Serious or fun?

Sassee

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How many of you are shooting to write a "real" novel for NaNoWriMo, one you hope to revise and maybe publish, and how many of you are just going to pick a silly topic with no intention to let the thing see daylight after November?

I'm tossing the two options back and forth. Part of me wants to write something completely retarded just for the fun of it, and part of me wants to see if I can actually come up with something "good."

What's everyone else doing?
 

jennifer75

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How many of you are shooting to write a "real" novel for NaNoWriMo, one you hope to revise and maybe publish, and how many of you are just going to pick a silly topic with no intention to let the thing see daylight after November?

I'm tossing the two options back and forth. Part of me wants to write something completely retarded just for the fun of it, and part of me wants to see if I can actually come up with something "good."

What's everyone else doing?

You mean those two are not the same thing? :)

It is frowned upon to start writing before Nov. 1st, but I think I'm going to use the time to FINISH my first NANO project. At least the first draft. Shhhhhhhush.
 
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TheIT

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I'm planning to throw my characters into a new adventure, but I haven't decided what yet. Something fun sounds good, but the first thing I've come up with is something pretty dramatic. It's nice to let loose with something not so serious.

So far I've gotten two starts of novels out of NaNo. I'm considering both of them outlines which I can use as a jumping off point when I decide to tell those stories. Both need lots of work both in prettying up the prose and rewriting to take into account changes in my fantasy universe.

My current plan is to finish the rough draft of my current WIP in October (fingers crossed), gear up and do NaNo in November, then begin revising my current WIP while working on finishing the drafts of one of my previous NaNo novels (probably "Double Take", the one I did last year).
 

TheIT

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It is frowned upon to start writing before Nov. 1st, but I think I'm going to use the time to FINISH my first NANO project. At least the first draft. Shhhhhhhush.

The only thing that's frowned upon is starting to write this year's NaNo project before Nov. 1. Anything else is fair game.
 

KTC

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I always shoot for some serious writing time. I don't think of the big picture, just of the BIC incentive. I wrote a nanowrimo novel 2 years ago that I am now preparing for submission. I worked on it, on and off, for almost two years. Last year's nanowrimo is still being worked on too. Why don't you do it out of seriousness...with the picture in the back of your mind to eventually publish. You won't walk away with something publication ready...but you will walk away with bones you can later add flesh to. It's more productive than doing something silly. This is real BIC time...I use mine wisely.
 

Mel

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Serious or fun? Can I have both? Torture my character ::as in bring her close to death from it:: at the very beginning would be serious for her, but might be fun for me. But that's all I have right now.

I want to do a very in depth outline this year so will probably try the Phase one. Mainly because I'd like to hit "The End" one of these years during NaNo.
 

MidnightMuse

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Well since I need some serious BIC time too, I'm working on a WIP that is intended to see the light of day. Thing is, I can't count any of the words already written once Nano starts, only the ones I write during November, which is good since I'm having a terrible time putting my B in the C on this, and have a huge long way to go!
 

jennifer75

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The only thing that's frowned upon is starting to write this year's NaNo project before Nov. 1. Anything else is fair game.


Yea. Something like that. Isn't that what I said?
 

Siddow

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Serious. I'm actually going to use the time to explore and poke around with the situation and characters from my current WIP, which is a serious novel, and being a serious novel, I'm having difficulty writing it. :)

So I'm going to have fun with it through NaNo, and hope that my 50k exploration yields some great stuff to mingle in with what I already have.

Well, I guess I'm doing serious-but-fun.

Last year I wrote one just to take advantage of the free book offer from LuLu. I wrote a book for my kid, featuring him and his friends. It was a raving success. :D If anyone has kids, and you're trying to get them to read more, I suggest writing a book for them for NaNo, and getting it printed and bound for free. His teacher even let him do a book report on it, for a grade. He got an A.
 

L M Ashton

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Both, sorta. :)

I usually write science fiction, but this time, I'm going with fantasy, an idea I had several months ago. I have no idea if I'll be the least bit good with fantasy - it could totally flop, and bad. But I'm doing my usual plotting and preparation for it like I would with my other stories in the hopes that it'll be good enough to someday see the light of a publisher's day.

I'm going with the fantasy out of fun and curiousity. Will it be any good? Will I like it? Will I hate it? What kind of fantasy world will I end up conjuring up? It's out of my comfort zone, too, so that'll be interesting. :D
 

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Last year I was serious (but still fun). I'm querying that one now. The year before it was all fun (but hoped that I could turn it serious eventually... never really did). If I don't get inspired, I might return to a dare-driven novel. We'll see about mid-October where I am.

ETA: Uh oh, I was just dared by my roommate for NaNo. I mentioned that I had only written two sentences so far today: one, one word long, & the next two words long. She dared me to write a novel with each sentence being one word longer than the last. Suggested I write it from the POV of a five year old for the later rambling sentences ;)

And then of course, there's the great fiction novel, "God spelled backwards is D.O.G." (title not mine) I teased I might write.
 
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Vorteil

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Last year I wrote three completely ridiculous and useless novels. I'm not sure why, though it was pretty fun. This year I'm shooting for one decent novel. I think it will go all right, since I wrote something salvageable in 17 days in June. Knowing me though I'll probably end up writing a crap one in the last two days after I've finished the other. :tongue
 

AnnieColleen

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Serious here. I struggle enough not to squander the writing time I've got!

(But it still sounds like it'll be fun. Just dedicating that much time to writing sounds fun from where I'm at now.)
 

P.C Greene

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Ill probably use NaNo as an excuse to actually get my butt down to some serious work.
I've never entered before but it sounds like fun, especially with the high amount of participant's.

ATM i have two outlines ready, im just jotting down Char info, it would be nice to be able to get one of them completed by the end of November. But i wont be starting until the start of NaNo:) I like to stick by the rules:roll:
 

benbradley

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Since this will be my first year and considering my total output of fiction so far (maybe 10k words? Most of it's in the FF Challenge archives), I have no expectation that I'll write something "serious" that won't need EXTENSIVE rewriting to be publishable, so I'll go for fun, and just spitting the words out.

Somewere I read that the first million words you write are crap, so I've got about 20 years' worth of nanowrimo writing before I write something publishable. OTOH I could just go full time, write a 50k novel a month for the next two years (actually only a year and 8 months!), and then I'll be ready to start a career as a novelist.

Regardless, this will be an exercise that I should have been doing for the last several months, writing 1000+ words a day.

On the other hand, perhaps we should careful what we shoot for. I've read some published novels that I thought were "completely retarded"...
 

larrypotter

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I have always gone into it with the attitude that it has to be fun. But why put that sort of TIME into a project that I never plan to return to?

In my case, if it's not fun -- or at least compelling -- to write it, then it's not going to be anything worth reading later. So for me, "serious" and "fun" comes out to be the same thing!

That said, my first Nano novel was a joy to revise... several times. I still have it, and sort of haven't figured out what to do with it next. My second two... I'll never do anything with. They're done.
 

RJThorne

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I... oh. I don't know.

I'm inclined to say that since this is my first year participating in NaNo I'll go with the silly topic with no intention of ever letting it see daylight. Ever. Not even during November.

Realistically, however, I know that once I write it, I'll keep poking at it until I either fix it or burn it.
 

MMWyrm

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I don't have enough writing time to do something 'just for fun.' I'll be going for an eventually-publishable novel again this year.
 

spacejock2

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Yes, I'm going to write the first half of book five in my series.

Book four, which is just going to the publisher, was partly based on my Nano 2005 and 2006 efforts.

So, I'm doing Nano in earnest ;-) No three-word character names and long descriptions for me...
 

Williebee

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I'm usually of the serious fun school of thought. You tell me. Here's the concept:

You know that old line about how enough monkeys with enough time will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare? Well, I've only got 30 days... and I don't have enough monkeys. All I have is a pair of guinea pigs, Will and Francis.

But hey, they're willing to give it a try. At least, I think that's what they said. That, or pass the strawberries.
 

jodiodi

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I haven't signed up yet, but if I do, it'll likely be something fun that may or may not ever make it into print. I want to play around in the universe of my currently submitted book and maybe write not so much a sequel, but another book with the same cast of thousands in a different story.
 

BenPanced

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I treat it seriously. I've done it three times and I've gotten three first drafts out of it. First year's is now polished and ready to be submitted. After that pesky query gets done.
 

ChaosTitan

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Serious. It'll be the sequel to the book written during last year's NaNo, and the final book in a planned trilogy. Which will, next year, probably expand into a quadrology (if that's even a word).