National Novel Writing Month . . . thoughts?

[janet118]

I just found this site that holds a contest for writers in the month of November. I don't quite know how it is supposed to work. It appears that you are supposed to write a novel beginning November 1st and have 50,000 words by November 30th. There are some indications that you can't start writing before that date, but you are allowed to do an "outline." Has anyone participated before? How was it? Pros? Cons? I'm intrigued but would like to hear from writers who have tried it out.

Right now the site is down, but here's the link for later.

I apologize in advance if everyone else here is familiar with this except me. I'm brand new to this forum.

Thanks

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Have never done Nano officially

but my last novel, the first draft, would have qualified, by draft two in two and a half weeks it was 60K words...

[MorningGlow]

2. I just joined!

Another DUer recommended it a little while ago, and I bookmarked the site, but just took action today. I'm already finding it amusing--and humor goes a long way toward helping cajole me to write, I know that much. This might be just what I need to light a fire under my butt. We shall see...

[Ozymanithrax]

3. Nanowrimo is great.

We should begin a Nano thread for mutual support.

[valerief]

4. They're editing the Bible. Maybe some entries will be a new Bible!

Great idea, huh? Of course, it had better be MORE liberal, not more conservative like the Bible rewriters want.

:rofl:

[sybylla]

5. Heard of it, thought about doing it, but...

Every November I have a huge commitment on another project that takes me away at least 10 of the 30 days. Maybe once I no longer have the commitment. I think January would be a better month. Up here in the snow belt no one does anything anyway.

[ellie]

6. I love it!

I have done it twice, and won twice, and it is a really great experience. I also did Script Frenzy this year where you write a script during April.

The con for me is that I am a procrastinator but once I start, I am good to go. The best way to do it is to have a word count to meet every day. This year I have an idea to explore, like I did last year. The first year I did it though, in 2007, I had no idea what I was going to write, I just sat down and a story fell out of my head. It is exhilarating and scary and fun.

I highly recommend it.

[Ozymanithrax]

7. Nano is a great exercise. I man, you will not wrie a salable novelin 30 days...

But it is gresat for developing th discipline.

[nuxvomica]

8. I'm very surprised that I've gotten this far

It's really not as tough as I thought, once I got going. I've stayed just above the daily quota because my muse seems to work in dribs and drabs. The great thing is that I can just make shit up and at it counts. ;-)