The Book Pirate » NaNoWriMo

Why I don’t NaNoWriMo…

The Book Pirate Colin Matthew — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:38:46 +0000

The blogs and Twitter are a buzz with people announcing their NaNoWriMo status. It’s nice to see some many writers jump on board. Me, however, will be keeping my distance. You see, I tried NaNoWriMo-ing a few years ago and failed completely. I’m sure if you were to do a quick search you would come across my NaNoWriMo posts. By the time the month was over, I was left with only two thoughts:

Wow, that was hard.
Wow, what I wrote sucks.

Writing however many words you need to a day is no easy tasks. If you miss a day or two you will quickly fall behind and will find it impossible to catch back up. But what really did it for me was the quality of the work I produced. It sucks. Hard. I was going to use NaNoWriMo to write a rough draft of my novel, but none of it was usable. There isn’t a single thing in that NaNoWriMo mess that made it in to my real first draft. If anything, NaNoWriMo taught me what NOT to write.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, fantastic. But to me, writing is a marathon not a sprint.

YouTubesday… Where is that darn Waldo?

The Book Pirate Colin Matthew — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:12:20 +0000

Turns out he is here. 1,052 people dressed up as Waldo to break the world record while at the same time donating over 3,000 childrens book to the New Brunswick school system.

NaNoWriMo ’08 Results

The Book Pirate Colin Matthew — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:01:37 +0000

NaNoWriMo has ended. Where did I end up? Well, a meager 19,617 words. I dropped the ball the second week in and couldn’t muster up the motivation to continue. Still, for my first attempt I am proud of myself. I will continue to work on the story and then revise it in hopes of making it readable. I left off with my main characters on the verge of an epic sword fight between a businessman and a pirate while another was experimenting with writing pirate themed erotica. Good times to be had.

Next year I vow to do better.

NaNoWriMo Day ’08 12

The Book Pirate Colin Matthew — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:40:40 +0000

Day 12
Word Count: 11,626

Holy crap am I behind on my word count! I should be hitting the 20,000 word mark today but as you can see I am nowhere near that. I’m not going to give up though. I can still make it, right?

Other than that, the writing is really bad and I have a habit of running my main character’s head in to hard objects. He may have a concussion, and I am worried about his health.

NaNoWriMo ’08 Day 4

The Book Pirate Colin Matthew — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 03:09:23 +0000

Day 4
Word Count: 6,712

Today’s election day in case you were too wrapped up in reading to notice that. Today was a little harder to finish because I kept getting distracted by hitting the refresh button on CNNs homepage. While writing these past four days politics have slowly slid in to my novel. I’ve made two jokes about how nothing good has come out of Alaska recently as well as based one of the characters off of Ann Coulter.

Tina Fey, fellow book pirate

The Book Pirate Colin Matthew — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:15:51 +0000

Avast! Tina Fey, who you may more commonly know as Sarah Palin, is also a fellow book pirate!

Thank to The Hidden Side of a Leaf for bringing this important bit of information to my attention.

NaNoWriMo ’08 Day 2

The Book Pirate Colin Matthew — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:40:59 +0000

DAY 2
Word Count: 3,036

Yesterday was the start of NaNoWriMo. Getting started was tough because I had an English paper I had to write first. I finished that (barely) and was set to start writing my novel. But when one of my co-workers called out sick, I was called in to work which cut in to my NaNo time. My time yesterday was cut short.

Today I haev exiled myself to my favorite coffee shop. Where I have been pounding the keyboard for the last hour and a half. So far this has resulted in 3,036 words put forth from my novel. Originally I thought I was going to have a hard time filling 50,000 words based off of my novel idea. However, I am now worried that 50,000 words wont be enough.

No real problems so far aside from being a little behind. But I still have the rest of the day to work on it, so I should be able to catch up no problem.

No books for a month :-(

The Book Pirate Colin Matthew — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:09:39 +0000

I’m taking a month off from reading any new books. Somehow I found myself in a spot where I was not in the middle of reading any books. Normally I am in the middle of reading one or two books at a time. For November, however, i’m going to be participating in NaNoWriMo (Nation Noval Writing Month). The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days which works out to 1,667 words a day. How hard could that be right?

Anyway, I don’t plan on having much time for leisure reading. But I do plan on updating TBP with my various musings on the NaNoWriMo process and the progress of my novel. I also might bug random strangers about the progress of their novel just to keep things interesting. If anybody reading this is participating in NaNoWriMo, I sure would like to hear from you.