NaNoWriMo and honesty
Over at the NaNoWriMo site, each participant can upload their word count on a regular basis during the month and this is shown beneath their names when they post on the forums.
At the end of the first day, out of curiosity, I checked the word count for Malaysian participants and was surprised to find someone with a word count of more than 60,000 words. And when I did a general search, I found that there were other participants around the world who have “completed” their 2006 NaNovels. In fact, the highest word count submitted so far is 200,000 words.
8O 8O
Maybe these participants think the word count feature is for putting the number of words they plan to write towards?
Or maybe they’re not taking it seriously and just think it’s all for a laugh?
Well, I actually had a friend tell me I can just write the word “ho” and repeat it 50,000 times and I would have met the word count requirement for NaNoWriMo.
No. That’s not how NaNoWriMo works.
I don’t know about other participants, but I take NaNoWriMo seriously. It’s a contract with myself that I plan to honour and fulfill with plain simple hard work and honesty. Well, and a bit of word padding occasionally, but it definitely won’t be merely repeating a word or a phrase until I hit the 50,000-word mark.
I don’t have the discipline the rest of the year to sit down and write (fiction, altho I write for a living), but come November, I do it without fail every day. It’s my one big writing project each year, and a habit successfully cultivated over the past three years. I think about it the rest of the year, even make notes – story possibilities, characters, etc. – and by November, I’m ready to sit down and write everyday to get it written.
Let’s see, I’ve successfully completed NaNoWriMo for the past three years (2003, 2004 and 2005). Which means I have three very rough manuscripts that I can work on and improve.
For the past two years, I’ve been telling myself to look at NaNoEdMo and get some editing done on one of my three completed NaNovels. But in true Chet behaviour, I haven’t got round to it yet. Maybe I wasn’t ready the last two years. But I feel ready now.
Come March 2007, I will be participating in NaNoEdMo.
