I did NaNoWriMo last year. I had planned to do it all the way through October. And even though I spent the first weekend of Nov. 2002 at WFC (thus sacrificing three writing days) and the last long weekend doing our usual Thanksgiving travel circuit, I put the fingers to the keys, made myself write, and won. (I'm a winner! woo!)
The main reason I did NaNo was that I needed to find a way to short-circuit my Inner Editor. In the past, I would write a chapter and obsessively rewrite until the words were flat and I never finished anything. NaNo forced me to just pump out words, day by day, and because "no editing" is the watchword, I felt like I was suddenly freed from my editing destruction cycle. (And now, in rewrites, I feel like I don't have to stick so closely to what I'd previously written.)
I haven't participated in the LJ community, but the NaNo forums are nice. I wasn't a big forum hound (needed to spend my free hours writing my novel, not idling away on the Internet), but it was a great place to check in, because you'd definitely see you weren't alone: there were always some other authors having the same issues you are, experiencing the same exhiliration, struggling with the same blind stupor toward the end. ;)
Personally, despite NaNo's "official position" on quantity vs. quality, I was amazed at the quality of what I wrote. There was some clunky stuff, sure, and I'm now in the midst of a massive rewrite to tighten up the plot. But it's rewriting on a story that's solid and real, and that makes all the difference.
I'm doing it again this year. :) Come on, have fun with us... *wheedles*
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The main reason I did NaNo was that I needed to find a way to short-circuit my Inner Editor. In the past, I would write a chapter and obsessively rewrite until the words were flat and I never finished anything. NaNo forced me to just pump out words, day by day, and because "no editing" is the watchword, I felt like I was suddenly freed from my editing destruction cycle. (And now, in rewrites, I feel like I don't have to stick so closely to what I'd previously written.)
I haven't participated in the LJ community, but the NaNo forums are nice. I wasn't a big forum hound (needed to spend my free hours writing my novel, not idling away on the Internet), but it was a great place to check in, because you'd definitely see you weren't alone: there were always some other authors having the same issues you are, experiencing the same exhiliration, struggling with the same blind stupor toward the end. ;)
Personally, despite NaNo's "official position" on quantity vs. quality, I was amazed at the quality of what I wrote. There was some clunky stuff, sure, and I'm now in the midst of a massive rewrite to tighten up the plot. But it's rewriting on a story that's solid and real, and that makes all the difference.
I'm doing it again this year. :) Come on, have fun with us... *wheedles*