A Cabinet of Anomalies - NaNoWriMo 2020
Nov. 1st, 2020 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aprilmarchOK, so I hate NaNoWriMo.
I think it's terrible to reduce the act of writing to wordcount. Wordcount is important for readers and publishers, but not for writers, in my opinion. Linking a competition to wordcount seems madness to me; sometimes, removing ten words might a better day's work than adding a thousand.
That said, I like the idea of taking a month to focus on writing - and Lord knows I could use something, anything, pushing me to work on it. Fortunately, there are "nano rebels", defined just as loosely as NaNoWriMo itself: people who are participating on NaNoWriMo, but are not writing a novel. Last year, I decided to write a text a day, using prompts made for inktober - specifically, I used AI generated prompts created by AI researcher Janelle Shane. (They are in Portuguese.) I found that to be an incredibly rewarding experience. It showed me that I can, in fact, work on writing every day; it stopped me from hewing and hawing over editing, since I had to publish SOMETHING every day; and it stopped me from feeling blocked, because if you write a text every day, of course some of them are gonna be stinkers.
I loved it, but I wasn't going to do it this year. I considered doing it on October, but that was the first time I was able to spend some time with my girlfriend since March, so I decided not to take time off smooching. And I knew that on November I'd be busy with Eita! Magazine, a project to publish texts by Brazilians to English-speaking audiences.
But then, Janelle Shane made another series of AI-generated prompts for this October.
And this one - well, it was love at first sight.
So I'll be a NaNo Rebel again this year. It won't be short stories, though. It'll be something different. I'll start with an 'in-universe' explanation of what I'm doing.
I think it's terrible to reduce the act of writing to wordcount. Wordcount is important for readers and publishers, but not for writers, in my opinion. Linking a competition to wordcount seems madness to me; sometimes, removing ten words might a better day's work than adding a thousand.
That said, I like the idea of taking a month to focus on writing - and Lord knows I could use something, anything, pushing me to work on it. Fortunately, there are "nano rebels", defined just as loosely as NaNoWriMo itself: people who are participating on NaNoWriMo, but are not writing a novel. Last year, I decided to write a text a day, using prompts made for inktober - specifically, I used AI generated prompts created by AI researcher Janelle Shane. (They are in Portuguese.) I found that to be an incredibly rewarding experience. It showed me that I can, in fact, work on writing every day; it stopped me from hewing and hawing over editing, since I had to publish SOMETHING every day; and it stopped me from feeling blocked, because if you write a text every day, of course some of them are gonna be stinkers.
I loved it, but I wasn't going to do it this year. I considered doing it on October, but that was the first time I was able to spend some time with my girlfriend since March, so I decided not to take time off smooching. And I knew that on November I'd be busy with Eita! Magazine, a project to publish texts by Brazilians to English-speaking audiences.
But then, Janelle Shane made another series of AI-generated prompts for this October.
And this one - well, it was love at first sight.
So I'll be a NaNo Rebel again this year. It won't be short stories, though. It'll be something different. I'll start with an 'in-universe' explanation of what I'm doing.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-02 01:57 pm (UTC)eu tinha começado o nanowrimo, mas desisti hoje por questões de saúde mental hahaha seria minha segunda tentativa, a primeira tendo sido em 2012, quando eu também desisti lá pro dia 10 depois de 20k de palavras. 2020 tem sido complicado por algumas razões, então eu prefiro me preservar e não ter ataques de ansiedade por causa de número de palavras.
esses prompts são interessantes. eu sou sem graça e escrevo slice of life (embora tenha dois projetos cyberpunk, mas eles também são centrados em slice of life, mais ou menos), mas tenho tentado sair da minha zona de conforto, então quem sabe eu escreva alguns deles.
a proposta do eita! é bem legal, eu até passei o link para uma amiga que escreve realismo fantástico.
eu vou ler sua resposta ao primeiro prompt quando estiver menos morrida da cabeça.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-04 01:15 am (UTC)