GWJ Writer's Throwdown: November 2012: Nano Turkey!

November; when a writer's mind turns towards the gleaming hill of NanoWriMo (GWJ Nanners). Or turkey. Or the existential dread of another family Thanksgiving. Or the incessant braying of mechanized music as retailers begin the push toward Hannakwanzamas.

A fair number of the usual crew of suspects in the Writer's Throwdown have expressed some interest in attempting to scale the mountain of words that is the NanoWriMo goal. And others are allergic to sherpas.

For our Throwdown writers who are doing Nano; pop in here, keep us posted, let us know if there's a place to read your excerpts, and feel free to plumb the vast amount of critique, nudging, and cheer-leading that this group always offers.

For our Throwdown writers who love the concept of Nano, but cannot possibly fit it in with their schedule; this is your assignment, should you choose to accept it:

Thanksgiving. Make it about family, make it about avoiding family, make it about that one time Mom drank the cooking sherry and accidentally cooked Uncle Bob in the smoker. Make it about being thankful, make it about being angry at being told to be thankful. As my 4th grade English teacher once said: "Tell me what you think about Thanksgiving." (Right before she said "Dear god child, you should see the counselor; you're not right.")

No tricky vocabulary, no word count, just tell us a story.

If anyone is interested I'll post an excerpt here but I'm not exactly looking for constructive criticism right now while I'm plowing through the word count. If I do post I'd ask that any thoughts on it get spoilered so I could come back in December and take a look then

Edit: Or if my will is weak and I want some immediate feedback

Jolly Bill wrote:

If anyone is interested I'll post an excerpt here but I'm not exactly looking for constructive criticism right now while I'm plowing through the word count. If I do post I'd ask that any thoughts on it get spoilered so I could come back in December and take a look then

Edit: Or if my will is weak and I want some immediate feedback ;-)

Post away! I'm tempted to post what I'm building on (since I'm cheating and not starting from scratch - still, it's only 14 pages!)

Previous years of WriMo novels are here. These are the ones that are too crazy to publish, or infringe on some amount of copyright. I have three others that I'm presently editing, rewriting or continuing.

I'm happy to have a break. I may get something done on the family theme but if it doesn't happen I won't stress and will get back into gear next month.

I'm also going to try to read people's stories from last month. I'll post responses in that thread but will try to give a little heads up here :).

Higgledy wrote:

I'm also going to try to read people's stories from last month. I'll post responses in that thread but will try to give a little heads up here :).

I still need to do the same. Can we all agree that no spoiler tags after the month is over?

It's been a while since the last time I wrote anything more complicated than a forum post. Though I feel particularly rusty, it felt good to just write, and thinking of the topic put me into an odd mood. The story is very short and you can take a look at it here. It needs a title, but I'm terrible at coming up with them so chuck one at me if something occurs to you.

Well, I'm 20,000 words into my Nano, and realized that it was completely wrong, told from the wrong perspective and had the wrong lead character.

On the upside; I have a really good idea for how to tell the story I was trying to tell, on the downside...it's starting over.

That said; I'm not scrapping the first 20k, because there's a lot to mine from there, and I did write it during nano, for the nano project, so I'm counting it, dammit. Especially since my constant computer failures for the last 3 weeks have meant the loss of a lot of work already.

Rhydius wrote:

It's been a while since the last time I wrote anything more complicated than a forum post. Though I feel particularly rusty, it felt good to just write, and thinking of the topic put me into an odd mood. The story is very short and you can take a look at it here. It needs a title, but I'm terrible at coming up with them so chuck one at me if something occurs to you.

That's beautifully done. Evocative without explanation is hard to do, and you've done a really great job of it. I love when story can be told well in short form.

Rise from the dead, ye post of earlier times!

Hey gang, do we want to do a December Throwdown? I'm totally up for it. I have a great idea for the challenge if anyone is interested.

I'm in - especially after I Nanowrifailed! :/

Or should that be Nanofailmo'ed?

I'll be pushing myself to keep writing after the month is over, so definite yes

Sweet! I'll pull a post together and get it up in the next couple of days.

Ooh, looking forward to next months challenge.

Oh Snap! I totally missed this thread!

I'll be sending Ducki my ideas for the challenge... haven't seen a new post yet so...

Since I never did let anyone know, I nailed NaNoWriMo (finally) by the 26th and am reaching the 80k word count as I reach the end of my novella.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Is there a December thread and I just missed it? I kinda want to participate...

NSMike: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1... I just found it myself