anyone remember?

[keiliss]

Did I imagine it or is there a sum to convert number of minutes spent editing into a NaNo word count? I want to use November and Nanowrimo to finish an old wip but it needs a bit of adding and editing to get back on track. Anyone? Help?

And of course, life has to be complicated. I don't think there's 50k in that story without a loooot of padding, so I want to throw in some other wip completion to bring the number up to a rebel but honourable word count. This is assuming I get past Week 1, which is assuming a lot right now.

Comments

[hhimring]

I've seen Nano participants convert editing into word count, so it must be possible, but I know nothing about Nano, really.
I would have expected there to be something on the site itself that tells you how to do it?

[ysilme]

Yep, the common convert ratio is 1 hour equals 1000 words, and so on. Of course, you can find out your own ratio of this doesn't really fit. I rebelled for the last two NaNos and used this ratio, which worked really well. It's a bit to my disfavour (can you say that?) as I'm a fast writer, so when I write longer parts of text during editing/ reworking phases I count both, words and time, and then see what is more applicable for any part of the work. Also, sometimes, I don't want to watch the clock and dawdle while writing, then I'm rather counting the words.
It takes some getting used to keeping the time in mind; if you like you can find a time-counting tool (there are a few online for free) which can be activated and paused every time you need or want to stop.

There's also no problem to do more than one WIP or a mix of whatever. If you're going to rebel, you can go as crazy as you want - anything counts, kind of. On my first rebel year (when I also worked at The Valley), I worked for about 20 days at the WIP in question, and then hit a point where I couldn't sensibly go on. We were away on holiday, too, I didn't have resources I would have needed, and was frustrated anyway. So I stopped, and allowed something else that wanted to be written to come up, and spent the reminder of NaNo indulging in this, having a lot of fun.

In my experience, there's one downside to doing edit/rewrite/working at a fic for NaNo: you might not have the drive created by writing in the NaNo fashion, and find it harder to motivate yourself, and get to your daily word/work count, and to continue daily. For me, the daily motivation was never a problem when I wrote new stories, but I often had to fight my lazy self to start working, and keep going, while rebelling. I honestly think rebelling needs to hide behind the classic NaNo writers; it's just a different way to do it. And anyway, I believe anything that helps you writing and stay motivated is allowed. *hugs*

It would be awesome if you could use NaNo for your purpose in this way, and join the madness! :o) I'm mostly doing editing and "working at", too, with "The Valley", as I don't want to stop the (slow going) work on this for the NaNo; but I'm also writing something new. I don't know yet what will become the main NaNo thing.