BellaOnline Forums Career Fiction Writing NaNoWriMo - Are you joining in the fun?

I'd like to gently remind posters that the purpose of this thread is to support people who want to do NaNoWriMo. We want to uplift their dreams that they can create great works by using this process. We want to demonstrate that we're here to help them in any way we can. Our BellaOnline forums are about support, nurturing, and encouragement for people on the path they have chosen.

It's like our Married-No-Kids forum. That forum exists for people who are married and have no kids to feel safe, warm, and nurtured in that environment. We want all posts in that forum to be encouraging of that goal and to support the posters in any way we can.

People who feel life is only complete when a woman has a child share their thoughts in the Moms forum! They would not post that in the married-no-kids forum . There are different forums for different goals, and all strive to be supportive of the chosen area.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Just a few inspirations for you all!

On The Road was written - start to finish - in less than a month by Jack Kerouac. Yes, he did ample research beforehand. That's fine. Research is good! Then when he set down to write, he focused, plugged away, and he was done within one month.

On The Road has been voted in many top-100 of all time lists. It's 320 pages long.

He didn't even spend any extra time after that editing, which we can do!

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote A Study in Scarlet in under a month, and again that was complete start to finish. That was "only" 44,000 words, so a bit short, but he spent time polishing .

So absolutely, great, fascinating, entertaining works of literature can be created start-to-finish in a month. In our case we're simply aiming to break through our writer's block and get the story down on paper to start with!

I did well my first year, I started without an outline or a thought as to what I was going to write, but once I started words just flowed. I actually finished a week ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, I didn't participate last year due to personal family issues.

I love a challenge and this is really, as Lisa said, a draft. There are thousands who participate and some really great kick-off parties. I had made numerous friends at some of the "write-ins". I think there were even some that cleaned up their creations enough to publish.

I'm looking forward to participating. Granted it isn't for everyone, and that's ok but what a wonderful opportunity to write, as they say, with "literary abandon."

I support everyone who is giving it a try. My NaNoWriMolog-on still works and my user name is dxwalker. I'm with you Lisa, it's all about encouragement!

I gave it a shot once and got to about 20,000 words before burning out. I'm going back and forth about trying it again. Even if you don't finish, the free-flow writing for days on end is a worth experience.

My husband has done NaNoWriMo for several years; unfortunately, he's having to skip this year because he hasn't had the time to do any pre-writing work this time around.

Every year he's done it, he's reached the 50,000 words in the time limit. With two of the manuscripts he wrote during NaNoWriMo, he spent time polishing them afterward and self-publishing them.

My 15-year-old participated in the youth version of NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago, and she's planning to do it again this year. With the youth version, they get to set their word count goal. With her first attempt, she set it at 20,000 words, and I believe that will be her goal again this time.

If you decide to participate in NaNoWriMo, just try to do your best. While it's great if you write the 50,000 words in 30 days, it's not the end of the world if you don't. Good luck to all who will be participating!

Dear Dianne -

That's great that you finished early in your first run! That's quite inspiring!

I've added you as a buddy.

Part of this exercise is the training-the-brain-to-write part. That is, when one meditates, one practices every day because the more one practices, the better one's mind gets at doing it. The mind gets into the rhythm.

So by focusing on writing daily for a month, one trains one's mind on writing smoothly and easily. It gets easier and easier as one goes. That serves a writer well no matter what projects the writer takes on after that.

It's well worth it for anyone who writes to do this, even just to put in that training time!

Dear Alice -

Absolutely you should give it a shot - let us know what your username is! We will support and encourage you. Burnout is exactly what this process is about counteracting. It's just like any other skill one works on. If I did an hour long yoga routine the first day, I might be exhausted. Then the next day it's a little easier. After a month I'm loving it and reaping great benefits from it.

The more one writes, the easier it gets, and the more the brain lubricates and builds its skills in that area. And that then helps us in all writing tasks!

I'm now at the point where stories just flow out of me, because I've been doing this kind of practice.

I bet you will get further this time, because of the skills you learned last time!

Dear Lesley -

That's wonderful that your husband has been able to finish his goals each time! It's inspiring that he then was able to polish that work into publishable final products. In essence the month-project gave him the raw material to then finish.

It's what milestones are all about . Set a deadline, and things are much more likely to get completed. Leave things up in the air, and things tend to drag out.

Kudos to your daughter for her writing! Think of the skills and experience she is building!

I think the whole thing is such a great idea. I've had friends telling me I should write a book about my life or some such thing. It's not something that really interests me. This also comes during the time period where my own business is at its busiest.

Anyone that can start and complete a rough draft of a book is simply awesome and kudos to them. I'll try to check in here every few days to see how everyone is doing.

I do have a short ebook I'd like to complete by Thanskgiving. maybe I can finally get that done.