Ask HN: Who is Writing? (NaNoWriMo 2017) | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Who is Writing? (NaNoWriMo 2017)

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It's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) [0] time again.

There have been some HN submissions over the years where people have posted NaNoWriMo-related software projects thay've made, like daily word counters [1], [2], ways to share progess [3], etc.

Any HNers doing their daily 1667 words? If so, what are you writing about? Do you have a NaNoWriMo strategy? Are you using any interesting tools?

[0] https://nanowrimo.org/

[1] http://www.amelyn.com/nanowrimo/nanowrimo_v2.htm

[2] https://github.com/WorldMaker/NaNoWriMoAtGlance

[3] https://tablo.io/communities/nanowrimo

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I'm doing the related National Novel Generation Month, which is a hackeresque twist to generate novels computationally.

https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/

https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/60

I'm also doing NaNoGenMo.

I've finished four novel generators thus far this year:

https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/54 https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/43 https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/3 https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2017/issues/16

I'm not doing NaNoWriMo, but last week I did just finish the draft of my first book, a kids Sci-Fi novel

Now begins the editing and revision phase, which will be a ton of work, I fear.

On tooling, I used Scrivener. Interestingly, the last few months I've written about 50k words on the iOS version on my iPhone during my commute on the London tube.

50k words on an iPhone is really impressive. I'm guessing you didn't find it too frustrating or you wouldn't have made it to 50k words?

As for me, I often find iPhone writing productive because it's hard to edit on an iPhone, whereas on a computer I'm encouraged to tweak, move sentences, reorganize, etc. The distinction between writing and editing phases is profoundly important, I think, and computers generally destroy it.

(I've started to write texts by chatting with myself as a way to suspend the inner premature editor.)

It's not too bad actually. The Scrivener iOS app is pretty good too. Sometimes my thumbs can get sore (on a separate note I sometimes wish there was the option to have a keyboard on top of the phone screen instead of bottom. More natural thumb angle I think)

I have about a 30 minute trip on the tube each way, so that's a dedicated session to focus.

I set a session word count target of 500 words and try to make something happen. The last couple weeks I was easily hitting 1000 words in total over both sessions. But like code, that's no indicator of quality

The tough times are when I really don't know what's going to happen, and try to come up with something. Other times I can really get in the flow, and stop thinking in words, but more in thoughts, and the words just form themselves.

Most days when I get to my stop, I'm in the zone and want to keep going. Maybe the forced stopping helps in some way to keep things fresh.

Repeat again on the way home.

But now that I finished the draft, I feel much less productive. The past week I've been reading and making minor tweaks, but I probably need longer editing sessions to ensure better continuity.

Btw, when I started, my target novel word count was 75k words, similar to the first Harry Potter.

I did about 45k on laptop. But then blew past my target and hit 95k.

Now I have to decide whether to do a lot of chopping, or keep the extra bits.

Not doing NaNoWriMo, but thought I would mention FAWM - February Album Writing Month. It's like NaNoWriMo for songwriters. The goal is to write and record 14 songs over the month of February - that's one every two days.

My wife and I are writing books based on the same prompt "living in two worlds".

My strategy was a brief outline beforehand then just write.

My main tool is Ulysses.

I'm actually looking to get into writing Sci-Fi, and this post is pleasantly relevant!

Not this year, and probably never again. I did it in 2012 and 2010. It was as exhausting as it seems. My strategy? Be unemployed. What tools? Text editor and separate files for 1) The outline and 2) Each chapter

Instead of a novel, I am trying to write a short story/essay each day of November. The idea is that I will have 30 different stories at the end of the month :)

Just published my first blog post on sales advice today, actually. Aiming to make it a weekly event and eventually build into online sales courses and bootcamps.

I published my first tech blog post on medium today. Though it didn't quite get enough traction on HN. I am not much of a writer, though I enjoyed the process.

I'm writing on political satire.

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