Personal NaNoWriMo

The NaNoWriMo is infamous among amateur writers. Simply put it's the National Novel Writing Month.

The rules are as follows:

- Write one 50,000 word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
- Start from scratch. None of your previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people's works). While this is no longer a hard-and-fast rule, it is still very strongly recommended, ESPECIALLY for first timers.
- Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you're writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
- Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.
- Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.

Now I don't know about anyone else, but I have a life (or at least I pretend to have one) and I don't really have time to write 50,000 words in a month; especially since I'm very particular about my own work. Not only that, but 50,000 words is a lot for a hobbyist who isn't all that invested in getting into writing as a career.

But as one kind person who understands lazy people like me wrote, "But you can rebel and you can do your own thing!" And thank goodness for that. So a few friends and I decided to rebel in the most rebellious way we could while still keeping the idea of NaNoWriMo intact.

We decided our own goals for the month: write a complete chapter, write some amount of words a week, write anything, etc.

Then we decided on a date to send our work for the week to everyone via email and a date to send out feedback on everyone else's work.

After that we decided what we wanted the others to pay attention to. For me I wanted my betas to pay attention to character interactions, believability of the world, and the believable integrations of characters into this world, plus grammar and spelling.

Then we started writing. Simple, no? We removed the novel part of the NaNoWriMo as well. Mine will eventually turn into a videogame with multiple branching storylines (or just a comic, we'll see). The weekly check-ins and feedback are really useful and it's nice to discuss how to tackle certain problems and see the results. That and I get some great ideas for character interaction by talking with everyone.

It may not be the NaNoWriMo that everyone is accustomed to, but hey it works for me. I'm even thinking that maybe I should just do it all the time. I get to work at my own pace and I don't need a billion words by the weekly turn in date. For the first turn in day I submitted a few pages of notes about the world!

I like how it doesn't demand my full attention constantly and it's easy to go and deal with all that life has to throw at me.

So here's my question to anyone reading this out there.

What are your writing goals?
What do you want your audience to get out of your work?
What do you want your betas (editors, whoever) to pay particular attention to when they read your work?