• cantstopthesignal
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        1 year ago

        I would like to know who in the fuck thinks they can write a novel in only a month.

        • Patches
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          1 year ago

          If college taught me anything, it’s that I can write thousands of words per night. Typically fastest in the wee hours of the morning.

          None of these words are good, mind you, but they are in fact words.

          • Sheltac@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Oh yeah. Some of my worst work is on those mega-inspired days where I sit for 10h and crank out 10000 words.

            To this day I don’t know why I do that if I end up throwing most of it away.

            Maybe it’s good to get bad plot out of the system.

            • rwhitisissle@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              November is National Novel Writing month and December is National Edit the Terrible Novel You Just Wrote month.

            • cantstopthesignal
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              1 year ago

              For me, a good day is about 1000 words. I really run out of juice after that and just type bland shit. That’s about 3 months for a decent draft.

              • Sheltac@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Oh it depends massively for me. One of my best (IMHO) short stories is 8k and was written over 10-12h in a day.

                But that has to be a pretty special day.

                On bad days I usually go into the negatives 😂

        • toomanypancakes@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          If you can make time for 1,700 words a day starting on the 1st then by the end of the month you’ve exceeded 50k

          Making time and having energy for 1,700 words a day on top of daily life activities and working a job is the trick.

        • ickplant@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          I’ve done it. You’re not supposed to come up with a finished product in 30 days (although some people do). Mine was a first draft of roughly 55k words.

          • jballs
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            1 year ago

            I’m reading a short book by Patrick Rothfuss (The Narrow Road Between Desires). This dude is such a notoriously slow writer that it drives me crazy. He had the audacity to do an author’s introduction where he said this was an existing story of his, but he added 15k words to it. I’m like… what is that, a couple weeks? Write faster, you bastard!

            • TheActualDevil@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              And it’s not like this kind of attitude online has in any way made him self-conscious and led to us most likely never getting the conclusion to his series.

              • jballs
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                1 year ago

                I love the idea of Rothfuss planning all day, coming up with the perfect next chapter in his life’s work, knowing just how to wrap up the intricate threads he’s woven. Then he boots up his laptop, slowly stretches and cracks his fingers. Just before he opens up his word processor to record his beautifully crafted prose, he decides to check out Lemmy for a few minutes. Then he comes across a random comment of mine saying how his fans are frustrated at his pace of writing, and just goes:

                • TheActualDevil@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  “I absolutely care about finishing the book… I feel bad about [not giving people what they want] all the time. It’s one of the things that’s fucking me up, I’m in a lot of therapy right now… I went from fiddling around with a book that I just liked to work on and I knew would never be published… then it’s like 'hey a million people are disappointed in you because they want this book. It’s not a great feeling. … If I didn’t care about the book, you’d have it by now… I owe everyone who loved the book something beautiful”

                  https://www.reddit.com/r/KingkillerChronicle/comments/k52gcz/pat_on_how_much_he_cares_about_finishing_book_3/

                  Literally, the pressure makes it harder for him to make the book he thinks the fans deserve.

          • jballs
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            1 year ago

            Just finished his 4 secret project books. Also just finished the first Mistborn trilogy with my son and started in on the Wax and Wayne series with him (I’ve already read them). I freaking love me some Brandon Sanderson.

            • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Nice. Yeah his prose is meh, but the world building, character writing, and volume are amazing. I’m in the middle of stormlight right now and loving it.

              • jballs
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                1 year ago

                Stormlight is my absolute favorite series. Yeah, Sanderson doesn’t write as flowery as some authors, but that’s not what I’m looking for. I love how he puts together a whole world with a new magic system, history, religions, political climate, etc. Then is like, alright so that’s what the world was like hundreds of years ago, now let’s see what happens when they get guns and spaceships!

          • flambonkscious
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, well, when you develop characters as much as he did, it’s manageable, I guess.

            He did some good world building, though - don’t get me wrong, I feasted on the Hari/robot series several times over!

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Then there was L. Ron Hubbard. Nobody spewed words like L Ron. Nobody wrote pulp like L Ron. Motherfucker could churn out a book in a day

          • TheActualDevil@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            He also does a friendly competition thing with his fans in his subreddit every year in November. He posts how many words he writes in a week and encourages others to post their word-count to see if anyone can keep up with his output.

    • starman2112
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      1 year ago

      NaNoWriMo? It’s a push to get that writing project out of your brain and onto paper, it’s super helpful for some people just to have something telling them to do the thing.

      NNN? Test of self control. “I can quit any time I want” is something addicts say when they can’t quit any time they want. It’s also super easy; if it feels like masochism to not nut for more than a week, you’re addicted.

      No shave november? Pure, unadulterated laziness.

  • yamanii@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Didn’t know about the novel one, but I already forgone NNN when doctors said it was bullshit.

    • Codex@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      National Novel Writing Month, often abbreviated NaNoWriMo, is an annual event encouraging people to finally write that novel they’ve always said they would. The goal is to write 50K words during the month. There are usually meet ups, writing workshops, and other gatherings so participants can encourage each other, share ideas, and generally have fun being part of a thing.

      Edit to add: The “nation” is the USA I’m assuming. I’m in the USA and have only heard of it being a US thing. Presumably if you live somewhere else and want to write a book in November, the various online communities would be glad to have you though.

      • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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        1 year ago

        Some ridiculous percentage of all currently publishing novelists in the US have an MFA in literature or creative writing or something similar. If this makes you feel a little suspicious about how the publishing industry actually works, it should. It’s very much a closed ecosystem that’s all about recycling the tried and true and that is highly risk averse in terms of straying from the norm. This is why it’s almost impossible for “regular” people to get a novel published unless they self-publish.

  • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Why do Americans ruin everything?

    It’s not no shave November is Movember. Moustaches for Novemeber. Optional sideburns but they can’t touch the moustache. Just like the cool old timers. It’s been very clear when this started what the rules were.

    And it isn’t about doing it as a challenging it’s about raising awareness and money for testicular cancer.