#nanowrimo

[albatris]

today's natnowrimo word count is 31,828!

a slow day today, but doing some sprints in my region discord helped a bit :3

tomorrow will be a long day so I'm not sure I'll get much work done if any

today's mood is okay FINE I'll take the stupid POTS meds consistently and today's jam is "the knack" by mother mother

today's excerpt is UNABASHEDLY cheesy

He found a chair to perch on and he slid the shoes onto his feet. He took his time with the laces, pondering how stupid this suit looked with his purple striped socks. Then he stretched out his legs, watching the way the gold flashed in the store’s gnashing fluorescence.

“I like them,” he said.

“Can you walk in them?” Quinn asked.

Nat hopped up and tried. The thick base of the heels probably helped, as did some miraculous vampiric sense of balance.

Quinn took him by the hand and twirled him around. “You look amazing!”

“Thanks!” Nat said. “I feel weird!”

“No one can tell,” Quinn said. “They’ll be too distracted by how attracted to you they are. You’ll be stealing every heart at the party, I promise you.”

Nat blushed, and this time didn’t bother to turn his face away and hide it. An unfamiliar bubble of laughter rose in his chest.

“I have one last thing to add, but it’s at home,” Quinn said, slinging their arm around him. “You’ll just have to trust me on it. It’ll be perfect.”

“Sure,” Nat said.

“Now you go get changed while I pay for all this,” Quinn said. “Quick, before I fall in love with you.”

Nat went, but not without a little hesitation.

LIKE. QUINN. C'MON

AND NAT YOU'RE NO BETTER. CUT THAT OUT

[imwritingbooks]

some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.

[erithel]

Two of the characters from the novel I'm writing, Marek and Jules.

[penny-anna]

“Oh, like your thing wasn’t just flashy nonsense,” said Sara. She opened the vial. “Blood fountain,” she said emphatically. “Please no,” Myra whimpered. “Blood fountain!” Sara said again. “Goooo!” The thing was – Sara was good. Samuel hadn’t realised till that moment just how good. This couldn’t be an existing spell, because there was no way any spellbook in the Temple had something called ‘blood fountain, go’. It had to be something of her own creation, the absolutely maniac. She spoke in English; that was both irregular and a little tricky. The blood spurted, in an absolutely fabulous scarlet plume, all the way up to the ceiling. Droplets spattered down onto Sara’s grinning face. Some of them made their way all the way to the audience. “You are,” said Nil. “Such a freak.” The blood fountain was still going. “C’mon,” said Sara. “You’re impressed.”

blood fountain go

[meluiloth]

Since the whole thing with NaNoWriMo has gone down, I've noticed that one of their former sponsors, Ellipsus, has cut contact with NaNoWriMo because they do not support their stance on AI; I didn't know what Ellipsus was, but upon further research I've found that they are a writing platform that works a lot like Google Docs and Microsoft Word, only with a heavier leaning on the story-writing aspect and connecting with other writers - and they also completely denounce any use of AI, both in the writing process itself and in the use of their platform. I really appreciate that.

Since this is the case (and since I've noticed Google has begun implementing more AI into their software), I've decided to give Ellipsus a try to see if it's a good alternative to Google Docs (my main writing platform). It's completely free and so far, I've found it simple to use (although it is pretty minimal in its features), and I really like the look of it.

I figured I'd spread the word about this platform in case any of you writers would want to give it a try, and if you do, let me know how you like it!

[fakecrfan]

I know most people on here don't like to go to the gym because you're all gay nerds. I like to go to the gym. For the purpose of understanding this post please try to imagine that you, too, enjoy going to the gym so that you can empathize with my point here.

Anyway, so imagine you are going to the gym. You're pumped about the concept of getting some muscle on you. Plus, the gym has this "lift weights every day!" challenge with a feasible plan to slowly and safely increase the amount of weight you can lift by the end of the month. Cool!

So anyway you go there, and you're having a good time. But then you notice something. Some people are coming in with these guys in shirts that say LIFT FOR HIRE. You're curious, and you notice over time that some people are actually paying these guys to come in and do the lifting challenge for them.

"Huh," you say to your mega hot, muscled gym buddy. "That's so weird. What's in it for the people paying these guys?"

"Dunno," says your friend, mid bicep curl.

"Um, actually!" says the gym owner. "Some people are disabled, so the only way they can lift weights it to pay LIFT FOR HIRE, inc."

"But wait," you say. "They still aren't lifting the weights though? Paying someone else to lift for you doesn't mean you've lifted the weights."

The gym owner gasps. "How could you SAY that?"

"Because... it's true?" you say. "Uh, if you pay guys to lift your weights, that's probably really good for the guys you are paying. But it's not going to develop your ability to lift at all. Your muscles aren't going to grow, you're just going to lose money and get no results."

"That's ABLEIST," they say. "How DARE you! Some people are LITERALLY paralyzed, did you think of that?"

"Well, yeah, some people are, and that means definitionally they can't lift weights," you explain. "And paying someone else doesn't change that. Maybe if they wanted to like, move something in their house it would make total sense to hire these guys! But if you hire them to do your workout you get nothing, because the purpose of a workout is personal development. I'm not morally condemning people who do it, but it seems like a waste of money when this event is, again, about improving one's personal abilities."

"This is absolutely DISGUSTING, CLASSIST rhetoric!" the gym owner roars, and then turns to one of the LIFT FOR HIRE guys, "Pay no attention this disgusting person, dear sponsor, we support your business and we totally want you to keep funding our gym!"

"Sponsor?" says your hot muscled friend who was way too busy actually doing their workout and getting gains to engage in dumb discourse. "Oh, now it makes sense."

"Shut up, you don't understand our love!" says the gym owner, before sloppily making out with a LIFT FOR HIRE guy in front of you.

Anyway, that's what learning about the whole AI nanowrimo controversy was like for me.

[ellipsus-writes]

We know many of you have seen NaNoWriMo's recent statements on generative AI...

Well, we have too—and that's why we've made the decision to retract our sponsorship of NaNo.

Your support and belief in human creativity, transparency and collaboration mean everything to us, and we're committed to staying true to that. Thank you all! 💙

You can read our full statement here.

The Ellipsus team xo

[the-pen-pot]

So it looks like NaNoWriMo are happy to have AI as part of their community. Miss me with that bullshit. Generative artificial intelligence is an active threat to creativity and the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in creative fields.

Please signal boost this so writers can make an informed choice about whether to continue to take part in such a community.

[damienthepious]

watching @nanowrimo within a single hour:

make an awful, ill-conceived, sponsored post about "responsible"/"ethical" uses of ai in writing

immediately get ratio'd in a way i've never seen on tumblr with a small swarm of chastising-to-negative replies and no reblogs

start deleting replies

reply to their own post being like 'agree to disagree!!!' while saying that ai can TOTALLY be ethical because spellcheck exists!! (???) while in NO WAY responding to the criticisms of ai for its environmental impact OR the building of databases on material without author consent, ie, stolen material, OR the money laundering rampant in the industry

when called out on deleting replies, literally messaged me people who called them out to say "We don't have a problem with folks disagreeing with AI. It's the tone of the discourse." So. overtly stated tone policing.

get even MORE replies saying this is a Bad Look, and some reblogs now that people's replies are being deleted

DISABLE REBLOGS when people aren't saying what nano would prefer they say

im juust in literal awe of this fucking mess.

[taibhsearachd]

Hey guys... I met my wife through NaNoWriMo, I am as attached to the concept as a person could be, but if we're going to recreate it... I'm begging you to not put it in November. November is possibly the worst month for it if you live in the US. In school? You're probably studying for finals toward the end of that month. Adult? Some part of your family is going to want you to come visit them, which is a whole thing if you have to travel to see them.

We can break free of this. We can have a whole new novel writing month. I'm begging you. Even as someone whose life partner came to me through NaNoWriMo. Do not put this fucking month in November.

[eric-bogosian]

Re-sharing this post I found on Twitter for people looking for alternatives to NaNo. I haven't tried any of these sites but they might be worth looking into.

[novella-november]

Novella November 2024 Announcement Post

Hate AI, but love writing challenges?

Want to take part in a global, fun project to write a Novella in one month?

Grab some friends, and take part in Novella November, by writing 1,000 words a day for the month of November, ending with a 30,000 word Novella to test and stretch your novel-writing skills!

Your goal is not perfection, but merely getting into the habit of writing a litte bit every single day :D

No website, no sign-ups -- Just a community initiative to write using only your own word!

What are the rules? Just Three so far!

#1 - No AI

#2 - No Plagiarizing

#3 - Wordcount for the month should only come from what you write during the month.

What does that mean?

Only words written during November should go towards your Wordcount for the month... but! Feel free to use your 30k words as a continuation of previous writing, or just make it the first 30k words in a longer novel!

Don't think you can write a whole entire 30k word story? Write a series of short stories that total up to 30k!

Not ready to write original works yet? Write a 30k word fanfiction that you can post after the month is over!

Share your writing experience, tips, encouragement, and questions in the #Novella November tag!

---

EDIT, from the tags: Want a progress tracker? Track your progress with TrackBear!

https://trackbear.app/

Don't have a word processor? Use LibreOffice , the free and open-source alternative to Microsoft Word!

Want to organize/storyboard your Novel and don't want to pay a subscription? Try 7writer by Simon Haynes!

Want to be able to listen to your story aloud for proofreading using TTS (text to speech)? Try Balabolka!

Or, create some custom progress / Goal Cards in advance you can fill out as you reach word goals! For ideas and templates, search this blog for "goal cards" :D

Want to do a writing challenge in more than just November? Check out my ideas here for year round challenges to keep you writing consistently! Got feedback? Send it in, I'd love to see everyone's ideas!

---

EDIT 2: I almost forgot to mention, if you are unable to write/type your story, you can also narrate/dictate your story to your preferred recording device!

If you're doing a Recording only and it doesn't automatically generate a transcript, it would obviously be hard to judge the word count -- but you're also working with a lot of obstacles, so I'd say if you're able to complete your story via voice recording from start to finish, you've definitely achieved the goal!

Edit #3: added the title "Novella November 2024 announcement post" to the top to make it more standard with my Ominous October and Drabble December posts (will be updating Outline October shortly) , added "Official Announcement Post 2024" to the tags so people can easily find the monthly events for 2024, and added a bit of bold to the third bullet point in the original post from September 2nd 2024 for emphasis.

[anneapocalypse]

Regardless of what you think about generative AI in general, NaNoWriMo allowing AI-generated works is beyond stupid because that completely defeats the purpose of the challenge, which is for you, a human being, to write 50,000 words in a month. Yeah, that's hard. That's why it's a challenge. Where is the challenge when you can ask a chatbot to spit out 50,000 words of whatthefuckever for you? Even if you think that is a legitimate way to produce fiction, even if you don't care about the ethics of training on stolen works... where's the challenge? What's left of NaNo at that point?

[lizardsfromspace]

NaNoWriMo, the competition whose raison d'etre is making people write actual words for a month, declaring that you can do writing with AI is a predictably inane choice. But coaching their statement in social justice language about how banning AI is classist and ableist, now that elevates it to the sublimely dopey

[vaspider]

So... apparently the NaNoWriMo organization has been gutted and the people at the top now are fully focused on Getting That AI Money.

I have no reason to say this other than Vibes™️ and the way that every other org who has pivoted to AI has behaved but I wouldn't trust anything shared with or stored on their servers not to be scraped for training LLMs. That includes pasting stuff into the site to verify your word count, if that's still a thing. (I haven't done Nano since 2015).

Also of note:

Age gating has been implemented. If you haven't added your date of birth to your profile or if you're under 18, it's supposed to lock you out of local region pages and the forums. ... It's worth noting that the privacy policy on the webpage doesn't specify how that data is stored and may not be GDPR compliant.

...

Camp events are being run solely by sponsors. Events for LGBTQIA+, disabled writers, and writers of color no longer appear to be a thing at NaNo.

Just... go read the whole thing. It's not that long. Ugh.

[gaywizardemporium]

*taps mic*

Fuck NaNoWriMo

It's always been a shit way to write a book. Slamming through fifty thousand words in a month leads to burnout and a garbage draft you'll spend more time unfucking than if you'd actually just paced yourself.

I'm proposing Novel Outline November

Start with your idea on November 1st.

Write something for your novel every day. The only unacceptable amount is 0.

Attempt to complete the plot in 50K words. Stick with that as a limiting factor so you focus on what's most important to your story.

When it's done it's done! Everyone is a winner!

You will

Develop good writing habits

Challenge yourself to write long form

Create a base that can be expanded into commercial fiction (70-100K) or genre fiction (100-110K)

Happy writing!