Is anyone going to participate in National Novel Writing Month this coming November and write fanfic for it? I'm writing several original books instead of fanfic this time, but I know of many others who do write fanfic for the challenge. For those not familiar with the challenge, the idea is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Basically a small novel. It's great for getting first drafts down. It would be fun to go through it with others from the fandom. I'm Dreamerscove over there.

Hmmmmm..... I intend to participate every year and get sidetracked. I'm Madilayn over there as well. I think I may give it a go.

It's something I've always been interested in, but with my job, November is always a bad month. Now if it were in January, I'd be all over it!

with both Maddy and TJ; it's something that I try to do every year, but usually get sidetracked from it. If a few other writing projects are well on their way as well as a sewing project, I'll probably give it a try again this year. Who knows. Maybe I'll even get registered on their site and submit something even if I don't complete it. It would be better than years past.

This is not really something I would consider since I have not written anything over 30 000 words. But I admire anyone who could think of writing over 50 000 words - let alone in 30 days.

Hey, CD, check out the NaNoWriMo website. While that is the goal of that website, I think you can chose smaller goals if you are a newbie (It's been awhile myself since I checked it out; I know they have a junior website for students). But I don't there is anything that says that the work cannot be a collection of related stories, such as additional stories for your AU. Instead of writing one large story, you set out and write three for the series. And remember these are all meant to be first drafts pushed out to challenge you with adrenaline to fire the muse. After you get the initial story done, there's nothing to say that you can't go back and edit it multiple times to get just right. Heck, if the most you've ever written in a month is 5,000 words, and you tried this and got 15,000; that's an improvement. You try again next year and aim for 25,000. Just because the website suggest a minimum, doesn't mean that you can't set a goal for you based on what you know about your writing style. And there's nothing wrong, either than say. "Oh, that does look like fun, but I can't write under that kind of pressure."

Originally posted by amethyst And there's nothing wrong, either than say. "Oh, that does look like fun, but I can't write under that kind of pressure."

Hahaha .... that is me. Most months I am lucky to get any writing done at all (at least no fic writing.) In fact November is one month when I have been so busy writing Report Cards for my students that I get no story writing done at all. The good thing is December comes along and I am all charged up from "writing" reports that I have all this energy to write fics. Then I slow down again. A while ago TJ challenged me to write a sentence a night. (I think she said something every day.) At first I was quite successful, but it has been a while since I have written anything new. I want to say, even writing 5 000 words a month would be a lot for me, but I may be surprised how little 5 000 words is when I count the words. When we wrote the drabbles I was surprised how quickly I wrote 100 words and how many extra words I wanted to add to make the "picture" more detailed. I think rather than trying something like this, I will go back to TJ's challenge of writing something every night. At least I will attempt to be successful at doing that first, before I commit to anything as large as NaNoWriMo.

I did NaNo last year, which was my first, and completed it! And then in the editing process I deleted the last 20 000 words because I didn't like them. But it was a great exercise, I really enjoyed it. The idea is simply to write, not to write anything good, just to learn the discipline part of writing. And that's great! I'm doing it again this year. Last year I wrote fantasy, this year it's up in the air--either sci fi or erotica (or erotic sci fi, or sci fi erotica)--depends on how much sex I get into the novel! Though think of it, imagine if the challenge was to write a sex scene every day for a month...now that might be just the challenge I'm willing to try! Imagine how great the research part would be! Katse