NaNoWriMo

What in the World Are You Talking About?

What is NaNoWriMo?

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a fun way to get yourself writing, and get yourself writing fast! The idea is to produce a novel of 50,000 words or more within a month. No starting before the 1st of November – and pens down on the 30th. No stopping, no editing, and no looking back.

So, with all you can’t do, what can you do? Well, you can write like crazy! And while your family and friends may think you have literally gone insane, there’s a whole host of things that make NaNoWriMo not only a fantiastically fun experience, but a worthwhile and productive one, too.

Why NaNo?

For a lot of people, writing a full-length novel is something they plan to do some day. Many people in the fandom have started – but less have finished. For some it’s because they’re stuck going over and over first few chapters, making them perfect. For others it’s because their novel just seems to keep going – or they’ve forgotten about it.

Nanovelists skip all these problems. The time to write is not some day, it’s right now. Those first chapters? Go back and revise them when you know how the story ends! The stories that just keep getting longer – just can’t, because they’ve got to finish at the end of November. And as for forgetting about it? Unless you’ve got some major short-term memory difficulties, I don’t think so!

Dim Aldebaran said she was participating because “everyone else is doing it, so why not me?” That’s right, many of the NaNovelists are writing because of their friends! No, you can’t collaborate on one book with a group, but wouldn’t it be fun to check out each other’s stories when they’re all finished? Don’t underestimate the difference it makes to have someone to whinge and complain to, who knows exactly what you’re going through, either! The White Lily and The Humble Mosquito have also been engaging in “write-offs”, where they engage each other in a duel of word counts over a set time limit – the winner taking away full gloating rights and a whole lot more verbage on their story.

“The general coolness of actually having a novel in just over a month’s time?” replied The Humble Mosquito. “And, I don’t know, the insanity of it kind of suits me.” Besides the fact that it really is an insane notion, most of us are not exactly normal anyway. He makes a very good point though; “the general coolness” would definately be great when this is finally finished. How many people can say that they wrote a 175-page novel in one month?

Linwen answered this question stating, “Because I believe in The Power Of Deadlines.” Eterah agrees: “Deadlines are the reason we must know what day it is. Otherwise, no one would care. So why not use them to the fullest?” Are you not motivated to get working on your 3 – 5 page English paper when it’s due the next day? For those who work better with having a “due date” NaNoWriMo provides it, with no editing attached.

NaNoWriMo isn’t about the quality of the story. More or less, it’s concerned with the word count. This benefits you how? By also helping you focus on word count and not your imperfections. Like in a peice of artwork, many times those little imperfections become large assets to masterpeices.

Chris Baty, who founded NaNoWriMo back in 1999, calls it “Exuberant Imperfection” – forcing yourself to write at a speed where it’s impossible to self-edit, to second-guess yourself before your words even get onto the page. NaNo makes you to dredge the words and ideas from the depths of your mind and soul and push them straight out onto the page. You may just find you’re capable of more than you’d ever realised.

Who is NaNoing?

The Artemis Fowl fandom is lucky to have a number of participants in this year’s NaNoWriMo. Some a writing fanfiction, some are branching into original fiction. All are planning to have a wonderful time!

The White Lily: My working title is “Return to Sender”, which is a line from the pop song “Am I here yet?”, which kind of summarises my themes and setting. I’m hoping something less blatantly stolen will occur to me while I’m writing. In any case, it’s a Sci-Fi original story, set on a relatively near future earth, where the technology used to pass messages from the future is as common and taken for granted as the television or phones of today.

Dim Aldebaran: [She plans on winging it!] I know that the first and final scenes have to do with a guy playing Fur Elise, and I think Yeti’s going to be inserted into it somewhere, just for kicks. Whether it’s fanfiction or not, it’s going to have some sort of pianist in it (I think) which may or may not be Artemis, but that hardly matters, really.

The Humble Mosquito: It’s orginal. It’s fantasy, kid-lit, but that doesn’t really sum it up. At the moment, it’s called The City of Heavenly Peace, but I’m not overly keen of that, so it’ll probably change. The story examines the absurdity that is religous conflict, and the way it’s passed through generations. It does this through the eyes of children in a condensed setting. I’m really quite fond of the idea… May it rest in peace.

Linwen: I don’t have a title just yet. The genre is fantasy and adventure, and it’s fanfiction in the Card Captor Sakura fandom. My story pretty much takes it from the point where the manga left, and develops the individual conflicts of growing up from childhood into adolescene in the middle of one single magical adventure á la original plotline. It’s a bit darker than the manga, though, but not that much.

Eterah: Um, it doesn’t have a title yet but I’m thinking of one at the moment. The genre is action/adventure/romance, it’s an AF fanfic. I had planned on writing it anyway, but I had started doing one-shots for practice instead and so it got pushed off. Tell you about it? Only that I’m having trouble with a good resolution.

xTreme Spirit: Well the title is, Miss Jovi Rush, its an original idea, the genre is fantasy, I’m really bad at summaries so I won’t embarass myself with giving you guys one.

fuzzy_grapes: Well, it’s original fiction and I don’t quite have a title yet … It’s very inspired by the Green Day album, American Idiot to the point where it is possibly telepathically plagurizing someones interpretation of it … Trust me, I hope it’s better than it sounds!

But I couldn’t NaNo!

Think you can’t cut it? “But you’re experienced! I could never write that much!” Perhaps your main problem with 50,000 words is that it’s a heck of a lot of words? Alright then, that means there are several things you’re going to have to do in order make your fic longer.

First of all, write out a plot. Make a small list of the characters you will need and try to find a way to put them together. Writing a Artemis Fowl fanfiction with an original character? Run over to Criminality and run him/her through the litmus test. Like Dim Aldebaran, pick an opening scene and a closing scene. Do you need to set things out more than she does? Then after your beginning and ending, pick a climax and a couple of subplots. Are you planning on writing a AF fanfiction without knowing exactly what to do? Take a day or two to look over the books and play with plot-bunnies.

Yes, plotting ahead of time is okay with the rules. You are allowed to plot as much as your heart desires, but you don’t write a word of the actual story until November 1st.

What Eterah found useful was to look up tips on writing mysteries. You might not be writing a mystery, but the narrative pace a mystery uses to incorporate suspense and keeping the reader interested are good tatics to utilize in any type of story. Some of the articles of The Observatory are good to look over before starting your story, like this issue’s Orion’s Toolbelt and Marketing of Fanfiction.

Our various NaNovelists have also told us what they are doing to prepare.

The White Lily: Getting my real life in line, so that I’ll have less necessary stuff cutting into my writing time, and less stuff that I can take advantage of for procrastinative purposes. And I’ve done a trade with my husband for the chores – I’m doing extra for the rest of this month, and he’s taking them totally off my hands next month. I’m also telling everyone I know so that the thought of being mocked will help shame me into finishing.

Eterah: Um, well, the whole thing is just about planned. I did A LOT of reserach on the subjects at hand, and then I’ve plotted it into plots, subplots, more subplots, events that tie together subplots, into a main plot that encorperates each subplot. I’ve also downloaded a mini dictionary that runs at all times on my desktop. That way… I’ll be able to look up a word without being on the internet.

Linwen: OK, leadup time for me started around January… Cheesy yes. I’ve been collecting information ever since, drawing parallells in my head, making calculations of people’s ages and stuff, breaking my brains with the amount of cultural info I’m getting from Wiki to have a realistic setting for the story, researching the main aspects of shintoist myth and working them out into the story, etc. I haven’t really devoted myself to put this all down (just yet, I’m onto it, though), but I’ve done A LOT of mulling over the general idea and the main and secondary plotlines. And, as the starting date approaches, I’m putting all the info together in a nice Excel spreadsheet, in order to have an outline of what I have to write and when and how much. Yeah, I hope it works.

So there you have it! Joining up at NaNoWriMo is productive, challenging, and a great deal of fun. So why don’t you sign up, and give it a try? But even if NaNo’s not for you – give our brave and heroic Artemis Fowl NaNovelists a hand, and the encouragement and support they’re sure to need – and look forward to seeing a whole lot more fanfiction from them in the near future!