Editing The Pen Addict 485/transcript (section)

== NaNoWriMo Introduction ==


'''Brad:''' Because just the idea of this is fascinating, right? Like, we always have, we have, every month has a month, right? Right? Every month has their monthly thing. Do this, you know, the Inktober's or the Ink-O-RyMo, the writing of letters. And, like, in every other, you know, hobby, there's always going to be something to just kind of promote and be a part of and participate in. But this one blows my mind the most. Because the goal for NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words. Generally started as a new novel, right? So there's a lot of educational value to what NaNoWriMo does, right? You go to NaNoWriMo.org, you can see that they have this in a lot of school systems. And, you know, teaching kids how to, you know, plan and write and think and commit to this project. So 50,000 words over the month of November, generally for a new novel, is the idea, you know, the base idea. So that means, Myke, you have to write, you particularly, have to write about 1,666 words per day. Why me? Because you're going to do this.

'''Myke:''' Oh. No, I'm just kidding. You're not going to do this. Yeah, there's no way. Myke ain't got no time for this. I love it. I like that you edited yourself there. You were going to say, there's no way you would do this or could do this. No way. No way. I love the idea of it, you know? Yeah. Maybe one day I'll get that one novel out of me, like I love so many people. Which is kind of, I think, the reason that NaNoWriMo exists. Yeah. Kind of, you know, everybody has that book in them, right? Or thinks that they do. And this gives them a way to, I don't know, get it out there. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. And there's, for lack of a better term, there's some crowd pressure in there, right? So people participate in this and share their progress, many of them daily. Say, hey, I did 820 words today, right? And my 820 words today, and I've done, you know, 13,423 so far this month, right? And people are sharing these goals and they're tracking them every day. And it helps other people kind of, like, see where they are with it. And it helps push them a little bit. And I think it's cool because this is, like, this is aggressive, right? This is a no joke kind of commitment to get this. And it's a big deal when you hit it. But I also, I think it's a little bit, you know, more than just, like, writing your next novel. It's cool for our community because we get to use a lot of our stuff, right? So Sarah, who writes for the Pen Act, she's written a couple of books that I love. And she uses NaNoWriMo. And she's written a couple of posts on the blog to kind of kick off some of her ideas or complete stories or finish novels. And she talks about how she does NaNoWriMo. She talks about the tools she uses for NaNoWriMo. And there's a couple of articles I linked in the show notes. Y'all can check that out. And what's different about our community is most of the outsiders are using digital means to write their novels, right? Their computers, right? They're using their word processors and their computers.

'''Myke:''' The easiest way to do it, right?

'''Brad:''' Absolutely. And plus, it counts the words for you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. So Sarah actually writes about how she counts her handwritten stuff. So that's in one of the posts there. So y'all go check that out. Maybe I've heard of people doing it by typewriter, right? That seems like torture. But it's a fun commitment, right? If you're into that, it's fun. But in our community, paper and pens, right? You know, or pencils.

'''Brad:''' So if you're not a writer, can you participate in this? And I'm here to say yes. I couldn't write a fiction story. I couldn't write a one-page fiction story if my life depended on it. There's just no way. Like, that's not in my head. There's nothing I can bring out of my brain that would work from, like, a fiction perspective. It's never been my thing. But if I want to use the things that I use on a daily basis and maybe not use enough of being my pens and pencils and notebooks, all my tools, what can I do? So we were talking about this on Twitch. Like, if you wanted to participate, but you're not necessarily, you don't consider yourself a writer, but you want to try to hit this 50,000 word mark, what can you do to get there? And a lot of people are saying, just pick out a favorite book of yours and copy it, right? That's apparently a thing on YouTube right now that some people are doing that. I'm following a...

'''Myke:''' What does that mean?

'''Brad:''' So you... Do you have a favorite book? I don't know if you do, but a lot of people...

'''Myke:''' I actually don't think I do.

'''Brad:''' A lot of people's favorite book is Lord of the Rings. So I'm following someone on Twitch right now who just started transcribing Lord of the Rings.

'''Myke:''' Oh, so it's like literal copy copy.

'''Brad:''' Literal copying it. But you have to commit to, like, those word counts and using your pens and paper and trying to copy the book. You know, they're not trying to do Lord of the Rings during NaNoWriMo, right? It's like a thousand-page book, right? So I don't know that anyone, even if they wanted to, could copy that in a month, right? But pick your favorite book and just copy it. Rewrite the text. It practices your handwriting. You know, focus on, like, working on things on handwriting. Pick out new pens and new inks you haven't used in a while. Find a notebook that you haven't cracked open yet and fill it up, right? A lot of people who do this, they'll also sketch some of the story elements in the book as they go, right? Just use it as this kind of, like, freedom of testing out products and practicing your handwriting. And, you know, it's almost kind of like a zen moment in your head while you're just looking at the text, rereading the text, and copying it down into a notebook. Like, I think it's really, really cool. I'm actually, and I've actually been watching people do this. So it's crazy. Another topic that came up was you could just pick albums from your favorite artist and transcribe all the songs. You know, could you do a, even if it's not 50,000 words, could you do a song a day from your favorite artist and just rewrite the lyrics and share it out with everyone? You know, I'm not trying to subvert what NaNoWriMo is, but what I'm trying to do is saying there's ways to participate in these things and use your, use your pens and paper, which we're all looking for reasons to use our pens and paper. And participate in, like, a communal event. I think it's cool. One of my Twitch followers is taking all of the Inktober prompts. So Inktober, you have one prompt per day, and you make a drawing for that prompt. Say it could be bats, right?

'''Brad:''' You know, it could be, you know, a literal bat like the animal, or it could be a baseball bat or whatever, you know, that people would draw. Well, they're taking those prompts. They went through Inktober with the prompts, and now we're going to take the same set of prompts and tell a story from the prompt, right? So every day, they're going to take the Inktober prompt from October 1st, go to November 1st, and instead of doing the drawing, they're going to tell a story about the prompt, right? These are simpler ways to kind of, like, trigger your brain, get you involved in writing, practice your handwriting, use your tools, which is very important to me. Obviously, I keep repeating myself. And, like, I think these ideas are cool. Like, again, I'm not, like, trying to, like, subvert NaNoWriMo. I'm just trying to get us into the idea of, like, practicing, participating, and using the things, right? And this is a way to do it. So, you know, and then there's, like, this accountability out there as well. Like, if you're doing this, you know, you watch other people doing it, and you follow the hashtags, and you see, get some ideas, you know, as you're following along to maybe you can do things differently. Like, oh, look how this person's, you know, taking their writing, or they inserted this little sketch into their writing as they're trying to tell the story. Like, I think it's cool. So, the question is, Myke, am I going to do this? Am I going to participate? And I'm here today to commit.

'''Myke:''' Oh, boy.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Oh, boy is right. I'm scared out of my mind. Wow. I'm not going to sit here and prattle off all this stuff on how to do it and not do it myself. So, I'm going to commit to the NaNoWriMo time frame. I'm going to commit to copying a book.

'''Myke:''' Are you going to do the copy version? You're not going to write the great American novel?

'''Brad:''' I would, by day two, I would be done. I don't have fiction stories in my brain. I just don't roll that way. And some people do, like Sarah, like, can't stop, right? It's just endless story after story after story after story. Like, I'm not wired that way. So, I'm going to work on my handwriting. I'm going to use a bunch of pens. I'm going to pick out a new notebook. And I'm going to transcribe her book, right? Like, I could transcribe albums. I write album lyrics all the time, like, in my reviews, which is why I'm not going to do that. Plus, I think, like, having, like, an album, like, it gives you kind of an out. Like, you can, like, finish a song and be done and it might only be, like, you know, 200 words or something. I want to push myself to write that level of, you know, 1,500 to 2,000 words a day. Even though it's not original words, right? They're not my original thoughts or ideas. But I'm using the book that I might use as a tool to make other things I do better. Work on my handwriting. Right. Figure out a pen and ink combination that works good.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. I was going to ask you, are you planning on using, like, multiple pens? Oh, yeah. Okay.

'''Brad:''' Like, people were saying, like, use one pen per chapter. I will probably use, I'll probably just switch whenever I want. Right. Maybe per session or maybe. Yeah, per session. Like, so it'll be at least 30 different pens and pencils, but it might even be more if I'm, you know, maybe I run out of ink when I'm not paying attention and switch to another one. But, yeah, at a minimum, it's going to be a daily change no matter how far I get. Because if I pick a book with 10 chapters, like, I'm not going to write, you know, however many handwritten pages, one chapter would be 30 or 40 pages in, like, a singular pen and nib. That's my goal is to use more stuff. So I can't believe I'm publicly committing to this because I've been hemming and hawing on stream for weeks. And every time I say I'm not going to do it, later in the day, I'm thinking, why am I not going to do it? I want to do it. I should do it. I'm just terrible at committing to these type of things. Right. That's not, that's why I never do, like, a 365 project or some things like that. Or if I do do a project, I'll just say, okay, I'm going to do this project, but it's an undetermined start date and an undetermined end date. And just, you know, I'll just do it and it'll happen. Well, this is mostly a thing that's not something I would ever do, which is a good reason to do it. But it's because I see the benefits, right? Like, I see the benefits into writing and my handwriting. And even though I'm not having original ideas, which is kind of what NaNoWriMo is about, hey, write a book, right?

'''Brad:''' I'm still gaining the benefits that work for me. And so I'm looking forward to this. I'm actually, I'm genuinely scared. I haven't picked out the book that I'm going to copy nor the notebook I'm going to use. Like, I'm sweating those things. Like, I don't want to make a wrong decision to start with on day one. Myke, what do I do? So I'm just going to have to commit by this weekend to figure out what I'm going to do and stick with it. And then it's going to be go time. I'll probably stream some of it. I might have some extra streams. Like, if like at 8 o'clock at night, if I have like at 8 o'clock at night, it's like, all right, I'm going to write for an hour, throw on the stream and just write.

'''Myke:''' And let me, yeah, I was going to say, though, if you're going to do that, you've got to do the writing. Because if you're streaming, you're going to be streaming and then you're not going to be focusing on the writing. Yeah. So like, if there are some tasks like for keyboards where like, you know, like you've got to do some like maintenance type stuff or whatever. If I do it on my own, just me, I get it done pretty quickly. If I do them when I'm streaming, it takes me forever. I don't get it done because I'm like focusing on streaming.

'''Brad:''' But if I stream the writing thing, I will have like an overlay say, hey, I'm writing. I'm not reading chat, but feel free to hang out and chat amongst yourselves or write or whatever.

'''Myke:''' What are they like? Study with me. Yeah. Like have the timers. Yeah. That kind of stream. Just write with me kind of thing. Yep. That's the plan. So your goal really is just practice the writing, like the amount of writing. Like that's kind of it, right? Like that's.

'''Brad:''' My goal is to hit the number.

'''Myke:''' But like the purpose of it.

'''Brad:''' But the purpose of what I will gain from it is twofold. One, a successful commitment, right? I will be proud of that, that I did it. So that's goal number one. And number two will be practicing my handwriting and using the tools, right? I will use like, I use like several pens and inks and paper per day, but it might just be for like notes. Like I wanted to do some like real commitment type of writing because I journal a little bit, but we're talking like, you know, a few hundred words here and there. Like I want to just get down and to writing and that's the only way I'm going to do it because I, I, I would not have like the original thoughts to sustain myself for more than a day or two. So using this as kind of a tool to push me through, to do other things I want to do, which is actually use my pens more. I, I, I'm looking forward to, to giving this a shot.

'''Myke:''' And you have not picked a book?

'''Brad:''' I have not. I have three that I'm considering.

'''Myke:''' Okay.

'''Brad:''' None of which I own on Kindle, which I think I need to have a, I think, I don't think I could do like a, I have physical copies, but I don't know that I could do like physical copy and writing. I, but I'm thinking, I'm trying to figure that out what I'm going to do. So, yeah, I have a few books in mind. Um, you know, trying to, trying to narrow it down and, uh, you know, like even if the book is like, I don't know how you tell how long a book is by words. Like, even if it's, you know, going to take me longer, I would like to at least finish the book. So I'm not going to pick something like Infinite Jest or Lord of the Rings. That's like thousands of pages. Like, um, so yeah, I'm going to pick something more manageable.

'''Myke:''' Man, I cannot wait to hear how this is going.

'''Myke:''' I was thinking about it. There could be a flame out. Just talking, just talking. I'm like, let me, I'm just thinking, right? Like, could I, not that I would, right? There's no part of me for a second that thinks I would. Like, could, could I commit the time? And I started thinking, right? Because you've written, you know, you've written it and you said it. Like 1,600, basically 1,700 words a day. Right. We'd have to write. So that would take you, how long? Like an hour or so? A couple of hours maybe?

'''Brad:''' I have no concept.