Current writing challenges/exchanges stuff!

[auroracloud]

Good luck to anyone starting NaNoWriMo today! I'm not doing it, but I signed up for mini_wrimo to write at least 100 words each day during November. (You can set the word count you want to sign up for; 100 words is the minimum. The sign-ups are on until November 10 if you're interested.) I've lately been able to break through my post-CampNaNo slump with my novel by writing at least 100 words of it every day, no matter what else I write. I decided to use the community to help me stick to this practice for all of November. 100 words is such a low word count that it's not much pressure to at least do that, and that seems to be the key for me - and most of the time it turns into more, anyway.

I'm working on my Yuletide sign-up. The sign-ups still go on for a few more days, check yuletide_admin for the schedule and other info. I'm contemplating whether I'm going to do all my requests in 2010s awesome diverse scifi books fandoms, or if I'll include a historical/old book fandom or two. But this is the first year I could do all of the sign-up in 2010s awesome diverse scifi books, because I've actually read and finished enough series I super much want to read fic for. The ones I'm thinking of requesting are The Imperial Radch series, This Is How You Lose the Time War, the Machineries of Empire series and my old staple, the Wayfarers series (where I have so much trouble narrowing down which characters!). There's also other great stuff in the tag set, like A Memory Called Empire, the Murderbot novellas, and my currently-reading book Empress of Forever. And that's just the 2010s awesome diverse scifi I know! Let's not even get into the other books, the podcasts, the historical RPF (I could request Mary Anning!! I kind of want to, but I have to think about how many requests I want to have).

Also, Write Every Day is hosted by silveradept in November!

Okay, I'm too tired to continue, so that's all for tonight!

Comments

[ysilme]

I can only recommend trying it out! Some years back this or a similar non-NaNo-challenge encouraged me to try this as well. I hadn't written regularly before at all, and also never a single story longer than 4k. The challenge worked so well for me I dared myself to try something like NaNo but on my own, and started in January with the goal of 50k in three months. I ended up with 100k, dared to sign up for NaNo that year, and have every year since (and won, too). I'd say it's amazing what you can do when you find the right tools for you personally. For me, it's been forcing myself to write first regularly (not necessarily fic or content I keep, just write something remotely creative), and, later, daily.
I'm not saying this would work for everyone or even should, we're all different, of course! But it's definitely worth a try in my opinion.

[auroracloud]

I'm glad that such a challenge has worked so well for you, too! My regular writing started with Julia Cameron's creativity books and morning pages, then I did some fiction writing, then I did and won NaNoWriMo and discovered I could write lots of words in a short time. But after that first NaNoWriMo, doing the full NaNo hasn't been that useful for me - it was good to learn that I could do it, and learn the habit of daily writing, but after that, it's better for me to write at a slightly lower rate. (Especially because of the word count issue which means that 50K is a lot more writing for me than it is for folks using Indo-European languages.) I know I can write at that speed, but I also know that I like my writing more when the word count target is lower. But a mini-challenge like this is good for me. :-)

But many professional authors use NaNo, and there have been many novels written/started during it, even award-winning ones, so obviously it works for many people.