NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month
nanowrimo.org
nanowrimo.org
So when I got laid off earlier in the year I started working on an alternative to NaNo.
At the moment it's in MVP but it current has:
- Author profiles w/ blogging - Publication cataloging + reader reviews - WIP cataloging with word count tracking - A community feed similar to Goodreads + WIP word count updates
The idea is I think NaNo could be more social post-November. With Pen Pinery's current MVP I think Authors can build a readership fanbase much easier than anything NaNo could do.
In the future I want to also have goal tracking based on pages instead of word count and for editing as well. I also think there's a lot of potential for building out an ARC sign up system.
Pretty much I've self-published 15+ books and I'm putting everything that worked for me into a social author/reading platform.
Authors who use NaNo or are completely against it, I'd love to get some feedback on the concept from a description standpoint. Any thoughts or tips?
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Since this is YC, the tech stack is Django 4, Postgres and Bootstrap 5; Hosted on DigitalOcean.
You are right nobody cares about your novel but the rush from finishing and publishing something even if nobody reads it is pretty satisfying.
I've gone back and forth with taking Open Libray's [0] catalog as that would at least flesh out our collection of books but then I'd have to deal with verifying authors to accounts so they can access their books. Which sounds like a major headache and also just defeats the concept of building a community.
Since this is really a weekend project, I'm just going to keep building the tools out to perfection and hope people will trickle in over time.
Luckily for me I just want to write, so the tools I'm building are exactly what works for my writing goals and I think overtime others will find the same value.
As another author I am happy to create an account and pop my "masterpiece" on and re-link it for the 100 or so bots that visit my website every year.
Holiday coming up in a few week's time, so I have downloaded your first book for a read so at least you got something good from your post :-)
Have you tried asking for recommendations from your librarian(s)? On my public library's website there's a form for this, and if I'm ever at a loss for what to read next (I usually go with recommendations from friends, family, and HN threads) I'd either ask this way or in person.
There's also the NPR Book Concierge, BookPage (paid for here by Friends of the Library), and the Libby app, with lists put together by librarians and a option to see similar books (based on keywords? Sometimes the list items don't make much sense, but I have found some good ones this way).
i love self-published books and back a few authors on patreon that i've found on royalroad, but there's not a chance i'd be buying books from unkown self-published authors without even a few sample chapters. especially not when the pitch is that it's something an author has created by churning out as much wordcount as possible during a writing challenge.
We're not a marketplace just like NaNoWriMo isn't a marketplace. As an author you build an author profile (like any other social media) and link directly to where people buy books (Except we have catered icons for Ao3, Amazon, wattpad, quotev, etc that show up on the profile).
So the cataloging of publications on the profile is just like Amazon's author profile, GoodReads' author profile, a person website, etc it's another place for people to find ones work.
The plus side of an author profile is if you share your publications they can rank on the community feed where new readers can organically find your novel. Then go to Amazon, B&N, etc and purchase it.
The reader can also follow the author so if the author adds blog posts they'll see it show up on the feed. Which I think will be a great way for Authors to talk about book tours, new novel releases or WIP they're starting.
It isn't so much about wordcount is the focus but building an author brand on the platform where ones publications, WIP and posts are all talking to the same algo on the community feed. Here people can easily find new authors and what they are working on in an author/reader relationship I haven't found else where.
If you end up adding an API or looking for other sites to partner with, feel free to reach out sometime (email on profile). Not sure what your needs are but I might be able to help from Notebook.ai. :)
When I was writing my first fantasy novel I was messing around with Notion templates (almost a local wiki in a sense) just to organize weapons, factions/governments, religions, etc. It didn't work as well as I expected and I had been wishing something like your service existed the whole time. Well done!
For time being, I'll put together a little blog post about Notebook.ai to let the community know about it. I know there's writers out there that are looking for this exact product. I appreciate the comment!
Reach out any time!
The great thing about authors is they should be reading just as much as they write. So in a sense, we're able to build both sides of the coin by marketing to a single user from the start.
I attempted it twice in consecutive years about a decade and a half ago, and not only failed to complete anything, but was also driven into a worse depression because of it. I had to avoid people talking about it in November for years afterwards or I'd start to relapse, too.
My therapist told me that in Germany there is an idiom that in English translates to "if you want to prove that you will fail you will always succeed". If I did NaNoWriMo, I would have the full expectation that I will fail, even if I try to tell myself that I have hope it would go well, and so I will just naturally make myself fail.
i have never tried NaNoWriMo, but if i did, i'd look at my situation and realize that i would not get much done, but for me that would not be a failure, because i wouldn't even go in with the expectation that i should be able to change that. on other words, i would not even have the hope that it would go well. instead it would be the realization that without participating i'd write nothing. by participating i'd write something, and so i may consider that a (small) success.
I'm much more annoyed I haven't been able to replicate this outside of the contest.
Hope you feel better now.
If it does work for you, that is, of course, great.
Indeed, NaNoWriMo does - by the very nature of its focus on "pushing yourself to succeed" and positivity in challenge - make it hard to talk about not succeeding. (And I am pretty sure that attitude didn't help my own interactions with it.)
My book, I got to the word count but the characters hadn't done a quarter of what they were supposed to over the plot, it was a book with an extended beginning, a little bit of middle, no resolution or ending. So I learned a lot about myself! But if I was trying to actually make a worthwhile narrative, well, I need to consider how much reasonably fits in 50,000 words and how many books do I need to tell the bigger story.
No matter how well you plan, you really only get two meaningful weeks before the wall hits you. "Just set a reasonable word count to hit every day!" Then each day you miss days because your side dish plans went sideways or your flights get rescheduled, making the goal steeper every other day.
"Use your travel time to write more!" Almost impossible with young kids without sticking a spouse or relative with watching them, and the resentment of even asking if you can ignore kids to write lasts a hell of a lot longer than November.
"You can catch up after Thanksgiving!" Not after anti-vax Aunt J gives your family the gift of some great new viral disease that hits in the last week.
There are writing sprints in other months that never seem to have the community of NaNo, and all your single or childless writer friends burn it all out during NaNo. The community is a big part of what makes it fun, otherwise it's just an arbitrary chore goal.
I decided to do it as a series of short sci-fi stories. You can read them at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/TalesOfTheAlgorithm
It was fascinating to me how much like programming it was. So much planning, lots of time trying to figure out what isn't working, and a bunch of spelling bugs!
Well worth attempting this if you have the time to exercise your creative muscles.
Anyway, if you have any feedback on my weird stories, I'd love to hear it.
I might just suck at it, but if didn't someone would probably pay me to do it.
The stories aren't as popular as my normal blogging - but I was expecting that.
Looking at my logs, I've had a few hundred people read them, which is lovely.
And, frankly, it doesn't matter if I suck or you suck. The joy of creation is its own payment.
Selling even reasonably well takes a mix of persistency (building an audience over multiple works), talent, hard work promoting it yourself, and luck.
I belong to a local self-published authors group in my small town. We are going to cover NaNoWriMo this weekend.
My main goal is to have fun and I did feel great a few times, especially when I thought of something clever or spotted a mistake that'd not work with what I had written a few chapters back.
It was a good social outlet for me because I have a pretty severe mobility impairment and, long story short, small groups and laid back activities are easier for me to participate in than other things.
I haven't really gotten back into in-person stuff post-COVID, but I still enjoy making November a time to write and hanging out in the local NaNo Discord server. I enjoy perusing the NaNo forums, particularly the Adoption Society, where people offer up plots, characters, running gags, opening lines, chapter-naming schemes, and more for anyone to use.
There's also a bit of fun lore that has developed. For example, if you're stuck, kill a character with the traveling shovel of death ("traveling" because us Wrimos are passing it around). Or find a way to include Mr. Ian Woon (anagram of NaNoWriMo).
NaNoWriMo is different things to different people and I love that about it.
This year and last, I lowered my goal to writing a 20k-word novella. I have difficulty typing and a lower word count makes it a bit easier for me (that makes me a "NaNo rebel" lol I love all the little jokes and stuff).
One thing I notice is that a lot of people use it as a project to just get words out, regardless of quality. They talk about vomit-drafts, and/or just sitting down to write to see where it takes them, to see what the characters will do. I don't think that mindset is very compatible with story forms that requires mystery or twists or foreshadowing. My story this month has that so it's been difficult. I'm at 11,000 words now and we're late enough in the month that it's telling me I have to write more than 2,000 words/day to finish. Soon I'll be past the point of no return, where it will be practically impossible to catch up; I think the most I've ever written in a day is 5,000 words.
Ah well, it was still good motivation, and I'm signed on enough to my concept that I'll probably finish it even if I'm not done on 11/30.
An analogy I would make is that a marathon is measured as 26.2 miles. It's not measured in minutes or hours -- it's not the 2:30 run, for example. The standard of success is measured in miles, not minutes. Similarly, NaNoWriMo is measured in words, not quality or twists or ready-to-be-published state.
You are right, though. It's good motivation. I've finished every year for 10 years, but I've never gotten anything to a state I would consider to be even remotely publishable. :)
Obviously this is not the only approach to writing, and some folks are incompatible with the concept of "just write with abandon" and "sort it all out and refine it in edit".
If you want to write and edit at the same time, consider halving your total word count (since they take two months to do that), or double your time (and continue through December).
That's the point or at least it was in the early days. NaNoWriMo came out of Chris Baty's book, "No Plot? No Problem!" and the point was to crank out 50,000 words in 30 days. The point was to sit down and write. As I recall, the book mentions "One Day Novelists' as in "One day I'm going to write a novel...." It's just a kick in the pants to get you to sit down and write. Don't edit, don't re-write, just write.
I've done (and completed) NaNoWriMo a dozen times (2004-2013, 2015, 2020) and I've never had an outline and only a basic idea of a plot when I started,, mainly because I didn't want to start writing before 1 November. One way to handle twists and foreshadowing is not to write it in order (I used to bike to and from work and those 40 minutes each day was when I'd work to what happened next or what happened to get to where I was in the story.)
The first year, I took the "scientific approach" and started out just writing 1,667 words a day. While that was always my daily goal, I did abandon it. The most words I wrote in a single day was 10,596 (20-Nov-2007).
The floodgates opening for me was being stuck in a hotel room during a cyclone for 3 days without power and an old Chromebook which I nursed to fourteen hours of battery by turning the brightness all the way down and closing the lid to put it in sleep mode during the times I was thinking. That got me the re-start I needed.
I wrote one[1] about 5 years ago. It's amateur and too long, but it's my great American novel, for better or worse! It actually took 4 years, but so much fun! The most annoying part was getting it into a viable ePub. I ended up using Sigil, as it was the easiest to use at the time.
[1] https://darladarling.com (free ePub)
A text that reads "Rabbit." written 50,000 times is enough to win NaNo.
Feel free to fork.
I'm less in the frame of thought of using AI to "write a 800 word story on leprechauns" and more in the situation of "edit my lead paragraph in the same style as my concluding paragraph" or "here is an outline of my story, critique it and give me a structure to follow for a second draft".
As a self-driven exercise then, AI becomes just another tool for a writer to get better. Sometimes it's a training wheel, sometimes it's a rocket strapped to your butt.
I remember there being a group out there that had the same competition but trying to tweak a good LLM to write a novel in a month, but I couldn't find it again and it was before the ChatGPT heyday.
Which I think largely pre-dates the availability of LLMs and is/was more aimed at traditional procedural generation techniques, although I imagine LLMs get used a lot these days.
The only "win" is personal and if you want to define your win in terms of ML/AI, that's for you to decide and mostly just between you and your keyboard. But there's a lot of neat resources and a different sense of accomplishment/competition/cooperation if you choose to focus on it as a NaNoGenMo project instead of a NaNoWriMo project.
I wanted to keep the anything-goes spirit, so “movie” is defined really loosely. Anyone is free to join me, there’s still time this month!
See the Oct 29, Nov 5, and Nov 12th episodes so far.
Good luck.
Edit: the novel http://files.howtolivewiki.com/MOTHER_OF_HYDROGEN_NOVEL/inde...
I find myself with 20 mins here, 40 mins there, and half the time gets spent trying to find a decent short story.
November.
However, if you're already someone that is able to maintain a writing schedule and hit daily targets of hundreds of words, and can see your dream works emerge through the simple act of scheduling... I'm gently skeptical of where your motivation to create comes from. Bear with me.
Before we get bogged down in it: Misery and disorder are not requisites for creativity and I'm certainly not advocating that, either.
The issue is that trying to hit some sort of material target by artificially imposing a daily grind on it forces your work into a box created by the work-a-day-world. An undeniably effective one, but for everything?
The global marketplace is what sets deadlines like "by the end of the day!" and "by the end of the month!" where as works of art and creators can both bloom like flowers and get seasoned over large segments of time like waves washing over a rock face.
Your arc as an artist or creator, starting from the discovery of that impulse inside yourself, may be one that spans decades or your entire life. If that's the case, success or failure in NanoWriMo may be a bad indicator for you:
"Oh shit, I missed my 7pm writing alarm and forgot to write ~1700 words, now I'll never be the next Charles Dickens!"
could come from the same writer as:
"After a slow walk through my city on a crisp fall morning, I can sit down and write 5000 words without so much as stopping to stretch my wrist."
and:
"I don't practice art regularly, but sometimes when I get the urge, I will be in the throes for 3 days trying to work out the specifics of an image that has flashed into my mind."
These and many other creative modes are valid and exist independently of schedules, clocks, word counts, time limits and other cops we might invite to sit by our writing desks, easels and computer terminals.
Making art for most people is like exercise. It's good for them and once they get into it they like it, but there is an initial cost and your initial attempts aren't going to be very fulfilling and all that.
Almost everybody feels that surge of excitement in front of the potter's wheel. But, pots collapse, finding a teacher to mentor you is expensive, the people who want to start it have to start by researching clay and how you work it and can I use my oven as a kiln or do I need to buy a dedicated one and do I need glazing materials...
And then the same thing that killed exercise has killed the “artism” that we feel. People stopped going on daily constitutionals because of the TV, we made the TV more addictive and put it in your pocket and called it TikTok
Reminds me of the difference between learning piano from someone that's scolding you and smacking your hands, and someone that is encouraging you, starting from where you are, leveraging your innate interests, opening your eyes to patterns... when the gates are down, it's much easier to get in.
That happens to be valuable info in its own way.
Was it actually possible for me to write ~1,600 words every day and have them form a coherent story?
I wasn't aiming for great art. I was following the start-up credo of "If you’re not embarrassed by the first version, you’ve launched too late."
And they're right, because 99.9% of them would be bad at it. Probably it would not even have any therapeutical value for them, and the 0.1% of new artists discovered might not be a significant upside.
The name is terrible too, sounds like Orwell's Minitruth and similar 1940s abbreviations - "Hey, comrades, there is a dire shortage of blather, and the Great National Novel is nowhere in sight. Therefore our enlightened leadership has established a program with the catchy name NaNoWriMo, and all youth is enrolled."