P-C, anything resembling "previously published" work is still a very grey area; if, for instance, you friendslock a blog, I believe it doesn't contravene most publishers' take on it, since you haven't made it available for public access. But putting it out for public view on the web does count, for a lot of publishers.
Anne, I need to send you the piece tomorrow; it's on my hard drive at home, and I'm on this tiny little horrible keyboard device thingie (aka Nic's laptop) in Seattle. I wanted to fix a couplew of typos before I sent it but the time got away from me.
I'm not planning on doing jack squat with it, so I can post with aplomb. But last year's just sucked, so I didn't. We'll see how it goes this time.
Challenge #29 (music) is now closed. Elvis has left the building.
Challenge #30 is this: one person on a ladder, one person on the ground. Drabble it.
Drabble early, drabble often....
I'm going to give NaNoWriMo a shot, I think.
Anne, there's a group of us doing it here and we were talking about getting together for support sessions and such. I'll let you know what is planned if you like. Or you can check the Atomic Books blog for updates.
I have a terrible time with the self-editor. That's why I'm (attempting to) do it. I'm not planning on showing any of it to anyone ever. Unless I actually think it (or parts of it) are good when I'm finished.
I love these mini-scenes.
Challenge #30: One person on a ladder, one on the ground
“Hand me the newspaper.”
He held it up to her, admiring the view. Her long legs were slender in her cotton shorts. She liked the illusion of delicacy—they were warrior’s legs.
“Okay, watch out.”
The Inquirer smacked the ceiling with a thud. He blinked as the spider splattered, a smear of bug goo and one brittle leg all that was left.
She bowed to him, victorious, undefeated, and he clapped solemnly.
He always would. If she wouldn’t let him slay the dragon, he would forge her sword. And later, he would give her the only spoils she would allow.
For the ladder challenge.
Machado Joseph Disorder, Type 3.
You’ve read all the articles they’d sent, and you’ve surfed the web. You've learned what the symptoms are, and you've even managed to make some sense of the science. You feel prepared for your first visit home since the diagnosis, because you understand what he, and the rest of the family, is up against. You get it.
The slight trembling in your father’s hand as he hands you the new light bulb and the sheer frustration in his eyes as you reach down to pass him the dusty one shatters that reality.
You know before you get to the last rung that you liked the old reality better.
(Just as background, Machado Joseph Disorder (type 3) .)
Grr. This NaNoWriMo thing is going to be really hard. I write too slow - a thousand words, even of almost exclusively dialogue, which is my best thing, takes me nearly two hours to write. So I have to write an average of nearly four hours a day to get 50k in one month, at my best pace. That's ridiculous. I'm a student, I have homework and drinking to do!
Then there's the fact that, once it's done, I have to decide whether I can, in good faith, submit and claim my winning status, as the final novel will include some prose I wrote before November. I need Buffistas to help me with this moral quandary, so here's the details:
The rule says "No prose written before the month."
However, one way of interpreting that, in my opinion, is "No prose that you use to count towards your final word count written before the month."
I had 3000 words of a story that I was really really liking written, but had stalled in writing it because I realized that it was growing in my head to a ridiculous size. Then November suddenly came around and I was like, "Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to write a novel. What should I write?" and then i remembered that I had a story that was turning into a novel all ready to go!
So my plan is to add 50,000 words (at least) to the end of the 3000 words I had written already, always submitting my word count to nanowrimo as 3000 words less than are actually in my novel. That way, when I'm done, I have a 53,000 word novel, 50,000 of which were written in the month of November. I'd even submit only the non-pre-written bits for verification.
But now I'm wondering if that's kosher. The problem is that, since I have this story, there's nothing else I want to spend an entire month of my life writing. So whether or not i decide to submit for "winning" NaNoWriMo, I'm gonna finish this story this month if at all possible.
What are your opinions? Is this plan okay? Or would too many other NaNoWriMo participants feel that this method cheapens their work somehow?
Nova, I don't think that's contrary to the spirit of the exercise. You're supposed to produce 50k words in a month, so you learn you can do it; so you actually complete a project to deadline, so you can encourage and be encouraged. Having 3k of a story already completed doesn't negate any of that, as long as you do the additional 50k on top. At least, that's my opinion.
