Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Write Or Die (aka my NaNoWriMo lifesaver)

Some of you probably have heard of NaNoWriMo, or National November Writing Month. For those of you who don't know what it's about: Starting on November first, you try to write an entire novel, ending on November 30th. For the adult program (which I'm doing), you have to write 50,000 words. For the kid's program, I'm told that you can set your goal. (A friend of mine, her goal is 5,000 words, just to play it safe. :P )
Anyway.
So, today is the 23rd. And I'm waaaaay behind. As in: I'm supposed to be up to something around 46,000 words, and I'm up to 27,000. So I have some catching up to do.
How, you may be asking, do I even start to attempt to catch up with 20,000 words?
There are a couple of ways I do. These all involve racing something.
  1. Word races with my friend. Word races are easy. What you do is you decide with someone, how long you're going to write. Usually it's something like two minutes, five minutes, etc. The longest race I've ever done was 20 minutes. As you can see: these are short. Then you write for the designated amount of time. When you're done, you check back in with the other person, and whoever has written the most amount of words in that amount of time is the winner. These are awesome because they are really REALLY motivating because you want to beat your friend, goshdarnit! Also, they involve other people. Helps make writing less lonely.
  2. Races against yourself. These are basically what a word race against your friend is, only you're racing yourself. Let me explain. You set your time goal (like before), then you set a word goal. For example... "I'm going to write for twenty minutes, and I want to write 1,200 words in that time." Then you write, and if you manage to get to your goal (or get more than your goal), you win.
  3. Write Or Die. Write or die is basically a word race against yourself, only with extra motivation. The link is here. At first you just see the "PAY $11" thing, and you're just like... whatever. no. But if you look on the right column, you should see something that says "Write or Die Online". There you can put in the amount of time you want to write, and how many words you want to write. Then you select your level. Gentle mode I think just does lights. Normal mode gives you lights AND unpleasant music. Then the kamikaze mode erases your words, if you don't keep writing. (You must write. Or be punished. So if you stop writing for a couple of seconds... BEEP BEEP BEEP... ) Then you click the forgiving grace period. That controls how long you can NOT write before it starts flashing, giving you music, or erasing your words. Then you click go... and you write! Write or die is honestly a NaNo lifesaver. A friend of mine (my NaNo buddy, actually) is wayyyyy farther behind than I am, then I sent him the link... and he's written like, 1,688 (just a guess... probably a different sum (but I'm too lazy to go look at it), but close enough) words already.
So there you go. Go and write, with Write or Die.
(Oh, and if any of you are doing NaNoWriMo, find me on the NaNoWriMo site! My username is Chanit_Henellia )

4 comments:

Amber Kirk-Ford said...

Am I the one you mentioned with a 5000 word goal? LOL. I'll add you, and thanks for posting the Write or Die link :D

Good luck!

xx

Angela said...

No, actually! LOL. :D
yay!
Thanks, I'll need it... :P Though if I can do a couple thousand words a day, I'll pull through! LOL.

Amber Kirk-Ford said...

Weird, I did 5000 too (nearly done!) xx

Things to Do said...

I so wish I would have seen the link for Write or Die before! It would have been a great motivator. I eeked my way to 50,000 but can't wait for next year all ready. Congrats on your progress!