Thinking About NaNo 2022

Post 1:

My NaNo name is Artisticinva. 2022 will be my 15th year of NaNoWriMo! Wow.

From the first (2008) to last year (2021) I count my track record as 7-7. Seven wins and seven losses. I do have some asterisk years mixed in there (i.e. stopped NaNo project to do something else; moving across country, etc.) Check out my NaNo profile for details.

I took over hosting the NaNoWriMo Swapping group when the original founder had to step away. I love the concept and challenge of NaNo and look forward to the year when I can notch another WIN.

Hi, all, my NaNo name is noelanicat. I have been a member since 2012, and have ten wins. I love the challenge of NaNo. I am still debating whether or not I want to do it this year, but I probably will.

Part two: For this year I will be writing a series of short stories about a young orphan boy, Rashay, who eventually finds out who he really is, and who, of course, becomes the King. He has a loyal buddy in his unicorn, Beau. He will be exploring Courage, Honor, Integrity, Loyalty and Love in the five stories I have planned. I am also thinking of continuing the story of Caano and Aerlinnel from last year.

@cynaemon Are you writing YA, adult or something else? Since there's a unicorn, I'm assuming fantasy is your overall genre. What subgenre is Rashay in?

Post 2

My thinking for NaNo 2022 is rather scattered at the moment. There are a couple of options under consideration, but neither of them are in the "ooh, write me, write me!" mode.

The first is what I was working on last year which didn't have a title, I just referred to it as "ATF Agent Romantic Suspense." Since I wrote all of 5,682 words on it, there's a lot of story still to write--like all of it. :)

The other is to expand on an idea I had about a private investigator/fixer. That one would be building from the ground up since all I have is a vague idea of who the main character would be.

One thing for certain: I'm returning to my "roots" this year. The first novel I ever completed I wrote longhand, in spiral notebooks from the beginning of the story to the end. After several NaNo and Camp NaNo cycles of writing random scenes catch as catch can via laptop, phone dictation, index cards, and the like (and having a huge revision project on my hands in the end), I'm returning to the basics.

I bought two 100-page heavyweight paper college-ruled notebooks (may go back to get a third, just in case). One longhand page for me -- I only write on one side of the sheet-- equals 2-3 typewritten pages. So maybe the linear storytelling approach is one to return to in order to cross the 50K-word finish line.

HI, Artistic, I am writing YA.

Partners are assigned. I added some days on the post by since I was delayed in assigning partners.

Let's get chatting about NaNo right here on the swap page.

Post 1:

Hi! I'm ctice on the Nano site. I always have a hard time remembering how many years I've been doing NaNo. When I started, I didn't actually sign in to the website or follow along there - I just did it on my own. I think there was only one year doing that. The site says I've been a member since 2010 - so this will be my 12th year! I've won eight and lost twice. I skipped last year due to all over burnout.

@Artistic - I wrote my first couple of novels long hand as well! Almost all of my first short stories were done in notebooks. I have been considering digging a notebook out and writing long hand again (that was before I saw your post!) I just found my notecard scene list for that first NaNo novel.

@nserviam -- I used to buy the one-subject three-ring spiral notebooks at BTS sales when they were 10-15 cents each. I'd get 12 of those, several packages of index cards, sticky notes and pen refills and I was set for the next writing year. :)

Was your notecard scene list detailed scenes on each card or just a word or phrase that would get you started on the scene?

Years ago, I did a detailed scene synopsis on index cards. By the time I finished, I felt like I'd told the story and never went back to write it! Still have that file somewhere (maybe in storage in Virginia).

Post the first:

My NaNo name is ariestess, same as here. I have been participating every year since 2002. This will be my 21st year to participate. In the 20 years previous, I have won 11 times.

On a side note, I've also participated in every single round of CampNaNo since its inception in July 2011. My track record there is less impressive, having won only 5 times out of the 24 sessions I've participated in.

Post the second:

For NaNo 2022, I'm still debating what I want to do. Most likely, I'll do as I have in previous years, which is focus on my OutlawQueen Advent Calendar entry that goes lives in December. Exactly what that project will be this year is still up in the air, as I may go back and work on a previously established 'verse or I may create a new one.

Alternately, I may work on one of my novel ideas. I could always go back to working on Laikostra, which was the same novel idea I worked on in my very first NaNo back in 2002. This is most definitely a labor of love that has had a lot of fits and starts over the years, but the writing group I've been in for the last year and a half has been very helpful in giving me some impetus to buckle down on this one. Laikostra is, in a broad nutshell, a high fantasy lesbian variation of The Lord of the Rings focusing on magic based on the genetics of red hair. LOL

Another option is to go a bit rogue and focus on a screenplay I've been itching to finally write from some challenges I did for NYCMidnight. I'd done two short screenplays in the same "universe", as it were, and got feedback about expanding the one [which was how the second came into being for another challenge], so I may finally just buckle down on creating that full length screenplay. It's a romantic piece following the 5 years between a lesbian couple's first meeting at a summer [or fall? I forget atm] festival at the beach through their proposal, engagement, and eventual wedding. There are some twists and turns, including a stalkerish male coworker of one half of the couple [who thinks he's her bff], but it has a happy ending.

And then there's always the option that I'll pull something else entirely out of my butt at the last second, which I've also done in past years. It really just depends. LOL Stay tuned for what comes next!

@Artistic :: I remember you talking about "ATF Agent Romantic Suspense" last year in one of our swaps and being rather intrigued by what you talked about. I would like to register my vote for that one, not that I think my vote counts for anything. LOL OTOH, world building is a lot of fun in and of itself, so I can see the allure to that, too.

As for going back to your roots to do it longhand? I am in awe. I used to do that a lot, but got out of the habit several years ago. Now, I will just write random snippets while at work, which get typed up the minute I'm home. LOL I wish you lots of luck on that.

@cynaemon :: Okay, I love that you're doing a series of short stories for your novel idea re: Rashay. That's something I've done in the past, too! I'm rather intrigued by this idea, but I will absolutely admit that you had me initially at unicorn, as I've always had a thing for those magnificent beasts, as cliche as that sounds. LOL That said, I also like the concepts you have as the central themes for each of the five short stories. It sounds like the kind of thing I'd love to read, as I'm a complete sucker for YA fantasy books.

@nserviam :: Wow! I am impressed with your success rate with NaNo! In my non-winning years, I always either get distracted by something else that isn't writing, or just get burned out on the story and can't figure out anything to switch gears on to continue the word count at least.

Post 1: My current NaNoWriMo name is EmmaLindhagen. According to the website, I have written about 300 000k words during NaNos, but I think it's more as I don't always use the site when participating, especially during camp. My success rate is very hit and miss, some years it's been great and some years I just can't get my steam up.

Post 2: I am not totally sure what to do for this year, but I know I want to participate. Either I will start working on a big, ambitious novel project that I want to trad pub (starting on the draft, or just working on an intense outline) or I might start on a self-pub project instead. We'll see, I need some more time to think...

Post no 2 continued because I posted early. Anyway, if i do the trad pub-geared project, it will be a social sci-fi about a generation ship and the watershade event that affects its history, told through a framing narrative of a popular science book about the event. If I go with the self-pub project, it'll be scandi folklore erotic romance, hah.

@ariestess wow, it sounds like you have some beefy projects to chose between! That screenplay sounds very cute, and we always need more queer high fantasy. I'm curious though, what is the OutlawQueen Advent Calendar?

@TheSilverLining :: The OutlawQueen Advent Calendar is an annual project that a bunch of us who ship Regina and Robin from Once Upon a Time do to celebrate the holiday season.

Hi, Ariestess, I think it is great that you have done NaNo for 21 years. And congratulations on winning for 11. It sounds like you have some interesting ideas for this year. A novel, a screenplay. It will be fun to see what you choose. The Outlaw Queen Advent Calendar sounds like a neat thing to do. As you know, I am a Middle Earth person. But I hate what Amazon has done with the series.

Hi, TheSilverLining. I am sure that whatever you choose to do will be wonderful.

Post 2:

Holy crap time got away from me. I have no idea what I am doing anymore. :P The thought that got me interested finally is an old idea I've done some short stories on. It's a Dieselpunk story set after WWII. The main character is a woman with magic/affinity for cars who is a secretary for a magician detective. Think Sam Spade with magic but the secretary actually does most of the work. I'm not sure if it's enough of an idea for a novel.

I started going through my old workbooks and websites to see if there was a preptober or follow-along thing to post here with this. But I ended up down several rabbit holes and completely forgot I was going to do that until I started typing this. My brain is so scattered, I am not sure anything is going to get done. I'm going to go through EA Deverell's worksheets again. I am also going to try to use the Plot Embryo system and story toolkit from Rachel Stephen - https://www.rachaelstephen.com/toolkit.

@Artistic - The index cards were about a sentence with a scene on each. When I try to fill out the notecards on Scrivener, I feel the same way about feeling like I'm done with the novel! :)

@Ariestess - Same here about Camp! I've participated a number of times and have actually finished only maybe once. And it almost always seems to be the same project. :P

@TheSilverLining - I've always loved the idea of generational ships!

@cynaemon - I love the idea of writing short stories/novellas as a full novel! Have you thought about including some vignettes as well? One of my favorite books from school was "The House on Mango Street," by Susan Cisneros. It's all vignettes, small snippets of a life, put together to create a whole.

Post 3

I came to something of an epiphany over the Labor Day weekend. I was at a group event and the getting-to-know-you chitchat was going on. Someone asked me what I did. I responded: "I'm a writer." That might not seem remarkable, but the answer in that sort of setting would typically be the day job/profession, the job that pays the bills. It immediately struck me that that moment was -- the third such over the course of 30 years -- a turning point, just as the other two occasions (the first from a stranger in a mall, the second to someone at my front door).

I've been mostly not writing for the last five years. The cycle of lying fallow is shifting, and now the time to prepare the ground for seed.

The definition from a farming collective, * "Fallow ground, or fallow soil, is simply ground or soil which has been left unplanted for a period of time. In other words, fallow land is land left to rest, regenerate, pause. It allows the soil of a field to replenish nutrients. *

That I recognized those moments then, and this past weekend, have buoyed my have buoyed my spirit about my own fallow season and what comes after that dormancy.

@ariestess 20 years of NaNoWriMo (and all years of Camp NaNo) is incredible!! Congrats on that achievement.

Re: your comment about "going rogue" with a screenplay reminded me that NaNo, well, its organizing entity -- The Office of Letters and Light -- used to have a month for writing scripts. I couldn't remember the name, but a quick search with some key terms found it: Script Frenzy. They no longer run it, but the fact that OLL had a month for script writing IMO means it's in the overall wheelhouse. So go for it! I've been a NaNo Rebel many times.

That wikiwrimo site also has a list by month of various [artistic challenges] (https://www.wikiwrimo.org/wiki/Listoftimedartisticchallenges) site is just like all of the rest of the internet. Enter at your own risk of losing hours of time clicking through links.

Man, this is not my night for getting coding right. Just saw that I left a space where there shouldn't have been one to create italics and I totally messed up the wikiwrimo one for year-round and monthly artistic challenges

@TheSilverLining --What factors help you determine if a project is best suited for traditional publishing or for self publishing? Have you done both before?

Also, your second option for November piqued my interest. Just today, a book I ordered from Amazon arrived from a bookseller: "The Sagas of the Icelanders." I sat in the car in the post office parking lot and looked at some of the illustrations/figures and started the 782-page volume. That's way more than a NaNo count! Ha!

I love the notion of a Scandi folklore erotic romance. I went to Iceland in 2019 and have been reading Icelandic writers since then, including recently joining a Reykjavik-based international book club. I've been reading Scandi noir (mostly writers from Norway, Swede and Denmark) for years. It was a natural progression from the Viking historical romance novels I used to read.

@cynaemon - Oh, no! I was going to start the Amazon LOTR series this past weekend. But got to the hotel and realized I hadn't charged my tablet. Is it the writing in "The Rings of Power"? the casting? Something else?

@neserviam -- You wrote an AWESOME logline for a TV show I'd return to watch/stream. Think Sam Spade with magic but the secretary actually does most of the work. IMO, that premise is more than enough to carry a book, and definitely enough to launch many scripts or screenplays.

All, especially @TheSilverLining here is the link to the writing worksheets by Eva Deverell that @Nserviam mentioned. There are more than 150 of them and they are really good for every step along the way in the writing process.

@Artistic Yeah, I remember seeing Script Frenzy go by all the time before I got into writing them. Now that I am, they stopped. LOL It never fails. So I may do that script and I may do one of hte other options, or I may just do a bit of all of the above, based on what the muses want on a daily basis. LOL

Thanks for the encouragement everyone.

@ariestess that calendar event sounds like a lot of fun!

@Artistic thanks for the link to the worksheets. Interesting, I'll have to bookmark it for future use :)

As for the self-pub/trad pub thing, it honestly sort of depends. I have some self-pub stuff out and some of it is because it's sort of a tricky length to sell trad pub (novelettes), and one series is because honestly I'm too precious about it and wouldn't want to have to change it based on what an editor says because it's a really personal project, hah. I also plan to self-pub paranormal romance in the future because I hear that genre is kind of bigger in self-pub than in trad pub. The generation ship book will be my first attempt at trad pub tho.

I'm glad you like the sound of the other project! I'm Swedish myself so I grew up with a lot of stories of our creatures and am very fond of them, so I thought to myself that it'd be fun to do the Scandi equivalent of one of those series with vampires, werewolves etc but with our traditional creatures instead. I look forward to making it real, whether this nano or another time! Also wow, that book sounds like a beast!