feel free to sign up, and become a minion er I mean follower.
