Well, No One Said it Had to Be 50,000 GOOD Words…

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Deep into your Nanowrimo writing? Struggling to make 50,000 words and make it good? You’re not alone. Kristen is struggling as well.

I’ve crested 37K tonight and am anxious to be a winner. Reading this actually helps to keep up my spirits. So why not click through on the link above and help her along or share her frustrations.

Cheers,

I’m tojosan on nanowrimo.

Scrivener Trial NaNoWriMo message

Every day I see this message pop up. It’s the Scrivener NaNoWriMo 2009 Trial message. This software is my success story for this year’s National Novel Writing Month.

Scrivener is a Mac native application geared especially towards novel and scriptwriting. It allows easy organization of work into projects, manuscripts, parts, and subdivisions, such as chapters or scenes.

Research notes are kept in the Scrivener as well. The same interface allows not only keeping text in your research section but also images and links. It’s as handy as drag and drop.

Search has a Mac native feel, a la Spotlight.  Start typing in the search bar and the left hand bar immediately responds by only showing subsections (in my case chapters) that have that search word included. In turn, the search word is highlighted in each section. I’ve found this feature especially useful for name use. Don’t want two characters with the same name right?

Search has more than just simple text searching. Here’s a snapshot of the search drop down.

Full Screen mode is nice. A single column down the center of the screen is the initial set up. Configuration is adjustable to place the column, set the column width, and the transparency of the background. Many writers will find this their preferred mode I think. It blocks out distractions well.

Document exporting is robust. Microsoft formats are selectable, as well as PDF, RTF, and plain text. Selection is allowed at differing levels, allowing any part of the document to be exported. This feature allowed easy email off to my wife of the novel.

Scrivener has other features I’ve been enjoying. It doesn’t have a couple of features I’d love though.

• Web publishing
• One click email sending

Will I be purchasing Scrivener at the end of the trial? Right now it seems a sure bet. Its interface is straightforward. There are plenty of ways to customize and export. Support is built in for CSV version management. (computer geeks will get that)

Find the Scrivener NaNoWriMo deal.

Find me as tojosan on NaNoWriMo.

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This morning I crossed the 30,000 word mark.  I’m excited. This is the highest number of words I’ve reached in three attempts. I’m not done either.

This puts me ahead of the curve. Much better than either of the previous years.

Blue lines represent the word count you’d have if you divided the 50,000 words up over the 30 days equally. As you can see, I’m not doing that.

My personal goal is to be done before Thanksgiving eve. I’m planning on traveling starting that Wednesday evening and be busy for the next few days. That will certainly decrease the opportunity to write.

How am I doing it? I’m giving myself some isolate time to write nearly every day. Only one day did I miss writing. I’m also seeking daily encouragement from others. The flip side to getting that? Give out a ton of it.

According to a recent pep talk, it gets easier after 30,000 words. I don’t know about that, but I’m pumped up to go the distance.  Please consider cheering me on, donating Diet Pepsi products, writing a blog post about me and my story, or something else.

For those choosing to write about me and my story, I’ll send you the text to date and you can excerpt it. Heck, monetary donations would be nice as well, but please make those at nanowrimo.org, under donations.

Cheers to my #nanowrimo twitter family, especially those in St. Louis.

I’m tojosan on nanowrimo.org. Find me. Buddy up.

November is coming up, and you know what that means: warm up your word processors, refill your fountain pens, gnaw at your pencils, sharpen your quill nubs, and set the espresso machine to overdrive because it’s NaNoWriMo time!

It’s that magical time of year where writers from all over the world hunch down in their favorite writing corners to produce a 50,000 word novel. Some will succeed, some will fail, but most everyone should be able to get Chapter 1 done—and that brings us to this month’s contest!

Submit the first chapter of the NaNoWriMo novel you’re writing to enter our NaNoWriMo ‘09 writing contest. It won’t be your best work ever (after all, 50,000 words in 30 days is a lot to write), but that’s the point. We want to see your raw, unedited writing. Everyone will be on the same playing field, so don’t be shy—let’s see what you’ve got. Good luck!

That’s the gist of Sribophile’s National Novel Writing Month 2009 contest.  There are prizes as well.

1st Prize:	$50 Amazon.com gift card
2nd Prize:	$25 Amazon.com gift card

Read more about the contest, including contest rules and submission guidelines.

National Novel Writing Month Write-In NaNoWriMo

I’m writing on NaNoWriMo.

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Twitter gives us a new toy today, the List Widget. Shown above is the first widget I’ve put together. If you scroll down on the blog you’ll see it in action.

List widgets let you select the user first, then you can select from the user’s public lists. Customize the list widget appearance by choosing colors, size and even title and caption. The widget size can be auto-adjusting or a set size. Color choices allow you to select the hex code or eyeball it using your mouse.

A National Novel Writing Month widget is my example. I built a list, still growing of course, of Twitter users doing nanowrimo. The list is by no means near 500 yet, but it’s enough that there should be a fair amount of tweets coming in. I chose to have it poll, and display only 30 tweets. Those settings are adjustable as well.

Twitter included the option to copy and paste the HTML as well as a Blogger specific option.  No Facebook or MySpace option was available; you can however use the HTML for MySpace.

I agree with TechCrunch, these will be your chance to curate your lists.

What will you do with the Lists Widget?

National Novel Writing Month doesn’t just take place on your computer; it is happening all across the world.  In my case that area of the world is the St. Louis metro. Today we held our first official write-in.

Hosted by the ML, Municipal Liaison, the official write-ins act as way to get a bunch of local are writers in the same place at the same time.  The idea isn’t to hold a big party, though you could have one.  Supporting each other is the goal.

Leading into my first write-in we held a little pre-party.  Folks showed up with food and beverages, and laptops.  Of course, they all showed up ready to get writing. In our case we mostly stayed away from the alcohol, but there was plenty of caffeine.

Music played a big part of our evening. The host provided some selections but a couple of the attendees brought their own as well. Quite a variety of tastes but a lot of fun.  Another cool party was a bit of Firefly flashback.

On the Halloween episode of Castle, the character, played by Nathan Fillion, is getting decked out in costume. The surprise? He’s getting decked out as a space cowboy, ala his character Captain Malcolm Reynolds of Firefly.  It’s a hoot because not only does he recreate that look perfectly, he gives us a bit of the old swagger.  Producers managed to squeeze in a bit of the old Firefly music riffs as well. Needless to say in a room of fans it was riotous and required several rewinds and replays.

Midnight was brought in with another flashback, this time to Thunderbirds.  It was the countdown from the beginning of the episodes.  Again the group went wild with laughter. Talk about a great way to kick off the writing.

Writing commenced.  There were Macs, Dells, HPs.  Laptops and netbooks were involved. Music and chit-chat provided a continuous background for the writing. There was even a bit of a music battle going back and forth at one point.

In the middle of the 2 hours of writing, we had a word war. A word war is where two or more groups compete to have the highest word average for a given period of time.  We set the timer and went to town. Talk about a keying frenzy!!

This encouraging group lead me to about 1500 words in two hours. That’s with talking, laughing, and goofing around.  At the end of two hours, most of us packed up and headed out but this one event will stick with me the whole month.

Planning on making more of these this month.  If you’ve not been to one yet, I recommend you find one in your area and get involved.  Give one a try at least. You might find the writing much easier.

Do you have a NaNoWriMo experience to share?

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National Novel Writing Month is upon us.  As in years before, thousands of would-be authors will sit at their keyboards and attempt to bang out 50,000 words or more. Yours truly will be attempting it as well.

This will be my third attempt. In years past, though I’ve had writing buddies on the nanowrimo site, I’ve not attended in live events, nor had in person writing buddies.  St. Louis though has a large community of nanowrimo authors so I decided to get some face time this year; the hope being that I’ll be more encouraged, inspired and challenged to complete fifty thousand words.

Saturday we had a kick-off party hosted by etoiline. She brought some goodies, captured our names, and set us to mingling.  This Saturday is the Halloween pre-party in St. Louis.  Party will lead into a November 1st writing kick-off.  Hopefully there’ll be room for me in there somewhere. Writing should go till about 2 AM.

Writing will be helped along throughout the month by write-ins all over the St. Louis metro area.  Planning is in the works for write-ins out St. Charles and St. Peters way.

Beyond the face time though, I’d still love to have some extra buddies along for the ride.  You’ll find me on the nanowrimo site as tojosan. Go. Click. Buddy.

What’s your novel?

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Slideshow is from the St. Louis NaNoWriMo Kick-off party on October 24th. Jennifer, @etoiline, organized, while a couple dozen of us showed up to hang out, get some good eats, and chat about our novels-to-be.

Signup was more than just jotting down our names. After recording our names, and forum IDs, Jennifer asked us to create “plot ninjas”. A plot ninja is basically a sentence or idea recorded on an index card. These will be used later to help folks through writer’s block. In exchange for filling out a plot ninja card, novelists received a gift bag.

Conversation wasn’t just about novels. We talked about jobs, current and past. People shared past NaNoWriMo experiences, including what helped and what didn’t. Personal histories were shared as well, such as trips to foreign countries, family stories, and music they love to write to.

A quick survey netted a range of novel themes, from horror, to chic lit, and several folks planning a sci-fi novel. Me? I’m leaning towards horror/thriller. Dean Koontz will be a heavy influence either way.

Next up is the Halloween Pre-Party leading into the first write-in, at midnight.

Can’t wait to get writing!
Cheers,
Todd
Find me on NaNoWriMo and friend me.