Monday 26 October 2009

What's IndyWriMo?

A group of friends were thinking that the National Novel Writing Month - otherwise known as nanowrimo - is an excellent idea. I personally have taken part three years running and have "won" once. But although it's an excellent idea, we realised that writing 50k a month is pretty rough going, especially if you have a Real Life and other responsibilities.

So we've come up with our own version and we're calling it IndyWriMo - Independent Writing Month. What's fun about IndyWriMo is:

1. Our total is 30,000 words a month. Broken down that is 1,000 words a day. Not all that much, to be honest.

2. IndyWriMo can become a challenge during the course of the year and doesn't JUST have to be during the month of November.

3. IndyWriMo is not affiliated with anyone or anything and there are no costs and no fees and can be done in conjunction with NaNoWriMo or entirely on its own.

4. IndyWriMo can be a fun and easy way to challenge some writerly mates and of course, it's a good way to get your word count up without sacrificing quality by forcing yourself to write too much.

And although I would love to take the credit for this, our friend Kaz Mahoney thought up this idea of reduced wordage and launched it as KazNoWriMo but due to unexpectedly falling ill with a truly horrendous cold, has given up the idea (for now) so instead of stealing her name in vain, we thought up the name IndyWriMo instead.

The rules are stupidly simple:

**Join to write 30,000 words (at least) this month.
**Check in twice weekly with a word count to inspire others and yourself.
**Challenge friends to join, start that novel and maybe even finish that novel you have at the bottom of your drawer!

Please leave comments below if you are interested in joining and we invite you post your totals twice a week under the correct blog post! We will kick off on November 3rd.

24 comments:

  1. Well, I'm excited about this. I'm the kind of person that needs set goals and public disgrace to enable me to achieve. Thank goodness, therefore, for Liz for kicking me into gear and suggesting a group of us band together to do this. Thanks also to Kaz Mahoney for coming up with the reduced wordage which is genius. Frankly, I find the thought of writing 1,666 words a day frightening. I'm quite happy to do a thousand and 30,000 in November would mean that I'll have reached my 50,000 for my YA novel Raven which I'm currently re-writing.

    Hoorah - bring it on!

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  2. Love the attitude, dude!

    It's going to be such fun.

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  3. Yay! I'll play. I was planning on doing 30k anyway, and it will be so much easier (and more fun!) if I have other people to check in with and chat to.

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  4. Brilliant - welcome! You're right, it's all about having others to cheer you on and catch up with.

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  5. AWESOME! I'm excited... I'm excited enough to consider offering to make an excel sheet (and graph) to track everyone's progress... but I don't know how I'd post it for everyone to see every week and I'm not willing to do it if there's an unspecified HUGE number of people :-D

    anyways I'm in. If someone could tell me how to post a pic of a couple of graphs, I'd post that every Friday or Saturday too (most likely HUGE would be more than 60 people or something like that)

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  6. Hi axisor, good to see you on board :) The spreadsheet sounds brilliant. Not sure how to post one either but someone will ....

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  7. Sounds like a better version of NANOWIMO for me this time as real life is pretty hectic. I think I'll take the plunge-great suggestion! I'm a new writer-working on my first novel. This will let me jump into the 2nd story concept I have in my mental folder.

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  8. Hi Janell - that's exactly what attracted me, smaller word count and I'm pretty new to this too. 50k in a month is too big for me at the mo! Welcome btw :)

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  9. So, how does one sign up / join? I am doing NatNoWriMos (Natalie's Novel Writing Month(s)) and aiming for 10k or 20k or 30k or maybe even 50k. I have MS and so cannot guarantee my health in advance on any particular day/week/hour. I have also bever written anything longer than a shor story and then not for a number of years now.

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  10. Cool, I'm glad you got together and set this up. I'd like to finish my ms or maybe even start on an idea that's been with me for some time. I like the thought of not just doing this for November.

    However, I'll be in the process of moving, so I'm not sure what I'll be able to get done. Hopefully a lot;D.

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  11. Hi natalief - you've signed up just by posting!Although we're aiming for 1000 words a day you can adapt your aims for what suits you best. My mum has MS so totally get the good day/bad day situation. Welcome!

    Hi also, tina - thanks for joining us. I think Indywrimo is great for a project like getting a ms finished. It's exactly what I'm using it for. Also they say it takes a month to form a habit, I'm hoping that this improves my writing habits forever :)

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  12. @gapyeargirl and @tinachristopher and @janell - yay! So excited! Welcome to the madness.

    @axisor - the graph is an excellent idea. I will put up a post about that and am thinking that if everyone participating can post their totals on 3rd November to start us off, then you can take those figures, do the graph, and email them onto me (I will contact you) and I can put it up on the blog? Howzat?

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  13. Can I play too? I've got an ms that needs finishing if that's ok? And 1k feels managable. (Or possibly manglable, which might be more likely.)

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  14. Hey @rflong - of course you get to play along! We'll be honoured!

    ;-)

    *preens just a leetle*

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  15. Count me in Lizzie dear. *grin*

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  16. I was going to do KazNoWriMo, so I'm in. :)

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  17. @liz de jager

    I'd be happy to do that. Sounds great. I have an excel sheet I made to track my writing the last 6 weeks that I'm prepared to copy and gut :)

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  18. @axisor - I checked you out on LJ and I have to say those graphs are truly impressive! I'll email you through LJ - I am "lilifae" on there.

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  19. Question - Does the 30K have to all be on the same project? (I'm thinking of revision work and short stories here...)

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  20. Hi Lex! No, the 30k can be on different projects. I'm about 25k away from finishing my first draft so will be using my extra to finish a short story that I started a couple of months ago :)

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  21. Quick question. Is it worth gathering a blogroll of blogs/livejournals for each of us and putting it in the sidebar? I am at http://natalief.livejournal.com/ and http://www.natalieford.com/ - yell if you'd like me to give a hand with this!

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  22. *facepalm* I forgot to add, do people go on the nano IRC or hang around in any other IM/chat venues? Twitter? I am natalief on Twitter as well but I do not check it very often to be honest.

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