One … two … three … four …
One … two … three … four … We declare a thumb word war
I only discovered the concept of a thumb war a few years ago. (one consequence of growing up in another country) The concept of a word war is even newer on me. I’d heard about them 3 years ago. I’d shaken my head when people had participated … I thought myself above that sort of silly nonsense … and then I tried it last night. Oh how the mighty have fallen. I guess I need to eat my words (pun intended). They are fun!
The official definition goes something like this:
A word war is when two or more people decide on a time to start writing, write for a certain amount of time, then compare wordcounts.
Simple really. The official Nanowrimo forum has discussion threads for word wars of different durations. The 10-minute word war was my downfall.
My usual level of output during Nanorimo is (roughly) 1000 words an hour. Not huge. It means about 2 hours or so every day through the month of November and I’ll hit the 50,000 word goal. Ten minutes would be roughly 160 words at that pace. I had a measure, and I smoked it: 275 words in 10 minutes. It feels good to beat a personal goal. That said I knew exactly where my character would be and what she’d be doing.
So, yeah, I’ll be entering Nano this year with a more combative and competitive stance. One … two … three … four … I declare a word war! GO!
August 18th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Of course, theres the Five minute war, the Thirty minute war and the whopping 5-hour / 10,000 word challenge if 10-minutes arent your style.
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Hi Paul! Speaking of NaNo - I’m a big fan of the work you did for the widgets. I’m the ML for Austin, Texas, and I’m also involved with some special projects for NaNoHQ. I’d like to talk with you about one of them. Could you please email me at austin_tx (at) nanowrimo (dot) org? I would really appreciate it! Cheers! Emily