The longest piece of fiction...

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

50,000 words is a novel? Really just that much? I thought a novel was longer than that. Anyway the Astro boy x Eureka crossover story I just finished was about 46K words long, so it was almost a novel? Holly crap!

[Earthshine]

50,000 words is 100 -120 pages in a standard word document which translates to about 300 pages in a standard digest sized novel. Then again it may depend on what you yourself count as a novel in size (I've met some that insist that a novel has to be 500 pages long).

It's actually quite a lot of text and as such there is a challenge that many literary lovers attempt each year to reach that level. It's called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) that takes place in November. Basically you have one month to write a 50,000 word novel, no editing allowed. It's all about word count, and is a bit of tool to help writers flush out ideas quickly and to forgive themselves when it comes to writing.

I do it every year and it's quite difficult for the hobby writer with other things on their plate.

Here's the website should anyone be interested.

http://nanowrimo.org/

46K words is definitely almost a standard novel, or it could even be counted as a YA novel as those tend to be slightly shorter than other novels.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

No editing allowed? I would have to at least go back and proof read anything I wrote and correct spelling and grammar errors which I always make in spades! I also usually find a few places where I make changes in how I phrased something because it didn't feel right a day later. Is that allowed?

[Earthshine]

Nope. No editing whatsoever unless it's superficial (like spelling). You can't go back and take out giant chunks of text or change the overall wording of something because the point of the challenge is QUANTITY not QUALITY... which is strange. It's a challenge that is set up as said to allow yourself to think freely and quickly and to forgive mistakes.

Believe me, it's HARD to NOT edit (I am constantly doing so myself) and just rip the story apart. Of course, everyone wants to write a good story but NaNo is slightly different in that the point isn't if the story's structure is good or not, it's all about the author.

What I traditionally do is write as much as I can during that month (I've only ever gotten to maybe 30,000 words, my best, it's hard) and then afterwards once the month is over go back and edit and tweak.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

@Earthshine:
When ever I write something; besides the usual misspellings, punctuation and grammar errors, I usually have typed a wrong or extra word that I need to go back and correct. It's almost like my brain wants to write one thing, but my fingers have typed something else. Maybe I've left out a letter, transforming one word into another, the spell checker won't catch that! That's the kind of minimal editing I usually need to go back and catch.

Looking back the 46K story I posted on fan fiction.net was done over a two month period, but I was actually working on another story at the same time. SO maybe, if I had a strong story idea to start with I could actually crank out 30-50K in a month. That fan fiction story was written, edited, posted to the site, edit checked AGAIN on the site (their upload and document handler often (re)introduces format errors that must be corrected on line. SO I posting the story added a fair amount of time to the process of writing it.

Now is this nanowrimo.org thing a contest, or just a personal challenge only? IE: if the idea isn't to post something to be judged, then I could 'stomach' not polishing it till later.

I do have a story idea that I had been trying to develop for some time. I recently realized the similarity between what I had thought of and Carl Sagan's "Contact" (Similar theme, but NOT a ripoff of his work). Anyway, it occurred to me that I could write the story as a sequel to Contact, using some of the characters from the story (I have sort of fused the book and the movie together in my mind, the movie did deviate somewhat from the novel, but since Sagan worked on the screenplay, both are legit.)

I started to write a basic outline and a few paragraphs of a possible introduction, but I could use this idea as a seed for such a project. I hope having done some homework before starting to write isn't 'cheating'.

What has become of any of the stories that you have done for this in the past?
Are you a member of fanfiction.net?

PS:
A google search revealed the opinion that most novels are AT LEAST 50K words, but 75K is more common as a minimum (depends on the genre). Also words are usually considered to be an average of 5 letters, so the way to count is to add up the CHARACTER count and divide by 5. I'm not sure what method FF.net, M$ word, or Libre Office Writer use! I was going by the FF.Net count.

[Earthshine]

NaNoWriMo is not a contest (though I think sometimes there are some contests involved) but it's just a personal challenge. On NaNo you can connect with other writers and give each other some support and try to come up with ideas when you're at a stalling point.

Of course, you don't have to actually be a part of the NaNo website to do the challenge, last year I didn't even use my account!

I believe the simple editing that you go back and do is perfectly fine as it's superficial, there is not after all a NaNo policeman who is going to come after you for doing it.

I used to be on Fanfiction.net when I was in high school, and as such my writings on there are all from when I was less experienced. I'm a little more private with my writings now, that and I lack confidence to show my work I'm afraid.

As for my stories many as in most are incomplete and are only on the conceptualization stage. I don't have much time to write and prefer to draw when I do have time. I tend to stick towards science-fiction as a genre but also I branch out to drama on occasion. For the longest time I wanted to be a comic book artist but silly me I did not go to art school and instead went to a traditional school and did not take up art as my major. Sigh.

As for word count I think FF.net uses the same means that Word does, though I never really paid much attention to be honest. NaNo also has a word count meter if you choose to post up your story to your account.