SoCNoC 2011 - a different route

This June started out busy. Over the first few days, I wasn't sure if I should even attempt SoCNoC (The Southern Cross Novel Challenge - write a 50,000 word novel in the month of June).

By the time the 23rd rolled around and the month was mostly gone, I decided that I couldn't possibly write a novel. I was writing lots of other things though, and just for fun, I went onto the CARM forums, where I've been spending a lot of time lately debating God, Religion, evolution, creationism and various minutia in and around the absurdity that is modern religion and went through all of my posts (they provide a link for this, which made it very easy) and cut and pasted everything I wrote (didn't count quoting other people) into a document and tallied up my word count. The number was big...really big, something like 35,000 words. When I took my Theist versus Atheist posts and Casual Atheism posts from facebook, my count was over 40,000 words of discussion, argument, logic and mis-speak.

Just to be sure, I checked on the Kiwiwriters forums, to make sure that making SoCNoC non-fiction and mostly random wasn't "against the rules", and sure enough, the other executive were ok with me doing what I was doing.

Over lunch today at work, I collected from June 23rd to today and re-tallied the total. I hit 52,466 words in June. That's well past the required 50k words.

It is the most incoherent "novel" I've ever written, but if I wanted to, it could turn into a book about atheism and religion.

Two things occur to me:
1. I'm writing a novel's worth of posts every month (most likely), since I didn't, in any way, plan to hit 50,000 words and
2. I really need a life!

It always starts with Nano

Chris Baty's National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) , founded in 1999, now has about 200,000 participants in 2010.

That's a lot of words being pumped out each year. While there are naysayers, there is little bad to say about an activity that gets people out of their mundane lives, off their asses and writing something. I don't believe that a finished first draft HAS to be a masterpiece for Nano to be worthwhile.

I learn a lot each time I sit down to do Nano or SoCNoC. The biggest point is that writing requires one to sit down and write. You have to put in the hours or nothing will get done. It is that simple, yet many, many young writers believe it is otherwise. A round of Nanowrimo will get you over that mindset and get you putting in the hours writing.

I know it's been said before. I know it will be said again, but that is the only bit of noveling that absolutely must be said. Everything else happens after that step, so it is absolutely required first and foremost for anything else (like finishing a publishable first draft, to getting it published and getting it read and critiqued and on the New York Times bestseller list etc...).