2018 Nanowrimo attempt

2018 Nanowrimo attempt

Byrichard

As an introvert, I have a tendency to listen and daydream rather than talk. It is for this reason that the Nanowrimo challenge is an interesting one. It encourages me to be verbose, to use more words than I would usually use. It also forces me to find 1667 words of inspiration on a daily basis. This is a challenge. When you’re inspired it can take about an hour and a half to two hours depending on typing speed or it can be split into chunks. 


Current nanowrimo progress
Current nanowrimo progress


This morning I wrote a draft about the routes you can cycle if you go west from Nyon and tomorrow I plan to do the same but for routes that go east. When I format them as blog posts I will post them. It will provide you with a more in-depth and informed look at cycling opportunities if you’re looking to cycle between Geneva and Nyon.


You can write about anything during the Nanowrimo attempt. You can write fiction or fact, love letters or blog posts, or anything. The principal goal is to get in the habit of writing every single day, and of not worrying about editing and post-processing until December and beyond. 
A few years ago I managed to write a 50,000-word fiction piece and never found the courage to read it. It’s a challenge to write, especially when you force yourself to keep going despite your instinct telling you that what you’re writing is rubbish.


You can look at it another way. You can look at writing like taking pictures or taking video. You’re not taking that picture or that video sequence because you love it, you’re taking it because when it comes to the editing phase you want to have a number of choices and opportunities. You want to get rid of 90 per cent of the content and just keep the good stuff.    This writing month is fun. It’s enjoyable to write, and imagine, and as you imagine write what you are visualising, until inspiration breaks, and you need to walk around, do something different for a while, and then come back and write some more. It is pleasurable.


There is also the added dimension that you can meet other people who are doing the same thing. There are events in Lausanne and Zurich this weekend, so if you want to be with people staring at their laptops rather than their phones this is a good opportunity. ? Co-working without the financial gain.


There is another dimension to this. I want to broaden my work opportunities and one way to do this is to demonstrate that I have the ability to write well and to be concise and to write in an interesting manner. I can’t prove that with a tweet or a facebook post but if I blog frequently, and I improve my writing ability then I have more of a leg to stand on.


We’ll see what I find inspiration to write about over the coming 30 days. Now to see if I can find the motivation to experience traffic to go climbing indoors this evening.

The Nanowrimo Challenge

Byrichard

The Nanowrimo Challenge is interesting for me to challenge because I am an introvert. As part of this introversion I like to be concise and to the point. That’ why I like twitter conversations. Why say in one hundred and fourty words what you can say in one hundred and fourty characters? Trying to write one thousands six hundred and sixty seven words per day is very hard for me. It requires me to extend what I have to say. It requires me to elaborate and to answer the “So what?” question in more depth than usual. Every year I start November thinking about how I want to attempt and succeed and eventually I give up.

The first year that I attempted NANOWRIMO I made it. I managed to write more than 50,000 words in a month. It was my first time writing fiction and my first time writing something so long winded. I never re-read what I wrote because I never found the courage. Interestingly enough I think that what I thought and wrote about a few years ago has become a reality. On other years the attempt failed because I found work and so had insufficient time and motivation to write for two hours a day. How convenient. 😉

This year I wanted to explore social networks and the history of how people interact on them, from web forums, deviant art and other forms of interactions to myspace, facebook and twitter. I want to look at how conversations went from being blog posts to being comments to being tweets to being silly emoji and eventually become a listening rather than a conversational medium.

I believe that I am a textrovert. When I use the word textrovert I do not mean that I like to send text messages by phone as SMS. I mean that I like to get to know people via the written word before I meet people in person. I want to learn what I can converse about without worrying about other people listening in. I also dislike competing with other people for attention. Sometimes I want to have conversations with people but I struggle to engage them properly and so I go back to the written word.

People don’t like the written word. They often feel that you are ignoring them by looking at your phone, by having a conversation with other people. If you have the intention of listening then you have the right to feel that people should put their phones down. If you only want to talk then do not be offended by people living in a text based world instead.

We need to get back on track. I expect to gain two things from this month’s challenge. The first of these is that I expect to develop ideas in more detail than usual. Instead of using a single sentence I will fill in the gaps, provide context and relevant information. I will attempt to behave like a standard/normal person. Why say in ten words what you can say in two hundred words right? How can you do this whilst adding more information rather than going around in circles?

I am out of my comfort zone. I feel that by writing far more than I need to write I am rambling, and I want to avoid rambling. At the same time as a camera operator and as a photographer I am used to creating more content than I need and then editing that content to something short and entertaining. When it’s with a video camera I do not worry about rambling because rambling provides me with more choice, more opportunities and more coverage. There is of course the small matter that when I take pictures or video I edit, and that with the written world I am less methodical. It is not that I don’t know how to edit but rather that as I write for pleasure I write for myself. People can read it if they like, and if I allow them to.

Over the next month we will see how many ideas I explore and develop. We will see how I find 1667 words of inspiration every day for another 29 days. I expect that I will manage. I managed half a decade ago. I should manage again today. When I reach the fifty thousand word count I will feel good about it.

You often play an instrument to help you relax and think clearly

Byrichard

The wind outside howled as it made it’s way up and around the shape of the car parked at the top of the hill. Ahead nothing but the white of clouds could be seen. These clouds had not obscured for long. Just 15 minutes ago you could see the valley below. A u shaped glacial trough with fields and human settlements at the bottom and many trees on the slopes of the mountains. While the left side windows stayed dry those on the right were getting covered in white specks. They were in fact rain drops. Humidity from the clouds was collecting and forming in to water droplets.

The transmission mast behind was a shadow of it’s former self. Although it was still in use today it was far less interesting. For a start line of sight communications had moved from being from land station to land station across dozens of countries to distribute the signal to satellite broadcasting where line of sight was still important but satellites and distribution took place over hundreds of kilometres. Geo-stationary satellites were used.

A few metres away there was a map. This map was designed so that those standing at the centre could look out at the view and see which shape represented which peak. It showed how each related to each one. It’s at this moment, as the collections of peaks and related stories emerged to create a sound that was only now becoming noticable.

“You often play an instrument to help you relax and think clearly don’t you?”
“Yep” and he continued on playing.
“Do you always bring a violin with you when you’re climbing the mountains?
“Well, when I was younger I’d carry a cello up the mountains but recently I found that it has become too heavy so I’m sticking to the smaller violin instead”.
“What gave you the idea?”
“Alpenhorns! When I was hiking as a child I would often hear the alpenhorns being played somewhere in the valley and as I enjoyed the sound of music in the mountains I decided to bring my cello. Imagine the view from the top of the mountains and the sound the instrument makes. It’s crazy and eccentric enough to be amusing.”

 

 

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A busy few days

Byrichard

Tomorrow I will be in Lausanne once more, this time to meet the people from Bloggy Friday. It’s Switzerland’s bloggers and social media types coming together for a chat and the traditional fondue (or so it’s been for the past few weeks) and an opportunity to hear about new projects.

Last month it resulted in me hearing about minsh and going to a demonstration of what the website will provide for users of twitter. i’m not going into details just yet but when it comes out some people might find it quite interesting.

The second event is the TGIO (Thank goodness it’s over) party for the National Novel Writer’s month and the Swiss writers that participated. it’s a sleepover right next door to where I live and that will be interesting.

The main event comin up is of course LeWeb which I will be attending this year through a great piece of luck. I’m looking forward to the presentations and meeting many new people. It should be an interesting to pick up ideas for how to develop and re-wrte some parts of the book I’m currently working on.

The culmination of the week of course will be on Friday when 30 of the French Seesmic community will meet for a dinner.

In all it’s going to be a very social media week and it’s refreshing for it to take place in a place like Paris. I will take some video and photographs and blog what I think is of interest. For now it’s a restful evening whilst looking forward to the fun week ahead.

I made it to 50,000 words in 25 days. I won.

Byrichard
It's complete

That’s it. I’ve made it. I wrote 50,000 words in 25 days, That’s an average of 2000 words a day for 25 days. That’s a lot of writing. That’s a lot of re-writing. It was fun meeting some of these writers over the past two weeks and I look forward to at least one or two more meetups. In the meantime I’m one of those that have completed the task.

Let’s see how many others have achieved the goal.

Fourty thousand words, ten thousand to go

Byrichard

Yesterday I spent the afternoon in Starbucks in Geneva but found no inspiration there. I was surrounded by NaNoWriMers from around Switzerland and a few of them were writing quite succesfully. some of us though just spent a few hours talking. That was good too.

It’s only as I was driving home and looking at the road, the signs and the night drive that I found inspiration to write once I got home. The first thousand words came easily, within a short time they were down on paper. What I did struggle with were the second thousand words I had to write to get to my personal goal of fourty thousand. I was up till one am looking for inspiration. I wrote something, then re-wrote, finally I found the order I liked. I checked and there I was, at fourty thousand words in 22 days 🙂

I want to get the writing finished with. I really want to wrap up the story and start proofreading. There are certain chapters that need a lot of re-working and others that I could publish with just a tiny bit of re-working. I really want to make it readable, and I want to make sure the story is coherent.

In five days I think I will have finished it properly :-), two thousand a day 🙂

Over thirty one thousand Words written in 18 days for Nanowrimo

Byrichard

With just under two weeks of writing left for Nanowrimo I have reached over 31,000 words in that space of time. That’s an average of 1750 words a day. It’s been a good experience so far and its now that I’m starting to worry about the proofreading part. It takes long enough to proofread an essay or dissertation, let alone 50,000 words from a document such as this one.

I did feel good about reaching those 30,000 words. The chapters have grown in length and I have experimented with dialogue. I have started to think about narrative in more detail and I know that there are a few things that I would do differently.

There is one thing that surprises me. Whilst a lot of people are aiming to write for Nanowrimo most of them are slightly behind the word per day count. Some are really behind. I read that last year 15% of those that took up the challenge did not complete the task. I wonder what the percentage is this year, and how many have participated.

We’ll see how it feels when I hit at least 50,000 words. How will I celebrate getting that far into writing a story? Not long left anyway.

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Fribourg Nanowrimo

Byrichard

I always go to social media events and meet a lot of geeks who love to use new technology such as twitter, seesmic and more. For once it’s a little different. I’m in Fribourg where I’m surrounded by writers. There are a lot of PC rather than Mac computers. The hot chocolate is good and the city is nice.

Fribourg, Switzerland

At the time of writing there have been two word wars. The concept is simple. Write solidly for five minutes at a time and see who has the highest word count. So far I’ve written 313 and then 328 in two sessions, not bad.

Word count is now over 24,000 words.