NaNoWriMo 2008 - You too?
13 July 2008
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Alright, after running into those NaNoWriMo badges all over the web, most recently on Jarsto’s website, I decided to check it out as well.
As far as I understood, you spend the month of November writing a 50,000 word story. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or not, the goal is to reach that magical number. I searched the web and that word count is roughly the equivalent of 200 pages! Wow! Not even my final thesis was that long.
But the idea … well, it intrigues me. I have some story ideas I would love to flesh out, but so far I either didn’t have the time (college kept me away from the important stuff, that is) or I lacked the drive, the motivation to really sit down and write. But participating in this kind of contest seems like the challenge that could keep me going and really make me write a story.
So, I will follow rule three of the NaNoWriMo’s and tell you: “I will write a novel in November!”
Tell everyone you know that you’re writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who’ve had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.
Now you have the chance to constantly remind me of what I promised so I will stick with it to not make a complete fool of myself. But, since I am “coming out” this way: are any of YOU guys are going to participate?
Jarsto? Any chance? I mean, you could just stop after 6 days when you have the word count? 
tschilai? Come on, I know you’ve got those ideas! And in order to have the time to write, you need to finish that other writing project thats been hanging over your head forever. That’s an incentive, right? 
Same goes for you, Batch! Anyone else?
And I’d like to get your ideas on how to accomplish that! I mean, 200 pages/50,000 words sounds like a hell of a lot me in the first place. But what keeps worrying me: what do I do when I run into a dead end while writing the story? I only have ideas for the middle part, but the beginning and the end are completely in the dark for me. Any suggestions?
(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
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It’s a cool idea, but 50K words - woah. Good thing I don’t have any talent in writing at all, so I won’t bother trying.
I’d go for the JMS approach. First define the arc, then write the story itself. Not that I have any clue of writing, but overwise I guess I would end up in total chaos.
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Hm. Let me think. November:
(1) I hopefully will have finished my very own, very entertaining to write, nothing made me happier, final thesis two months before. Writing mood? Check.
(2) If everything went okay, I’ll get full-time employment in my company as of November 1st. Won’t need any training at all, nah. Pfft. Using working hours for this? Check.
(3) PS3. GTA IV. CoH/CoV. DSA4. Buffy Watching. No problem, sleep is SO overrated. Using spare-time? Check.
So, lots and lots and LOTS of time for writing those wimpy few 50k words. Count me in.
.
.
.
.
(NOT!)
If I had any ideas for a story, plus the time for it, I’d do it. Sounds interesting. Maybe next year.
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I have no talent at all to write a novel. Believe me, I tried and failed miserably.
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@klti: I tried the JMS approach for the last 15 years and I had no luck at all finishing anything (okay, except two small stories). Which either means I have no talent for writing at all (very very likely) or I need to try a different approach (also very likely). The part about NaNoWriMo that intrigues me most: you have the pressure to write because it’s a competition and I hate to lose a competition and giving up is not an option for me. So that might be the new approach I was looking for
@Batch: You had me all excited there already! Believe me, work is overrated
BTW: I keep my fingers crossed that everything goes alright, you finish on time and get the job!!! *keepingfingerscrossed*
@Matthias: Really? Don’t want to give it a second chance?
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Are you planning to write your novel in German or English? Is it even possible to make use of a language other than English?
I’m convinced that I’m not capable of doing it in English. While I could come up with an English text, I wouldn’t be content with the result. Maybe you’re familiar with this phenomenon: If you’re used to high standards in your mother tongue, every text you write in your second (or third, for that matter) language just doesn’t sound “real” but sort of factitious. At the end of the day it leaves you dissatisfied with what you have accomplished, because you’re missing the right words to express yourself as subtly as you’d like to. Plus, compared to German, it takes me rather long to write an English text. To use your wording, I just can’t do it instinctively (yet). You can easily tell from the resulting text that it’s a lot of hard work for me. In contrast, a good novel must “flow” seemingly effortlessly, and just now that’s downright impossible for me to achieve.
However, I might be willing to give it another try in German. Can’t promise anything, though.
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You know, Batch will be getting this PS3 any time now. I just _need_ to play GTA IV, it’s a basic thing like eating, drinking and sleeping :-p
Seriously though, 50k words in one month? I am nowhere near this level. Right now, I am happily pushing out a (very) short story every now and then, toying around with an idea for a mini-series of short stories and happily collecting ideas and inspirations for the big ones.
JMS gave a good piece of advice once, that unfortunately seems to be lost, but it went something like that: “Ask yourself, can I do two pages a day?” There was a whole article, but that was the gist of it. I’ll probably end up doing this.
I am really looking forward to reading yours though
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@Matthias: I am planning on writing in English. It’s funny, whenever I sit down to write something (that has nothing to do with work or college), it always comes out in English. I didn’t really notice that until I gave a short story to my best friend to read and she said, “My English isn’t good enough to understand that”. So, what you wrote about the “feeling” of the language and how using another language can feel artificial … that’s how I feel about German. When I try writing in German, it sounds … shallow. I can’t describe it any better. Or in German: “platt”.
And about NaNoWriMo … I think you can write in whatever language you like. They do not read your story (to make sure no one can accuse them of stealing your concept), you just upload your text to them, a computer counts the words and then your text is deleted.
I am very relieved they handle it this way because I don’t feel comfortable sharing my story online. For one, it probably is not good enough and I would feel embarrassed; on the other hand I don’t want anyone to take my idea away (even if it’s a silly one).
The whole issue with intellectual property is very close to me as I’ve had the experience of my work being used by others without giving me credit and therefor I am really touchy about it.
BTW, I think your English is excellent, it’s a joy reading your comments. But, like I said, feel free to comment in German if you ever don’t feel like translating. I don’t care about the language (as long as I can read it to make sure no one says something inappropriate
).
@tschilai: Two pages a day I can do. I think. I am getting edgy every day I don’t open my writing app an jot something down. And may it only be to make some adjustments to my storyline. For some reason I have lately felt the urge to write, and write, and write. The problem is, I am a perfectionist and I usually keep myself from even starting on a story as long as I don’t know exactly where it’s going and how it’s going to end (like klti mentioned in the first comment). But, as I have discovered recently, just starting to write helps the story to develop itself. You just type away and watch as your characters do things and come up with stuff you’d never have though about. That’s fun!
And you want to read what I wrote? Well, since I consider you a good friend, I know I’ll get honest feedback and you won’t make too much fun of me (as long as I can hear ya’
).
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Well I’ll definitely be joining in the NaNoWriMo fun again this year, but even I’m a little nervous. Yes I’m five for five on winning for 2003 through 2007, but this November is going to be even busier for me than the last one was, and it already hurt the wordcount some last year.
Having said that, I’m quietly confident I’ll make 50k again. Although an attack on my best so far (50k on day seven) is probably not on the cards this time around.
As to languages, you’re right, it can be pretty much any language. I tend to write in English myself, but a lot of people I know write in Dutch. The bottom line is to write in the language you’re most comfortable with.
And now I’m off to add a “NaNoWriMo 2008″ subcategory to my own blog…
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That’s awesome, Jarsto! Have you published anything you’ve written during NaNoWriMo (or during any other writing flash)? Or can it be read somewhere online?
(I am still in awe that you managed 50K words in seven days. I actually re-read that blog entry of yours twice because I thought I was getting it wrong. Respect!)
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Nothing published yet, I really ought to be doing more editing these days so I can go publisher hunting, but I keep giving into temptation and writing new stuff.
As for the 50k in one week, that was a bit insane. But the last couple of years my sister’s been doing NaNoWriMo as well, so sibling rivalry adds a bit of motivation as well. She actually got 50k the same day I did, but an hour or so later.
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Well, please let me know when you publish something, I’d love to read your stories.
And as for your sister’s and your competition: I am sort of glad I am not related to you. Your fingers must’ve been burning after that week
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Yeah you do need to be careful of your hands when you’re going at that rate. My best ever writing day (which was during that week) was 16,011 words in a day, which (allowing for corrections, punctuation, and an average word length of at least 5 characters) is probably something like 110k keys pressed. Sometimes I’m amazed I don’t have to buy new keyboards on a yearly basis.
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Okay, I did the math - and I took a writing test on this site TyperA.
My average is about 260 keys per minute (German or English), which equals about 53 word per minute. That would mean about 5 hours of straight writing to get reach your best word count. Wow!
I mean, if I really know what I am writing I can hammer away (my colleagues will complain about it endlessly - I tell them that I have the crappiest keyboard and really need to punch the keys hard), but keeping that up for that period of time seems fairly challenging to me - both physically and mentally.
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223 keys per minute in English, 290 in German. However I was trying to go for normal, not extra-crazy and extra-tiring, type-mode.
My health being what it is, I can’t even keep that up for any length of time…
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Heh, I even got 132 keys per minute in Finnish
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*sheesh* Girl, do I have to ban you from clicking on links next time? Go, write your thesis! Don’t waste your wpm’s on this test.
*Children …. shakes head*
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Yes, mom.
It was fun though *pouts*
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My typing speed’s a bit higher than that, but not a lot. A little test right now puts me ca. 310 keys per minute, which is roughly 63 WPM when using a QWERTY layout, and around 330 keys per minute or roughly 67 WPM when typing in a Dvorak layout (I generally use Dvorak for writing, but QWERTY for most other things, and I can touch type in both).
Even so however my aim during NaNoWriMo is usually 1200 words an hour (6 blocks of 200 words in ten minutes). With some luck I can do 1200 words in 40 to 50 minutes, which than leaves me 10 or 20 to just relax an give my wrists and hands a bit of a break.
Of course when I’m really sprinting that goes up to something like 2000 an hour (2412 during a one hour word war to kick start NaNoWriMo last year) but it’s very rare for me to get to 2500 or over (done that maybe twice now).
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I can’t really touch type, I am always kinda half-looking. Which is why I tend to type faster when going from memory or imagination. If those two can keep up, that is.
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@tschilai: I tend to go faster making up my own stuff than retyping something as well; always provided, as you say, that I can make stuff up fast enough.
As for touch typing, I’ve grown used to just looking at the screen, and I couldn’t do anything else for Dvorak. I just use software to switch between layouts, so when I’m typing in Dvorak only a couple of keys on my keyboard look like the letter they’ll produce when pressed.
I don’t know if this is the same for you, but I’ve found that if I look at my fingers when touch typing, I’ll actually slow down so my eyes can keep up with my fingers on the keyboard.
And speaking of keyboards, there is a way (at least it worked for me) to get faster just by changing keyboards. While I don’t like actually typing on a laptop I do use a regular sized keyboard with laptop keys. So I’m only pressing down 2 or 3 millimeters each time rather than 6 to 8 with a regular keyboard (in between keyboards with a 4 or 5 millimeter are also starting to appear).
It takes a little while to get used to a keyboard with laptop keys, at least it did for me, but once I had gotten used to it I went up something like 5 WPM in both layouts. And as an added benefit it feels easier on the fingers to me, though I have to admit I couldn’t point out exactly what makes it easier (other than the obvious fact that I don’t have to press down as hard).
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Well, someone’s gotta be the loser in this virtual “Schwanzvergleich” (is there even an English word for that?) and that would be me (who would’ve thought women also participate in such contests?) I cannot keep up with Jarsto and you gals and “only” achieve 220 keys/min (English) and 260 keys/min (German), which is approximately 44 words/min (English) and 52 word/min (German).
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Matthias: … “Schwanzvergleich” (is there even an English word for that?)
Unless my knowledge of German is letting me down (which is by the way distinctly possible) the closest translation would be a “Willy waving contest” but that’s only rarely used (though I’ve come across it here and there).
In more commonly used colloquial English idiom I’m pretty sure the closest translation would be a “pissing contest”.
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Well, guys, it’s all about the contest
And your understanding of German is perfect, Jarsto 
@Jarsto and tschilai: Me too, I can type faster if I do it from memory or make it up as I type. Usually my brains too fast for my fingers (sounds better than: my fingers are too slow) and then I get mixed up. I can touch type, I trained myself during the long cold winter months I spent in Munich during my internship because I used to get sick. I was looking at my fingers as I typed, then always glance up at the screen to see if I made any mistakes and the constant up and down made me motion sick. I must be wired funnily.
@Jarsto: Was it difficult for you to lean the Dvorak layout? I’ve never heard of that and looked it up. Though I understand that you have fewer keys and such, what is the actual advantage if you can already touch type on the QWERTY?
@tschilai: *pouts* No tv for you today, you go straight to bed!
@Matthias: Well, since there is emancipation, girls can participate in [will not write phrase because of search engines
] as well. But we still like you, even if you can’t keep up with us. Just kidding!
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@Jarsto: Thanks for your quick reply - it’s more detailed than I could’ve wished for.
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I learned Dvorak before my first NaNoWriMo, so it’s a while back, but no, it wasn’t very difficult. In a way it was easier than learning QWERTY, because without a physical Dvorak keyboard it’s pretty much a matter of look down and you’ll make mistakes.
What I did was to print out the keyboard schematic and hang it right under my monitor (I like to lean back when I sit behind the computer, so my monitor is pretty high up to get the sight lines right). For the first couple of days it was really a matter of struggling through, working out which key was where from the schematic and then finding it without looking and without being able to rely on my QWERTY touch typing sense.
But it was only a matter of days before I started finding the common letters automatically and no more than a week or two before I was pretty much as fluent in Dvorak as I was in QWERTY. And once I was used to it I was almost instantly faster in Dvorak.
The reason Dvorak is faster for most people who type both is that the arrangement, with the most commonly used characters all on the home row, is more ergonomical. This lets you type faster, but having to shift rows less frequently also takes a lot of strain off the wrists, which is a major reason for many people to switch.
I haven’t been writing a lot lately, so my Dvorak is relatively untrained right now, but even so it’s faster than my QWERTY. When I’ve been doing plenty of Dvorak I know from past experience I can get up to something over 350 keys per minute, maybe even up to 400 (today was the first time in quite a while I tested my speed).
In my case I started partly just for fun, and partly as a sort of preventative wrist protection. The biggest day of writing I ever did on QWERTY was roughly 6k, call it 40k key presses, and after than my wrists felt iffy for a while. Using Dvorak it takes days over 10k to make me feel iffy, and not even all of those do.
In that respect it’s similar to the reason I use a trackball rather than a mouse at home. I never really got any major trouble with my arms or wrists while using a mouse. But the number of little annoying twinges I feel has gone down a lot since switching to the trackball.
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Jarsto, thanks for the explanation. Putting less strains on the wrists is actually a pretty good argument to take a closer look at Dvorak, though I will have to first find a way to use that keyboard layout on my Mac. Come to think of it, maybe it’s even pre-installed. I need to check.
Just another quick question about this topic: when you use DVORAK quite a lot, do you get confused when switching to QWERTY? ’cause I wouldn’t want to learn one on the expense of the other.
Regarding the trackball: I have one to a former friend for christmas two years back and it was actually nice to use it, but I’ll stick with my Wacom pen tablet. I switched away from using a mouse about five years ago because I had severe wrist and arm problems; one time I couldn’t use the computer for a week. With the tablet I don’t have any issues at all anymore and in addition it is great for image editing.
What you wrote earlier about keyboards: it’s very interesting that you prefer the flat kind. I never got the feeling for those right. I have a MacBook and while the keyboard looks awesome, I don’t feel comfy writing on it for longer periods. That’s why I haven’t bought the new Apple Keyboard because it’s the same style. Instead, I am using a Logitech S530 for Mac. it has a build in area to rest your palms on and that helps a lot when you have to work for 8 hours straight.
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I don’t get confused between Dvorak and QWERTY much. That’s partly because I use them in different applications. So when I see I’m in OpenOffice I know from the context that I’m working in Dvorak, because that’s what I use for all my writing.
Right now I’m typing this in Dvorak, even though Firefox is normally set to QWERTY, and I’m not having any real trouble. Only the first couple of sentences after a switch tend to go awry in that scenario (the same goes when I switch OpenOffice to QWERTY). After a couple of sentences my mind basically switches and the words sort of get onto the screen without my really realising where the keys for the individual letters are.
The one area where it does get confusing is keyboard commands. If I want to open up a new tab in Firefox right now I’ll likely end up opening my downloads windown instead (the T in QWERTY is the Y in Dvorak, so Ctrl + T becomes Ctrl + Y). That again is a matter of context, but because I don’t do as much of it it doesn’t get switched as easily as the pure typing.
But that too works the other way. When I have OpenOffice set to QWERTY I may well find myself trying to paste text by using Ctrl + . (. in QWERTY = V in Dvorak).
Some people do switch fully to Dvorak, but I keep most of my applications (though not the ones I type most in) in QWERTY so I don’t have any trouble using computers that don’t have Dvorak enabled.
Finally, as another illustration of the importance of context, it’s slightly trickier for me to type Dutch in Dvorak than it is to type English. As with other things it seldom takes more than a few sentences to settle down, but because most of my writing is in English that gets taken into account as part of the context switching.
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Jarsto, thanks again for the explanation. I will give it a try, as it is already pre-installed on my Mac. Now I just have to find the right keyboard layout to print out so I can hold on to that for the first couple of days. Now I just have to figure out how to define a keyboard shortcut to switch between layouts.
Thanks again. I had no idea such a thing as DVORAK existed and I hope I can make good use of it.
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Starstuff: You’re welcome.
I did a google image search for Dvorak and turned up tonnes of layouts including the one I used when I switched. This one has the added benefit of showing you which finger does what.
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Thanks! (again)
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@Jarsto:
I am currently an all-time laptop user and have become a big fan of laptop keyboards. When I get myself a “big one” again, I will probably get one of these for it, too.
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