What Nanowrimo did for me.
Today is Halloween, welcome to the November blog. I suspect a lot of blogs are getting released today, tomorrow, this week, this month. Tomorrow is after all Nanowrimo. So in honour of that idea, my contribution to the blog-overse, “What Nanowrimo did for me.”
Many years ago, no really, many years ago in a time far, far away, I wanted to be a writer. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t. I had lots of ideas and all the gear. I should have worked it out, being the lazy work shy fop I am. Anyway, over time an idea came to me.
The difference between someone who wants to write and a writer is; ‘drum roll,’ “A writer writes and the person who wants to write, doesn’t they simply want to write.”
Fully inspired by this idea I decided to write 100 words every day. Yeah that's right, one hundred. How difficult could that be? Obviously, the plan was to form a habit and move the word count up in stages. Brilliant.
Cutting a long story short, I failed. It never became a habit. I kept forgetting, re-starting, failed.
Roughly between the years 2000 and 2011, I wrote as and when. I had no real routine or habit but by 2011 I had a first draft of a novel, a few short stories, the start of other things. All was going okay but not brilliantly or professionally.
A couple of ideas I worked on for long periods, got binned for not being quite stretchy enough.
See my previous blog of July 21, "Historical quitting and returns."
I enjoyed the process of writing down my ideas, going away, thinking about the subjects I had written and returning to write some more. At this point it wasn’t about word count, it was just the pleasure of creating my own stories.
One novel idea I wrote, grew to a decent word length even if the writing itself was pretty bad, dreadful, awful, dire, poorly executed. I don’t remember any head-hopping but all the other newbie mistakes were there, telling, not showing, filter words, oh there is a long list of faults.
I completed draft one of my first ever novel sized piece of work in 2011. It had a title I felt was a bit spoilery so that need addressing and it ended up getting called, "When first we learn to question." Needing a break from this project I wrote a short tale of a guy who dies, part of a killer robot story and then a ‘Vikings in Canada,’ first draft.
N.B. “The Vikings of Vinland and When first we learn to Question are both available on Amazon.” I like to use the ‘look inside feature. A try before you buy, kind of idea. If any of this blog entertains you; I would recommend, you give both these books a look. If you like the ideas, the style, go on, treat yourself to one or both.
My day job is not in marketing.
I think it was around 2013 I discovered Nanowrimo. Genius idea, write one thousand words a day for a month. (Well I already knew that wasn’t going to happen. So, I opted for five thousand words a week.) Five thousand words gave me (in theory,) twenty thousand words in four weeks, Imagine if you could keep that up for four months. That’s eighty-thousand words, sometimes known as a novel. What complete rot. I do despair when people explain this sort of mathematics to writers. I’m certain I’m not alone in the knowledge that to write a novel of eighty-thousand words, normally requires three or four times as many words. And just banging down a first draft is not the same as writing a novel.
Let’s try some different mathematics. In an eighty thousand word novel, if you make one mistake, every one hundred words, that’s 800 mistakes; “count them.” Even one mistake every one thousand words is eighty mistakes in one novel. Best of luck with that.
I’ve never really been one for word counts. A story is as long as it is. My current project, the killer robot story is hovering around the sixty-five thousand words mark. But when it's done, it’s done. If a story is a novella, not a novel, so be it. I try simply to write a beginning, a middle and an end. Without any padding. But remember, I’m still learning and I fully understand I can’t usually, see my own mistakes.
So, what did Nanowrimo do for me? Well, the first year I tried it, everything went okay. The second year I carried on into December, then January. The key was my idea of achieving something each week and showing up. Nowadays I aim for an hour a day during the working week and a few hours of a weekend.
Note, the aim is to spend time doing this hobby not counting words. I count the words when I’m done, for the day.
For me research, producing book cover art, writing a blurb, re-reading, editing, working on new ideas, are all part of the process, they all take time.
If you are one of those many writers joining in the fun of this coming month, best of luck. Personally I'll continue to use the process I have acquired over these years. But thank you Nanowrimo, for teaching me, you just have to keep showing up and producing something regularly.
And talking of time, thank you for your time. As ever with anything I write, I hope you enjoyed it in some way. TJ.
The Vikings of Vinland
When first we learn to question
Many years ago, no really, many years ago in a time far, far away, I wanted to be a writer. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t. I had lots of ideas and all the gear. I should have worked it out, being the lazy work shy fop I am. Anyway, over time an idea came to me.
The difference between someone who wants to write and a writer is; ‘drum roll,’ “A writer writes and the person who wants to write, doesn’t they simply want to write.”
Fully inspired by this idea I decided to write 100 words every day. Yeah that's right, one hundred. How difficult could that be? Obviously, the plan was to form a habit and move the word count up in stages. Brilliant.
Cutting a long story short, I failed. It never became a habit. I kept forgetting, re-starting, failed.
Roughly between the years 2000 and 2011, I wrote as and when. I had no real routine or habit but by 2011 I had a first draft of a novel, a few short stories, the start of other things. All was going okay but not brilliantly or professionally.
A couple of ideas I worked on for long periods, got binned for not being quite stretchy enough.
See my previous blog of July 21, "Historical quitting and returns."
I enjoyed the process of writing down my ideas, going away, thinking about the subjects I had written and returning to write some more. At this point it wasn’t about word count, it was just the pleasure of creating my own stories.
One novel idea I wrote, grew to a decent word length even if the writing itself was pretty bad, dreadful, awful, dire, poorly executed. I don’t remember any head-hopping but all the other newbie mistakes were there, telling, not showing, filter words, oh there is a long list of faults.
I completed draft one of my first ever novel sized piece of work in 2011. It had a title I felt was a bit spoilery so that need addressing and it ended up getting called, "When first we learn to question." Needing a break from this project I wrote a short tale of a guy who dies, part of a killer robot story and then a ‘Vikings in Canada,’ first draft.
N.B. “The Vikings of Vinland and When first we learn to Question are both available on Amazon.” I like to use the ‘look inside feature. A try before you buy, kind of idea. If any of this blog entertains you; I would recommend, you give both these books a look. If you like the ideas, the style, go on, treat yourself to one or both.
My day job is not in marketing.
I think it was around 2013 I discovered Nanowrimo. Genius idea, write one thousand words a day for a month. (Well I already knew that wasn’t going to happen. So, I opted for five thousand words a week.) Five thousand words gave me (in theory,) twenty thousand words in four weeks, Imagine if you could keep that up for four months. That’s eighty-thousand words, sometimes known as a novel. What complete rot. I do despair when people explain this sort of mathematics to writers. I’m certain I’m not alone in the knowledge that to write a novel of eighty-thousand words, normally requires three or four times as many words. And just banging down a first draft is not the same as writing a novel.
Let’s try some different mathematics. In an eighty thousand word novel, if you make one mistake, every one hundred words, that’s 800 mistakes; “count them.” Even one mistake every one thousand words is eighty mistakes in one novel. Best of luck with that.
I’ve never really been one for word counts. A story is as long as it is. My current project, the killer robot story is hovering around the sixty-five thousand words mark. But when it's done, it’s done. If a story is a novella, not a novel, so be it. I try simply to write a beginning, a middle and an end. Without any padding. But remember, I’m still learning and I fully understand I can’t usually, see my own mistakes.
So, what did Nanowrimo do for me? Well, the first year I tried it, everything went okay. The second year I carried on into December, then January. The key was my idea of achieving something each week and showing up. Nowadays I aim for an hour a day during the working week and a few hours of a weekend.
Note, the aim is to spend time doing this hobby not counting words. I count the words when I’m done, for the day.
For me research, producing book cover art, writing a blurb, re-reading, editing, working on new ideas, are all part of the process, they all take time.
If you are one of those many writers joining in the fun of this coming month, best of luck. Personally I'll continue to use the process I have acquired over these years. But thank you Nanowrimo, for teaching me, you just have to keep showing up and producing something regularly.
And talking of time, thank you for your time. As ever with anything I write, I hope you enjoyed it in some way. TJ.
The Vikings of Vinland
When first we learn to question
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