![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Oct. 26th, 2012 08:42 pmWell, it's that time of the year again. It's five days until the start of NaNoWriMo. Anyone doing it this year? Wanna be writing buddies? I'm here if you do: http://nanowrimo.org/en/participants/sherryillk/
Anyway, with my laptop situation, I have decided to go the most convenient route -- writing it by hand. I actually wrote about a fifth of my novel by hand last year and it went quite well. It was weird, I felt both more and less connected to the story. More in that I really seemed focused into it (maybe because I didn't have electronic distractions at my fingertips, only a click away?) and less because I wasn't able to go back and see what I had already typed up and change or add major parts of it. But it did turn out well and I noticed that when I went back and typed it up, I did manage to add on to it, revising it as I went that ended up improving it. And adding more words than I had originally added. So the plan is to write it by hand first and then at the end of each day, spend time typing it up so I could get in my word count quota for the day.
I do feel slightly uneasy about this though. One of the things they tell you about NaNoWriMo is not to get bogged down on constant revision and that it's more about quantity than quality. This feels a bit like I'm cheating in that aspect because I would be changing it as I type it and I don't want to get stuck on always going back and rewriting what I've already written. Last year I only did this on a small scale so I could justify it to myself but this year it will be in a much larger scale so I don't know what will happen. I have, in the past, taking whole chunks of what I've written and decided it was crap and just gotten rid of the entire thing. If I do that a lot, I might actually lose words in this endeavor.
Well, hopefully it goes well... I plan on actually doing a tentative outline this year so maybe with a guide of how I want this story to go, I'll actually read 50,000 words and finish the story for once since in the past I've gotten to the end, but not the finish. *cross fingers*
And I'm hoping that by telling myself it's okay to just participate and not finish, I can actually do better writing by not stressing on it. I've always wanted to get to 50,000 words in the past. I was very hellbent on it the last two years and it took focus of my entire November (aside from the five days I take off for Thanksgiving -- I don't think I wrote anything those days last year but thankfully I always build a Thanksgiving buffer in anticipation of the lack of writing during the holiday). Frankly, I don't remember much of November the last two years aside from stressing about writing and Thanksgiving so this year I'm going to be more prepare beforehand and less manic while I'm doing it.
Now, all I have to do is buy myself a nice little notebook for my writings. I think I might end up needing several of them if I actually buy a cute little one so maybe I should go for the larger composition notebooks? But I want something that I can carry with me anywhere... Choices, choices... :\
Anyway, with my laptop situation, I have decided to go the most convenient route -- writing it by hand. I actually wrote about a fifth of my novel by hand last year and it went quite well. It was weird, I felt both more and less connected to the story. More in that I really seemed focused into it (maybe because I didn't have electronic distractions at my fingertips, only a click away?) and less because I wasn't able to go back and see what I had already typed up and change or add major parts of it. But it did turn out well and I noticed that when I went back and typed it up, I did manage to add on to it, revising it as I went that ended up improving it. And adding more words than I had originally added. So the plan is to write it by hand first and then at the end of each day, spend time typing it up so I could get in my word count quota for the day.
I do feel slightly uneasy about this though. One of the things they tell you about NaNoWriMo is not to get bogged down on constant revision and that it's more about quantity than quality. This feels a bit like I'm cheating in that aspect because I would be changing it as I type it and I don't want to get stuck on always going back and rewriting what I've already written. Last year I only did this on a small scale so I could justify it to myself but this year it will be in a much larger scale so I don't know what will happen. I have, in the past, taking whole chunks of what I've written and decided it was crap and just gotten rid of the entire thing. If I do that a lot, I might actually lose words in this endeavor.
Well, hopefully it goes well... I plan on actually doing a tentative outline this year so maybe with a guide of how I want this story to go, I'll actually read 50,000 words and finish the story for once since in the past I've gotten to the end, but not the finish. *cross fingers*
And I'm hoping that by telling myself it's okay to just participate and not finish, I can actually do better writing by not stressing on it. I've always wanted to get to 50,000 words in the past. I was very hellbent on it the last two years and it took focus of my entire November (aside from the five days I take off for Thanksgiving -- I don't think I wrote anything those days last year but thankfully I always build a Thanksgiving buffer in anticipation of the lack of writing during the holiday). Frankly, I don't remember much of November the last two years aside from stressing about writing and Thanksgiving so this year I'm going to be more prepare beforehand and less manic while I'm doing it.
Now, all I have to do is buy myself a nice little notebook for my writings. I think I might end up needing several of them if I actually buy a cute little one so maybe I should go for the larger composition notebooks? But I want something that I can carry with me anywhere... Choices, choices... :\
