I am happy to report that, for the eighth time since I first participated in National Novel Writing Month back in 2013, I have reached (and passed) my goal of 50,000 words. So, yay me!
This year I did something new. Instead of working on a novel or collections of short stories, I started a project called “Fifty Flashes and Fragments,” with the goal of writing fifty flash fictions or fragments of stories over the course of the month.
I hit 50,000 words on November 27 with piece 39, and then wrote one more because “Forty Flashes and Fragments” flows better as a project title. About half of the pieces have some merit, and of those, maybe half a dozen are genuinely good.
In service of this project, I created on this website a simple prompt generator which produces, at the click of a button, two subjects, a setting, and a genre. The only rule I set myself was that I had to use the prompt generated. Or rather, what I would NOT do is click the generator until I found a combination of subjects, setting, and genre that I liked. I only broke that rule once, when the generator produced a duplicate of the previous prompt. Random numbers are funny that way.
This method worked wonderfully, and I plan to continue to use the generator (with some modifications of the subject, setting, and genre options) for weekly writing exercises.
For NaNoWriMo 2021 and 2022, I came up with a new method of tracking my writing which focused more on the day-to-day nature of NaNo and less on things like chapters, scenes, and so forth. In those years I created one document for each day of the month, and when I started writing for a new day, even if I was still in the middle of a chapter or scene from the day before, I put that writing in the new document.
Psychologically, this had the benefit of breaking me out of the mindset of “I need to finish this chapter before I go to bed” or “I don’t want to start this chapter/scene/etc. until I have time to complete it in one writing session.” That kind of thinking is, to me, less valuable during the month of November. November is for writing 50,000 words. December is for editing those 50,000 words. Or not.
I feel that my 2023 NaNo project is a natural outgrowth of the method I used in the previous two years, and I recommend it to anyone who feels trapped between the demands of the story they are writing, and the demands of NaNoWriMo.
As always, I want to thank the members of NaNoWriMo Grand Rapids for their help, community, and support.
Here is the complete list of prompts I used for NaNoWriMo 2023.
Index: Subject 1, Subject 2; Setting; Genre
01: Economics, Aliens; Subterranean; Science Fiction
02: Revenge, Empire; Ship; Technothriller
03: Dragons, Evolution; Ship; Biopunk
04: Cyborgs, Possession; Small Town; Mystery
05: Super Powers, Portals; Battlefield; Solarpunk
06: Super Powers, Kaiju; Urban; Adventure
07: Cryptids, Music; Boardroom; Utopian
08: Cyborgs, Portals; Outpost; Literary Fiction
09: Evolution, Economics; Virtual Reality; Steampunk
10: Spiritual Beings, Super Powers; Lost City; Spy
11: Aliens, Cyborgs; Library; Noir
12: Apocalypse, Precursors; Labyrinth; Dystopian
13: Aliens, Dragons; Ruins; Western
14: Addiction, Language; Urban; Literary Fiction
15: Dreams, Espionage; Ocean; Western
16: Empire, Death; Lost City; Adventure
17: Possession, Dragons; Bar; Horror
18: Portals, Dragons; Battlefield; Biopunk
19: Kaiju, Language; Wasteland; Horror
20: Portals, Revenge; Labyrinth; Folk Tale
21: Music, Cyborgs; Ocean; Magic Realism
22: Robots, Revenge; Ship; War
23: Dreams, Fae; Subterranean; Cyberpunk
24: Colonization, Cryptids; Wasteland; Solarpunk
25: Music, Super Powers; Lost City; Steampunk
26: Genius Loci, Reincarnation; Battlefield; Weird Fiction
27: Portals, Espionage; Library; Weird Fiction
28: Revenge, Artificial Intelligence; Wilderness; Solarpunk
29: Language, Spiritual Beings; Space; Noir
30: Super Powers, Cryptids; Ocean; Utopia
31: Portals, Kaiju; Labyrinth; Horror
32: Politics, Dragons; Wasteland; Romance
33: Addiction, Spiritual Beings; Wilderness; Spy
34: Aliens, Music; Ship; Literary Fiction
35: Espionage, Robots; Boardroom; Western
36: Relic, Apocalypse; Space; Science Fiction
37: Fae, Politics; Small Town; Literary Fiction
38: Revenge, Mutants; Academia; Procedural
39: Mutants, Environment; Bordertown; Utopian
40: Portals, Colonization; Wilderness; Utopian