<![CDATA[Random Genre Month - RaGen Blog]]>Wed, 16 May 2012 13:57:34 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[It's May]]>Tue, 01 May 2012 06:46:29 -0800http://randomgenremonth.weebly.com/1/post/2012/05/its-may.htmlHello everyone! I hope that you had a good Script Frenzy, if you competed in it. This one was one of the best that I had. I finished in the first week, taking I believe three days to write it (one of those days being an hour that night that I had free). I enjoy writing scripts. I don't find them as challenging as novels, but I think that they are fun and it's a nice break from year-round novel writing.
Let me give you an update of what's to happen in these next few months. Coming in July, the website will be refreshed and we will start to get everything ready for Random Genre Month 2013. If you are used to NaNoWriMo making all of the changes on one day, we do somethings like that, but a lot of it we slowly incorporate into our new site. 
What will these changes mean?
Well, we may have a new website theme, we will change the website structure, get rid of pages that we no longer need, add pages that we feel are important, hire and let go needed/unneeded staff, and everything will begin to get ready for the next Random Genre Month.

More will come later. Enjoy your vacation from RGM!]]><![CDATA[RGM Reflection - Jack]]>Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:13:14 -0800http://randomgenremonth.weebly.com/1/post/2012/02/rgm-reflection-jack.htmlWow, what a month this has been. I guess I should be saying what a year this has been. We had such an increase in members to the site and such a great feedback for this RGM but I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about my RGM experience.
So I decided to write mystery. Before I begin let me just say that this is the worst novel that I think I have ever written. Let's just face it, I'm not a mystery person. I'm not saying that it was a waste of time because sometime in that month I had an "aha" moment and I guess I sort of understood the secret to writing well. I found out how to beef up my usually very thin stories plot-wise. I could go on and on about how RGM is a great thing and it helped me realize how to be a good writer, and that may be for you, as well. Either way, I think that one day I may think this experience.
Thank you everyone for this great month and we'll see you next year
]]><![CDATA[Stats]]>Sat, 04 Feb 2012 07:07:00 -0800http://randomgenremonth.weebly.com/1/post/2012/02/stats.html What a year this was. Not only did we have a 550% increase in competitors, but we had a total of 176,964 words written. Now, in comparison to NaNoWriMo, it is something that doesn’t really compare, but considering that last year only a little over 60,000 words. This year we had a 9% win rate. While it is a decrease from the 25% win rate from last year, we did have more winners because of the increase in the amount of people.

Here are some more stats:

85% of the people that were on our site were from the United States. Japan had a little under 7%, while 2% were in the United Kingdom. 1% of the people were from Indonesia. The rest is under 1% and they were Australia, Switzerland, Spain, Finland, and India. The biggest cities in order were St. Louis, Moscow, Kadena, Dupo, New York, Lubbock, Twentynine Palms, Bellingham, Seattle, and Phoenix.

The average amount of time that was spent on the site was 16%, which is a great amount of time that people. Also, a majority of the people on the website visited us on their iPhone.

Thank you to everyone who was here this month and we hope that you join us next year! More reflections will be to come!

]]><![CDATA[RGM Reflection: Syaffolee]]>Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:37:02 -0800http://randomgenremonth.weebly.com/1/post/2012/02/rgm-reflection-syaffolee.html
Throughout the next few weeks we will have Random Genre Month reflections posted to our blog. Here is one from one of our winners.
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I have to admit that I am no newbie when it comes to writing 50,000 words in a month.  I've been a regular participant in NaNoWriMo since 2001.  So this should be old hat for me, right?  Not exactly.  January was challenging because on top of the 50,000 words, there was a restriction on novel genre.  And, well, I had a dissertation to work on, too.  The sane person would have picked a familiar genre or given up altogether.  I decided to do all three genres at the same time.

To be honest, I worked on my dissertation for most of the month.  While I did manage to eke out a hundred or thousand here and there in the first half, most of the novel was put off until the last minute.  I wrote around 30,000 words during the last week of January. So exactly how did I pull this off despite writing in an unfamiliar genre with no prior outlines? I just wrote.

"Just write" might seem like a facile answer, but it's true. Whether you already have fifty pages of notes or only an inkling of an idea at the back of your mind, the real work is just getting those words out.  Get rid of the distractions, excuses, and inner editor and all you have to do is to put your fingers on the keyboard and go.  And that is the crux of why I put myself through this challenge.  If I had let doubt creep in, especially as the month slipped away, I wouldn't have all this prose I can now edit.
]]><![CDATA[Finished!]]>Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:27:27 -0800http://randomgenremonth.weebly.com/1/post/2012/01/finished2.htmlI along with one other person so far have finished their novels! You have about six hours left to write your novels! Good luck and I'll see you across the finish line!
Coming soon:
Staff Reflections
Statistics
Winner Prizes ]]><![CDATA[Two Days Left]]>Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:22:09 -0800http://randomgenremonth.weebly.com/1/post/2012/01/two-days-left.htmlThere's two more days left in Random Genre Month! You still have time to catch up so good luck writing the rest of your novel and we'll see you across the finish line!

-Jack ]]><![CDATA[How To Catch Up]]>Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:42:48 -0800http://randomgenremonth.weebly.com/1/post/2012/01/how-to-catch-up.htmlGetting ahead and catching up. That's what I'm good at. Every single writing competition that I have been a part of has either involved me being extremely ahead or being very behind. My first novel was written for the 2009  NaNoWriMo and I gave up about half way through the month only to finish five days early. Script Frenzy the following April I started almost a week late due to vacation. I finished on time (even though I don't count that as a complete win. It's complicated). The following two NaNoWriMos I finished  days before I was supposed to. And the last RGM I gave up halfway and then came back.
This RGM is a comeback. How am I doing it? I'm writing 2500 words a day. It does it. It only takes about forty minutes, sometimes even less. I set a timer for myself, I have to write 2500 words in less than an hour. For extra fun, I take off five minutes each day to increase my speed. Maybe what I'm writing is horrible, but that's okay. Those things can be fixed in editing and rewrites if that's something that you're going to do. Looking at Random Genre Month, every single one of the competitors is behind, but that's okay. You have plenty of time. This Saturday, I'm going to try and get extremely ahead by doing 10k. Try it with me, you'll find that it isn't as hard as it sounds.

Jack ]]><![CDATA[A bit behind, but....]]>Sat, 14 Jan 2012 07:02:14 -0800http://randomgenremonth.weebly.com/1/post/2012/01/a-bit-behind-but.htmlGood morning, fellow RGM-ers! My name is Sam, I'm the new Tech Director for the site, and that means I will also be running the blog from now on. I personally am a bit behind on my novel, having only written about 2,000 words. But have no fear! There is still much time for anyone not very far. In fact, you could still start now and finish a book! So stop reading this and get writing! Also, be sure to check out the new submissions page, where you can post your novels for other to read! Exciting, isn't it?

-Sam
Tech Director
Editing Director ]]><![CDATA[Welcome New Members]]>Fri, 13 Jan 2012 07:11:39 -0800http://randomgenremonth.weebly.com/1/post/2012/01/welcome-new-members.htmlMidway through our second Random Genre Month, we are pleased to welcome to new members to the Random Genre Month staff: Sam and Sean.
Sam has been hired to be the Director of Editing and Technology. One part of his job is that he is going to be updating the blog. That means that you should be seeing more frequent posts since in the past, I've had to do it while managing the website as well. You'll still see posts from us every once in a while, but all of the posts updating you about the website and what's going on are going to be done by sam.
Sean has been hired as the Website Moderator. He's going to be monitoring the website so that he can find any flaws or anything that we should be concerned about that your posting.
So please welcome them to the Random Genre Month staff and if you would like to say something to the new members of the staff, feel free to comment before.

Blogging for one of the last times before Sam takes the reigns,
Jack  ]]><![CDATA[Excerpts!]]>Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:07:11 -0800http://randomgenremonth.weebly.com/1/post/2012/01/excerpts.htmlA new feature has been added to the website! You can now post them to share your novels with the rest of Random Genre Month! We look forward to reading them! ]]>