NaNoWriMo (writing a novel from November 1-30)

Ongoing language-learning challenges, and team challenge logs (but not individual logs)
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Elenia
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Re: NaNoWriMo

Postby Elenia » Wed Sep 14, 2016 12:01 pm

arthaey wrote:
Serpent wrote:
arthaey wrote:But for me, to write 50,000 [L1] words takes up all my non-sleeping/eating/working time.
I don't understand how it's possible for it not to :shock: Is there any success story that doesn't involve sleep deprivation?

Some WriMos are very experienced writers, or just fast writers, and they finish ridiculously quickly. Like, done in a week, so they make their goal 200,000 words kind of ridiculous. We are honor-bound to hate* these people.

* and by "hate" I mean "be in awe, filled with jealousy and/or admiration" ;)


One of my MLs is one of these people. The last towering effort was to write 200,000 words in a month for charity. She did take time off work to complete though. Her girlfriend of the time managed to match her without breaking a sweat (or her work attendance record, as far as I know!)

Spoonary wrote:In the spirit of writing "like the wind" in November, what happens if you don't know a word in your target language? Would you take the time to look it up or would you just write the word in English (/your native language) and carry on? :?


Perhaps you can write it in English and then look it up later? Maybe keep a list of words you want to look up for non-writing time. That way you won't break your flow too much, and won't feel tempted to revise (which is officially not allowed - not that I ever pay attention to that!)
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arthaey
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Re: NaNoWriMo

Postby arthaey » Wed Sep 14, 2016 2:29 pm

Elenia wrote:
Spoonary wrote:In the spirit of writing "like the wind" in November, what happens if you don't know a word in your target language? Would you take the time to look it up or would you just write the word in English (/your native language) and carry on? :?

Perhaps you can write it in English and then look it up later? Maybe keep a list of words you want to look up for non-writing time. That way you won't break your flow too much, and won't feel tempted to revise (which is officially not allowed - not that I ever pay attention to that!)

That's exactly what I do in English for character names when the "right" name isn't coming to me. One year, the bad guy was named "[ANTAGONIST]" for quite a while. ;) I do the same thing for scenes that are incomplete or topics I need to research: "[FINISH SCENE]" and "[WHAT WAS THE VACCINE INVENTION TIMELINE LIKE?]" were also part of my NaNo draft.

I don't see why I couldn't do the same thing for Spanish words that I don't know. As you can see above, I like to mark such placeholders very obviously, so I can be sure none will slip through a revision. That might end up being too "noisy" for missing Spanish words... but I'll probably do something similar.
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Re: NaNoWriMo

Postby Spoonary » Wed Sep 14, 2016 9:45 pm

arthaey wrote:
Elenia wrote:
Spoonary wrote:In the spirit of writing "like the wind" in November, what happens if you don't know a word in your target language? Would you take the time to look it up or would you just write the word in English (/your native language) and carry on? :?

Perhaps you can write it in English and then look it up later? Maybe keep a list of words you want to look up for non-writing time. That way you won't break your flow too much, and won't feel tempted to revise (which is officially not allowed - not that I ever pay attention to that!)

That's exactly what I do in English for character names when the "right" name isn't coming to me. One year, the bad guy was named "[ANTAGONIST]" for quite a while. ;) I do the same thing for scenes that are incomplete or topics I need to research: "[FINISH SCENE]" and "[WHAT WAS THE VACCINE INVENTION TIMELINE LIKE?]" were also part of my NaNo draft.

:lol: I used to write things like that when re-drafting my essays at uni all the time. Things like WRITE MORE ABOUT THIS or WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?
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Elenia
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Re: NaNoWriMo

Postby Elenia » Wed Sep 14, 2016 10:01 pm

Spoonary wrote:
arthaey wrote:
Elenia wrote:
Spoonary wrote:In the spirit of writing "like the wind" in November, what happens if you don't know a word in your target language? Would you take the time to look it up or would you just write the word in English (/your native language) and carry on? :?

Perhaps you can write it in English and then look it up later? Maybe keep a list of words you want to look up for non-writing time. That way you won't break your flow too much, and won't feel tempted to revise (which is officially not allowed - not that I ever pay attention to that!)

That's exactly what I do in English for character names when the "right" name isn't coming to me. One year, the bad guy was named "[ANTAGONIST]" for quite a while. ;) I do the same thing for scenes that are incomplete or topics I need to research: "[FINISH SCENE]" and "[WHAT WAS THE VACCINE INVENTION TIMELINE LIKE?]" were also part of my NaNo draft.

:lol: I used to write things like that when re-drafting my essays at uni all the time. Things like WRITE MORE ABOUT THIS or WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?


Me too :lol: but I didn't ever do revisions in first or second year, so I once handed in an essay where every instance of one particular book simply had [DATE] instead of a proper reference :oops:
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Re: NaNoWriMo

Postby Spoonary » Wed Sep 14, 2016 10:27 pm

So, does anyone have a clue what they're going to write about yet? I've come up with an idea which stems from a kind of make-believe game I used to play when I was younger (we're talking at least 15 years ago). I don’t think I'll share any more about that just yet though... 8-)

Over the past couple of days I have been getting back into writing in Spanish by taking a notebook and pen to work with me and today I wrote a list of my preliminary ideas in there. I even found myself doodling some character design ideas too. :shock: What is happening to me?
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Elenia
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Re: NaNoWriMo

Postby Elenia » Wed Sep 14, 2016 10:55 pm

Spoonary wrote:So, does anyone have a clue what they're going to write about yet? I've come up with an idea which stems from a kind of make-believe game I used to play when I was younger (we're talking at least 15 years ago). I don’t think I'll share any more about that just yet though... 8-)

Over the past couple of days I have been getting back into writing in Spanish by taking a notebook and pen to work with me and today I wrote a list of my preliminary ideas in there. I even found myself doodling some character design ideas too. :shock: What is happening to me?


It's NaNo fever! I totally had a great idea earlier on, which I forgot about until I read your comment. It was sparked by my brother trying to have a philosophy discussion with me.
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Re: NaNoWriMo

Postby PeterMollenburg » Thu Sep 15, 2016 10:02 am

The challenge is interesting and one hell of a challenge, but I'd just like to note that it would have been nice to have had an explanation of what the hell this NaNoWriMo was in the initial post to provide some background. Obvioiusly it doesn't take much to find it online somewhere for anyone who is curious, so maybe i'm just in a bad mood and would like something spoon fed to me, but still, a few posts in and I was finding myself increasingly irritated with the assumption that I was to know what the hell was going on (okay okay, granted, I'm a bit peculiar). Maybe I am a grumpy old man (was my b'day on the weekend) :twisted: Now to completely balance out my bothersome mood and to make it all completely fine and dandy... good luck insane peoples with this insane challenge! I do (honestly) hope you do well ;)
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Re: NaNoWriMo

Postby tomgosse » Thu Sep 15, 2016 12:26 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote: Maybe I am a grumpy old man (was my b'day on the weekend) :twisted: Now to completely balance out my bothersome mood and to make it all completely fine and dandy... good luck insane peoples with this insane challenge! I do (honestly) hope you do well ;)

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arthaey
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Re: NaNoWriMo

Postby arthaey » Thu Sep 15, 2016 2:59 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:it would have been nice to have had an explanation of what the hell this NaNoWriMo was in the initial post to provide some background.

I apologize for the oversight. I've updated the first post, as well as the thread title, to be more NaNo-newbie-friendly.
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Re: NaNoWriMo

Postby PeterMollenburg » Thu Sep 15, 2016 9:26 pm

arthaey wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:it would have been nice to have had an explanation of what the hell this NaNoWriMo was in the initial post to provide some background.

I apologize for the oversight. I've updated the first post, as well as the thread title, to be more NaNo-newbie-friendly.


Thanks for receiving my grumpy old man comments so well arthaey, I appreciate it. *sigh* now all is well in the world (ie my head)... i think... dammit what does SRS mean... and PM, oh no, that's Peter Mollenburg of course... and CAUFF? Oh yeah, Chickens Are Us For Free... all good, all find and dandy here ;) ... need to get brain checked...
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