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[stagelight311]

QUESTION:

What the heck is up with people writing detailed outlines a month before NaNoWriMo? Why is this now okay?

Dammit, when I first started doing this, it was part of the rules that you wrote nothing related to your novel before November. Straight-up nada! No character sheets; no plot summaries; no chapter outlines. You came up with an idea

Comments

[rosewildeirish]

really? I never got that impression. Only that actual writing on the novel itself was no-go till Nov. 1.

[stagelight311]

Yeah? For some reason, I remember it being a part of the rules way back when that you weren't to do anything at all; planning was antithetical to the process. That was part of what made it so dang hard.

Of course, it's been a very long time, and there's no way to tell whether or not I'm simply imagining things. I suppose I should just lighten up...and focus on writing rather than worrying about the minutiae of the challenge! :-p

[oni_chan]

dang nanowrimo elitists!
dang nanowrimo exploiters!

i agree with you, the point of it is to write a novel in a month isn't it? that means you start from the month. thats why other things don't publish the rules for it until the day the event starts, etc.... it's a good idea but maybe now that everyone can predict when it's happening, they're starting their 2012 project in june, 2011 or whatnot

[stagelight311]

Yes, that's what I mean! It feels like getting a super crazy head start! And if you can get it started ahead of time, then does it really serve its purpose? To me, the whole point of NaNo is to get you to access your creative side organically: to write intuitively and off-the-cuff. Having a plan gets in the way of that. It hampers the ability of your characters to take you hostage, and it prevents you from letting go and giving in to the process. People still talk about how it's a mistake to use NaNo to write something that you really care about (and, man, I know this firsthand), but if you've already fleshed out the entire story, how can you not care about it?

I've decided that it's best to be open-minded, because the rules have changed, people now approach it in an entirely different way, and in the end, NaNo is really what you make of it. But personally, I'm going to stick to the old mindset. There's a rush to coming up with something out of nowhere and going into it blind that is beyond comparison.