An interesting concept.

[Quites]

I have a general theme I think I'm going to go with, but it's not much more than just a premise and some character names. I'm hoping it'll kinda help me get over my "write five chapters and quit" syndrome.

[Skiv]

Oh please, if me smacking you over the head with a lamp didn't cure you, nothing will.

[Canela]

I did it last year, and I reached 50,000 words, but the novel's still not finished. I'm going to try something a bit more random and less planned, last year's took place over a very specific ammount of time. However, last year's NaNo was also largely based on personal experience, and most of the characters came from real people. This year, I'm going for something completely different. NaNo 05 was about a group of foreign students living in Portugal-no real plot, they adjust to a new country, they get drunk, they fight, they fall in love, they get drunk... NaNo 06 is probably going to be about a college student, her brother, and her best friend, who believes she's the reincarnation of a 1920's flapper, backpacking from Miami to Niagara Falls. No real plans yet as to what happens in between, but there's going to be lots of coffee shops and arguments and mildly illegal activities.

About that 'write five chapters and quit syndrom...' Is that contagious? Hopefully, I'll pick it up if I hang around here long enough, because I'm currently at 'write one chapter and then get distracted and start something else.'

The beauty of NaNo is that ANYTHING goes-If you wanna make your characters get drunk and sing 'Barbie Girl' (thanks, TEO, for supplying a random annoying song when I asked for one!) eight times, you can. If you wanna make your characters go shopping with a three hundred item grocery list, that's okay, too. Look at the 'dares' thread from last year on the website.

I also found that this helped my more 'serious' writing, because before, I obsessed way too much over getting everything right, and was constantly going back and editing and tweaking things, which, of course, means my writing never got anywhere. NaNoWriMo taught me the important lesson of ploughing on ahead even if you decide to completely change the direction of the plot, just to make word count. Do I have minor characters whose names change three or four times? You bet. Do I have little notes to myself saying 'Albert is boring and he doesn't do anything, so from now on he doesn't exist,' completely erasing any trace of someone from the later half of my novel? Yep, that too. Is writing more fun that way? Oh, yes it is. No one ever has to see your novel, if you don't want them to, so you don't have to worry about how you sound at all.

Plus, you get access to a really spiffy set of LiveJournal icons if you win.

[Oz]

skiv said:

Oh please, if me smacking you over the head with a lamp didn't cure you, nothing will.

Speaking as someone who's only been e-smacked by you over Writer's Block online, I can safely assume that RL smacking probably doesn't help much more.

[Kirukelgyr]

Woot for sponteneous plot! And Canela's insight!

[Quites]

I like that rant, Canela. Shweet stuff.
And yeah, it's gonna be fun. Insane, but fun. And I probably won't make it to 50k, but I'll try.

[Canela]

I'd strongly reccomend reading 'No Plot? No Problem!' by Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo's founder. It's got a lot of good advice, and it makes the whole thing seem so much more doable, plus Baty comes across as so likeable and normal (Well. What might pass for normal around the BWE.) that writing 50,000 words in one month doesn't feel all that intimidating.

[Quites]

I got on Amazon and read the first coupla pages. It looked fairly interesting and well written. I might see if I can get ahold of a copy.