Tag Archives: national novel writing month

NaNoWriMo: Getting on My Crazy

Posted on October 24, 2016 by Jennifer Jensen

This is the time of year when hundreds of thousands of writers around the world, including me, get antsy.  Stories flit through our heads, a few characters decide to burrow in and stay a while, and we can’t wait for November 1st to start writing. NaNoWriMo, aka National Novel Writing Month, is a time when hundreds of thousands of writers around the world get crazy and try to write 50,000 words during the month of November.  We even manage to go to work, school, holiday gatherings, and sometimes even make a few dinners for our families! 1,667 words a day, every day, or catch up on weekends.  If, like me, you take Sundays and Thanksgiving off, it jumps to 2,000 a day.  Why drive ourselves like this?  Jaime Raintree put her thoughts into a brilliant post over on Writers in the Storm, and she not only ticked all my boxes but … Continue reading →

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NaNoWriMo and Shimmer of Time 2

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Jennifer Jensen

It’s that time of year again, when writers all over the world hunker down together and begin a new novel, with the goal of at least 50,000 words (that’s about 200 double-spaced pages) by the end of November – National Novel Writing Month.  Would you believe there were 310,000 NaNoWriMo writers last year?? I’ve “won” NaNo twice before, once finishing the majority of an adult novel, and once with a YA experiment with mixed results.  I haven’t participated since I got back from Ireland, but now I’m all set to go with the sequel to Through the Shimmer of Time (click to read an excerpt of Book 1). Jim and Hannah will be back, of course, along with a new village resident named Mr. Oppenheimer, a young Irishman named Donal, and their immigrant canal-building buddies.  Plus a nasty dude who has no name yet, and plenty of adventure and danger.  … Continue reading →

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NaNoWriMo Ends

Posted on December 1, 2008 by Jennifer Jensen

It’s official.  The November craziness of National Novel Writing Month is over.  My gray progress bar turned gradually to blue as I accumulated words, and 50,444 words later, it flashed green–I won!  Then when the validation process opened up on Nov. 25th and I uploaded my words, it turned purple with a big “WINNER!” inside it.  Hurray! It was an exhausting month.  I set my goal at 3,000 words a day (about 12 double-spaced pages), which seemed a humongous amount to me.  There were days where the writing flowed and I did it in two sessions, and days where I kept forcing myself back to the computer again and again, plodding away until I made it.  I finished by the 22nd, as planned, but I had hoped to keep writing in snippets even while we had visitors.  I was surprised at how quickly I dropped it all when I uploaded … Continue reading →

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NaNoWriMo: Idiotic Plot Twists

Posted on November 22, 2008 by Jennifer Jensen

There are those doing NaNoWriMo strictly for the fun and challenge.  And there are those who are hoping for a workable manuscript out of it.  Both kinds of writers find “idiotic plot twists” showing up when their imaginations take over.  Here’s a sampling from a forum thread that left me rolling on the floor. (MC = main character; MMC = male MC; FMC = female MC) ****** My MC is living in a half occupied house (one of the occupants hasn’t been seen since chapter 3) with a twelve year old girl who obviously is a nutcase and a talking bird who just emailed the MC’s mum and is a major suspect in his abduction. And he doesn’t realise anything’s wrong despite waking up in a room full of mousetraps. ****** My perfectly normal senior citizen was suddenly visited by the Chick-fil-A cows from space and taken to planet Eat … Continue reading →

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NaNoWriMo Begins!

Posted on October 31, 2008 by Jennifer Jensen

Well, I’ve done it.  It’s not as crazy as it would have been for me to try it last year, but I’ve signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  The gist of it is to write at least 50,000 words of a novel from scratch, between November 1 and November 30.  It means turning off the internal editor and undoubtedly writing a bunch of stuff that will get thrown away upon editing later, but the initial result is to have the story down on paper. While some people plan as much of the plot and characters as they can, I’m starting with a very fluid idea of a character (13-y.o. girl), a setting (Oregon and horses), and several directions the story might go.  And several possible characters that may or may not be included.  I’ve probably got 3 stories worth of plot ideas, but I figure one will sort … Continue reading →

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