The Novel Push Initiative — Official Rulings

Posted: August 16th, 2011 under writing.
Tags: novel, Novel Push Initiative, NPI, write, writing

The Big Guy So, you think you’ve got what it takes to tackle an NPI, do you?
Well then, welcome to the first day of the rest of your Next Month.

What I wanna see:

I wanna see you writin’.
I don’t care if you’re producing puke-on-a-page or the next Pride and Prejudice. Just write.

What you’re gonna do:

You’re gonna write words. 250 of ‘em. Per day. For a month. And you’re gonna support the other participants. You know, cheer ‘em on and what-not.

What I’m gonna do:

I’m gonna be checkin’ in to make sure you write those words. And I want you to post your results each day. Post ‘em somewhere public. I’ll be keepin’ track here. Oh, and three strikes and you’re out. NO EXCUSES!

Um, actually … *whisper*

What? Oh yeah. Well, three excuses, actually. BUT NO MORE!

Um, *whisper-whisper*

Sigh… My lawyer wants to tell you something.

Um… yes. *mic feedback* Ahem. I would simply like to state that you can pledge to write less than OR more than 250 words per day if you so desire. But, please, make it no less than 100. Oh, and you can edit, too. The number of words you’ve edited can count towards your goal. Um… *flips pages*Ah yes. If you can’t easily count the number of words you’re writing, you can always use the average words per page to come up with your totals.

Furthermore, if you will be posting your results via Twitter, please use the hashtag #NovelPI. It makes the action so much easier to follow for us lawyers and for the other participants, too. I suppose a typical ‘tweet’ might look something like this:

Day 10: 289 words. #novelpi

If you are unable to get your wordcount posted by midnight, you do indeed get a strike. I’m afraid we are quite serious about this–Three strikes and you truly are out of the race. Where we may have been lenient in the past, well, just ask the big guy. But that doesn’t mean strikes have to be negative. I mean, you can use them as the equivalent of ‘days off’, after all.

And let me assure you, we are interested if you are writing the next Pride and Prejudice–And I apologize for his rude-

Gimme that. Boy, I hate lawyers, always complicatin’ things. I don’t know about you, but I almost fell asleep. Look, this ain’t rocket science. 250 words per day. Capice?

Now that all that legal-ese is out of the way …

It’s time to write words and chew bubble gum, AND I’M ALL OUT OF GUM.

(Or at least I will be, on SEPTEMBER 1st!)

« « On Writer’s Block | The Novel Push Initiative: ALMOST OUT OF GUM » »

24 Comments »

You got in the Duke, eh? Well, I guess he’s free now they finally polished off the game that took TEN YEARS to make!

::looks around:: If he asks, I’m not here – well, until September.

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Nick Enlowe Reply:
August 17th, 2011 at 10:50 am
I think you’re safe for now since he’s still got some chewing gum :)

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Ryan G. Sanders Reply:
August 24th, 2011 at 10:44 am
Oh, and yes. 250 words – I’m aiming for more, but hey, the bigger the safety net the better.

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Comment by Ryan G. Sanders — August 16, 2011 @ 9:39 pm
Well, I have still not gotten on the Twitter ~~time-suck~~ bandwagon. So I’ll be posting at my blog again Discipline Under Fire.

It’s still the same novel for the last NPI I participated in:
“Stellar Gift of Death”. I had to attack the outline and restructure and now must write in a brand new direction from chapter seven to the end.

250 words a day.

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Nick Enlowe Reply:
August 17th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
In case it wasn’t clear, Twitter is totally optional. I was fairly anti-Twitter myself until I found a use for it. (I’m still kind of anti-Facebook. :P)
Anyway, good luck and godspeed on the partial rewrite. You’re kind of in the same boat as me as far as the restructuring and rewriting front goes, though lately I’ve been focusing more on short stories.

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KLCtheBookWorm Reply:
August 17th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
It’s cool, I was just doing the official sign-up thingy.

And I’m not bashing the technology. I just no how I get distracted by anything new on the Internet, so I tend to stay far, far away until I’m forced to use it.

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Nick Enlowe Reply:
August 17th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
Can’t blame you, it definitely can be a time-suck.

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Comment by KLCtheBookWorm — August 17, 2011 @ 10:55 am
Sorry I’m late. Can I still get in on this?

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Nick Enlowe Reply:
August 17th, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Yup! Deadline is pretty much September 1st.

To sign up, drop a line on any post here, email me, or let me know using the hashtag.

You want to do 250, Brian?

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Brian Reply:
August 17th, 2011 at 10:05 pm
Actually, since I’ve been shooting for five pages a day, I’m going with a minimum of 1300 words. My progress will be posted on my Facebook wall.

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Nick Enlowe Reply:
August 18th, 2011 at 10:54 am
Wow. Okay, well I don’t want this to step on the toes of your new job either. I’ll put you down for a tentative 1300 unless you state otherwise.

Oh, and FYI everybody: Can’t change your pledge once NPI starts!

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Comment by Brian — August 17, 2011 @ 3:00 pm
Oh, I am SO IN! I need this like you wouldn’t believe. Since I’m in editing mode, and have been all too lazy for the last couple of months, I’m going to say… 2 pages a day. No matter what. Do or die. I finally got a twitter account. Don’t use it much, but I will next month. I’m rakford and I’m looking forward to novelPI! I will probably also update on my blog since I need to get back into that as well. Over and out.

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Nick Enlowe Reply:
August 17th, 2011 at 4:39 pm
Heck yeah! That’s the spirit!

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Comment by Robin Ford — August 17, 2011 @ 3:12 pm
Count me in! Just what I need, a bit of a push to get me into the habit. Will post on twitter. 250 words. Scary!

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Nick Enlowe Reply:
August 24th, 2011 at 12:37 pm
Great! Good luck and see you on Sept 1st :)

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Comment by kakapo — August 23, 2011 @ 3:11 am
Signing in for NPI and I’d like to commit for 250 words per day. I’ll post my word count success on Twitter which is @jflamingo2 and also on my blog which is http://jflamingoreflections.blogspot.com/

Thanks for another NPI!

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Nick Enlowe Reply:
August 25th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
It’s been too, too long. sniff

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Comment by Julie — August 25, 2011 @ 2:38 pm
My girl @jflamingo2 says this is the place to be in September. She seems to have a pretty good handle on the writing "in" crowd. Sign me up! My goal is to hit between 700-1000 words a day. I have a novel to finish!

P.S. the intro is absolute giggle goodness!

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Nick Enlowe Reply:
August 26th, 2011 at 8:13 am
Welcome! It’s always nice to see somebody new. Hope you enjoy NPI :)

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Ranee Dillon Reply:
August 26th, 2011 at 8:13 pm
Awww, thank you sweetie! Anything special I need to do?

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Ryan G. Sanders Reply:
August 26th, 2011 at 10:19 pm
Bring biscuits and Tea.

That’s a rule I just included, voted on and passed. ;)

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Nick Enlowe Reply:
August 26th, 2011 at 11:27 pm
Motion is hereby ratified.

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Nick Enlowe Reply:
August 26th, 2011 at 11:26 pm
Well, you should probably let me know what site you’ll be posting your daily wordcounts to so I can ‘stalk’ you. But don’t worry, I’ll only be stalking you during the month of September … unless, of course, I find your site especially riveting. ;D

So before Sept 1st is up, be sure to post your wordcount somewhere. I can even track you on facebook, etc. (My wife has an account there.)

I am going to put you down for 700 words instead of 1000 because, as RG said earlier, the bigger the safety net, the better. Also, the goal is to be productive, not get burnt out. If you write just the minimum that you are bidding all 30 days without taking any breaks, you’ll end up with 21,000 words! That’s a pretty busy month.

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Ranee Dillon Reply:
August 31st, 2011 at 10:55 am
Sounds great! But the biscuits will be store bought and the tea is from Starbucks. #justwarning

I’ll post the word count on Twitter with the tag. Also you’ll find a second post count and a few lines for the day on my blog raneedillon.wordpress.com.

I’m hitting about 2,300 words a day at the moment, but 700 is a good fall back goal in case things get busy. Can’t wait to start!

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Comment by Ranee Dillon — August 25, 2011 @ 10:10 pm