Airborneguy

I had my entire story, in my head, in about ten minutes while driving home one day. If I could have spoken directly into a computer and had it appear on screen, I would have written the whole book in one day. I refuse to even write something unless I already knwo the ending that I want, because to me, that is the hardest part. Once I have the ending, I'm done. Why waste time taking 6 months to write a book? That's reaching as far as I am concerned. You are not writing what you know.

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tcaptain

A few years back I had heard about a contest for around July 1st (in Canada) for novelists to write an entire novel in a 3 day weekend. I *think* it was based in Vancouver or something but writers across Canada had been invited with the prize offered being a publishing contract. I don't know if this is a recurring yearly contest or it was a one time event.

As I recall, you were allowed to start with an outline on friday evening and you had until Monday 6pm to finish writing. At the time it sounded like a lot of fun to try but personal obligations intruded...ah well.

I might still try it on my next vacation or something...just to see. I love when I start writing something which takes me over to the point of losing track of time, need for eating and sleeping...you just get lost in the writing. Unfortunately its been a long while since I've felt that "zone".

Airborneguy

By the way... wasn't On the Road written by Jack Kerouac in like 11 days or something, on one long piece of paper that his wife rolled up every time it got too long?

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moonandsun

Really? I'm the middle of reading On The Road and it's quite good.

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sully474

I figure that it is quite possible to write a novel in whatever amount of time that you have, but odds are it is going to really suck. It takes skill to write well in a short amount of time, and pretty much everybody can't do it. The guy who started up NaNoWriMo didn't expect good novels either. He only did it to make fun of authours who takes months, and often times years to complete their books. It even says so on the homepage if you don't believe me.

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Eiji Tunsinagi

You can write a novel in a month. Anybody can. Will it be good? Probably not. Thats not the point though. Just getting it done is the first step, an most of us havent even done that! You can do rewrites later, so why rewrite when your still writing? (I hope that last line made sense.)

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Matilda

I can't imagine writing a whole novel that quickly. So much bubbles away in my head while I'm writing, and although I always have an idea of where things are going, they quite often take a different rout from the one I was expecting.

Bad Craziness

That was the spin that they put on "On the Road". Apparently he'd filled notebooks full of notes over the earlier years and physically typed it out over an 11 day period. Although with "On the Road" Kerouac never went through the whole draft/ re-draft process because his work was intended to be expressionistic (one of the key aspects of "beat" literature)

I also think he was on an opium binge at the time but I could be wrong...

DawnMorningStar

I've considered trying NaNoWriMo. It does sound like fun. But I do agree that a novel written that quickly will probably not be publishable material. I would think that after the novel is written, one would have to go back and make edits and things.

I'm the kind of writer who is constantly reading back over my work and editing as I write. So I don't know if I could stand to just sit down and keep typing until the story's done without even once going back to rework it.

Eiji Tunsinagi

I'd like to edit something....as soon as I have something written thats important enough to edit. I plan on writing my novel November and it being sort-of *good* and then editing the hell out of it.

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Emma LB

National Novel Writing Month sounds like fun, maybe it's just what I need. I'm so fussy that I spend months grumbling over a few pages I've written, lol.

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Eiji Tunsinagi

I'm wondering if I should go past 50,000 words b/c the idea I have right now is going to be way longer. I think I'm going to split it into two books----but some people dont like that.

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Emma LB

How much have you written so far Eiji? I think if you feel you can't finish it in a few chapters but need longer to finish the novel then just write more, nothing is worse than a rushed ending that's unsatisfactory.

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Eiji Tunsinagi

I havent started writing it. I'm just doing the outline, and it already feeling too long to be one novel. Well, it might not be too LONG, its just that in the middle of my outline of the whole idea, the scene and situation changes extremely. I think I should split the whole thing into a before and after kind of thing. I could do it as one book, but the sudden transiton to a whole entire new country could be too drastic to have in just one sitting. And when I say drastic, its going to be pretty extreme.

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"nothing is perfect, nothing lasts, and nothing is finished."

"how will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?"

Emma LB

well if the characters are the same it might not be too extreme, every book needs a bit of turn in it, if everything stays the same it would be boring.

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