Monday, September 08, 2008

National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month. Write a 50k words novel during November.
I don't think you have to be American to participate, I am guessing that the "National" part is just a leftover from the olden days when nations mattered.

If I am to do it, I think an interesting strategy might be just to deliberatly write crap, anything at all. It'll blast through all the internal-editor blockages, and I suspect a lot of ideas and qualities will seep in anyway.

L. Ron Hubbard, who was a high-volume pulp fiction writer, told a story about a lecture he had give at a university, where he said that "when you've written about 200,000 words, you'll know if you have a style". He felt he was being very conservative about that, but it seems he terrified these academia students, because they each tended to write something 5,000 words a month!

6 comments:

  1. NaNoWriMo I'm sure is great fun. If only I could dedicate my November to that (sigh).

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  2. "L. Ron Hubbard, who was a high-volume pulp fiction writer, told a story about a lecture he had give at a university, where he said that "when you've written about 200,000 words, you'll know if you have a style". He felt he was being very conservative about that, but it seems he terrified these academia students, because they each tended to write something 5,000 words a month!"

    As Tom says in this video, to LRH!

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  3. I've done it a couple times, finished twice out of three. It's a good time if you have a solid idea or three. :)

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  4. Kewl.
    Was the work good for any use?

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  5. Hey Blank, just upload the text to lulu.com and let Eolake purchase the book. Best way to answer the question in my opinion. :-)

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  6. The answer can be summarized in my lack of willingness to edit it or show it to anyone. ;) I do think about it from time to time... the first one, anyway. I may revisit it one fine summer day.

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