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Writing Words - writing it is the only way of getting it written
I mentioned the 500-words per day mini-novel challenge in my September challenges post.
I spend an hour or two developing an idea yesterday. It's for a collection of short stories and short short stories that work as stand-alone stories, but taken together they tell a bigger story. It didn't take me long to write the basic outline and I had a few ideas that I loved for the stories. The logical conclusion was to join the mini-novel challenge and aim for a minimum of 500 words a day.
Today, I wrote 784 words.
You think NaNoWriMo is insane? 30 days to finish a novel draft seems like a long time if you consider there's a 3-day novel contest. It takes place this coming weekend (September 4 - 6) and registration is open until Friday. I have to get back to the day job tomorrow and won't be able to write next Monday (it's not a holiday in the UK), so I'm not going to enter the contest. There are plenty of other writing challenges in September, however:
NaBloPoMo: One blog post a day for a month
The September theme is ART. Your blog posts don't have to refer to the theme, though, you can blog about any topic. NaBloPoMo is great for waking up a dormant blog. I've participated twice already this year and will have another go at it in November.
Write a Mini-Novel: 500 words a day
Someone on the NaNo forums is looking for people to join him in a mini-novel challenge in September. He suggests a minimum of 500 words but states in a later post that "there are no wordcount police for this". 500 words a day isn't much, though, most people will be able to write that in 30 minutes. I'm tempted to join the September mini-novel writers.
750words.com One Month Challenge: Write 750 words every day
750words.com took the concept of writing morning pages and created a 21st century solution for it. I've only signed up recently and am planning to write a blog post about the site after I've used it for a while longer, but I do want to draw your attention to their challenge. If you are familiar with the concept of morning pages and have always struggled with them, this one may be for you.The challenge runs every month, so you don't have to sign up for the one in September.
Thirty Days of Creating challenge: Not just for writers
CoachCreativeSpace is a community for creative people across the board. They run a Thirty Days of Creating challenge in September to help you establish a creative routine. There is no minimum word count, the only thing you have to do is create something every day. Even if you just write five minutes a day, you'll finish this challenge successfully. Might be a good one for freewriting exercises, this one, as there is no minimum word count you have to reach.
Quick post outside the posting schedule because I just realised that it's only three weeks until NaNoEdMo.
NaNoEdMo is the perfect opportunity for all NaNo novelists to edit their November novels. One thing that appeals to writers during NaNoWriMo is the group support. NaNoEdMo does just that for editing. The challenge is to log 50 hours of editing on a manuscript of fiction - it doesn't have to be a NaNoWriMo novel.
As with all the best things this month, the following list is highly subjective. I think these are the best online writing challenges but I'm curious to see what your favourites are.
NaNoWriMo - Write a 50k novel in the month of November. (I didn't really have to explain this, did I?) This was the writing challenge that took me to the next level as a newish writer, it will always be my favourite because of that.
NaBloPoMo - Write a blog post every day for a month. NaBloPoMo started out as the blogging equivalent to NaNoWriMo, but they've gone year-round a while ago, so now you can challenge yourself to blogging every day all year.
April Fools - Goal:wWhatever you want to accomplish in the month of April - you have to state your goal on the forums so it can be determined if you've reached it. I completed or edited novel drafts during April two or three times and made my goal every time. I prefer April Fools to NaNoEdMo when it comes to editing my NaNoWriMo beasts.
The internet is great. When I first went online in 1998, I was surprised to find so many other people who went through the same, or at least very similar, thing as I. There were countless writers asking the questions I asked, doubting their abilities just as I did, and exchanging tips, quotes from published writers, creating communities.
Soon I found writing communities and read every piece of writing advice I found. That was 11 years ago, when the general consensus on my side of the Atlantic was that writing couldn't be taught. You were either born to be a writer or you weren't, in Their opinion. So I was glad to learn that some people, famous writers among them, thought you can indeed teach the craft to those who had talent. I started to read books on creative writing, I read novels in the genres that interested me to see how other people did it, and I joined online writing groups. I grew more confident as a writer, I had a few small successes, but one thing never changed: I felt I'd still need to read more on the craft, get as much theoretical knowledge as possible.
The problem with the internet today is that writing advice is endless. You can read and read and read until the end of days, I suppose. True, some background knowledge on how novels work and how other people go about writing them is helpful, but no amount of theory can ever replace writing practice. If you want to write a publishable piece of fiction, you need to write lots of unpublishable rubbish first. Things you would never admit you wrote. Because knowing what works in theory doesn't mean you sit down and write a publishable text. You make mistakes, and you learn because of them.
I've recently fallen into the trap of reading up too much theory again, instead of sitting down and write even when I know what I'm writing is awful. That's why I'm glad I discovered Blovelspot. I signed up today, and while I'm still considering the options for my first blovel, I'm sure this is just what I need to forget about all the theory I don't know about yet and do what really matters: Write.
I've just discovered something on Twitter that I have to share: blovels.
A blovel is the first draft of a novel, written in 40 blog posts in no longer than 40 weeks. Check out Blovelspot for more info, and if you want to write a blovel yourself, you can do it right there, too.
Can't make it in November? JulNoWriMo is your answer.
I'm tempted. But I'm not happy yet with last November's work, and I'll not embark on a new writing journey before I've arrived with this one.
There's quite a lot happening in the land of writing challenges in April: There's Script Frenzy for budding playwrights and script writers, there's NaBloPoMo for the bloggers - the April theme is Growing (Up) -, and for all those people who aren't quite sure where they fit in yet, there's April Fools.
I've made good progress on my NaNoEdMo goal, but I've found out that the rewrites require that I start almost from scratch. I've told too much backstory, which is good for me to know, but not really that interesting for the reader. So, as usual, I'll need April Fools to finish my novel.
NaNoWriMo - I may repeating myself here, but NaNoWriMo is one of the best things since sliced bread.
April Fools - What I like most about April Fools is that you get to set your own goal. Last year I had my personal editing month in April, and I edited my NaNoWriMo 2006 manuscript (224 in total, and I had gotten through 24 of them during NaNoEdMo the month before), including writing new scenes to fill the holes. It was the first time that I enjoyed editing as much as I enjoy writing the first draft
[ Click here to read more ]
Script Frenzy is for script writing what NaNoWriMo is for novel writing: A 30-day challenge which will take its participants one (or more) step(s) closer to their dream of being a script writer.
Last year, Script Frenzy took place in June, but this year it has been moved to April, which means it is approaching fast. I will not even attempt to take part in the challenge this year - I am too busy and I'm not a script writer, so I feel I couldn't motivate myself to sit down to work on a script every day after the day job. If I had more time, and if I didn't have a novel to revise, I would give it a go, though. Just imagine you could write the script to a successful movie or the next big sit com!
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