#1

Any dissers doing it this year?

I’m gonna try giving this a shot for the first time, even though I hate showing people what I write and never get past even 1000 words on short stuff anyway, just in the hope that the regularity will give me motivation.

Anyone done it before and have some advice?

#2

Think about it every year. Never do it.

Maybe this will be the year.

(It won’t be).

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#3

I could get cracking on this though:

#4

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#5

Probably not. Not the number of words, as I’m total hack who can knock out 4,000 words in an afternoon (I’m not claiming they’re good words), more knowing what to write about/not writing something embarrassing.

This year, there’s also doing Zinewrimo, to encourage people to make a zine in November, especially if they never have before, which is way more achievable than a 50,000 word novel.

https://seagreenzines.com/tag/zinewrimo/

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#6

Scrivener is doing a free trial special edition that lasts until december so people can complete it. MIght use this as I’m always find novelty an easy motivator.

#7

Did this in 2009 successfully albeit a cheap victory given that I was literally just describing album covers in the protagonist’s bedroom by the end to fill up the number of words. Worst thing I’ve ever written; password protected it so no-one (including me) can read it. I would say it’s better to ignore the specified total number of words and just ensure you write a little bit every day - write something you’re proud of rather than dreadful filler to tick a box.

Can never do it again due to the ol RSI :+1:

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#8

That zine one looks really interesting. I have an idea for one that I’ve wanted to make for ages so this might be the kick up the arse I need.

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#9

Do it.

#11

Not doing the event, but have used it as a reminder that I must keep at my children’s novel. Wrote 450 words yesterday which is way below “par” but is good as I’m now thinking about it again.

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#12

Been working on two zines this morning- one about Paris for €60 per day which I mostly wrote a while back, but went well over the word limit for my standard 24 A5 pages, and another about how much I loathe Oxford University which I had planned out in bullet points but hadn’t written up yet. (Oxford one might be of interest to @anon82218317 when it’s done).

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#14

square motion with hands

#15

I did once in 2004 I think.

It wasn’t a great story. On the other hand it wasn’t simply ‘filling up with words’. If anything I gave myself too much story and had to just sort of cram it into the limit.

When I read it back 6 months later some bits I’d written quite well and I gave a go at editing it to make it better. Probably lost about 10K words and added 30K in that process? The result was still too bad to share with anyone. It was hacky as hell but the final 70K version was at least a story. TBH having read some of the crap people self-publish via Amazon now maybe I should have kept it? :smiley:

So yeah, if you fancy being a writer I think you can learn something about how hard it might be and also how useful just writing something, anything, can be in giving you stuff you can then edit.