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:

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

"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!

BlankPhotog said...

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. :)

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Kewl.
Was the work good for any use?

Anonymous said...

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

BlankPhotog said...

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.