NaNoWriMo* 2013
Is anyone taking part this year? If so, keep us posted, please.
*National Novel Writing Month
Date: October 31, 2013
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction, Things We like
Saturday, 20 April 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Is anyone taking part this year? If so, keep us posted, please.
*National Novel Writing Month
Date: October 31, 2013
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction, Things We like
So far: 300 ceremonial words, done just after midnight.
Planning: Sketchy and disorganized. Includes plenty of ideas that I haven’t decided whether to scrap or not. We’ll see how this goes.
Whee, I love November.
So far: Five thousand words. Although busier than ever, I find myself a whole day ahead. My plot has been outlined for a few months now, but I still find myself unsure of what’s going on.
November is fun!
Update: Nothing but planning done while camping. I’m at maybe six hundred now. Catch-up time!
2k total. I got my motivation back! This story is coming along much better.
Except I can’t figure out where to go from here. Maybe I’ll just keep following the story I have been for a bit? I didn’t intend to, but I can’t think of the alternate plot…
It’s NaNoWriMo: Anything goes.
I’m at 11k on Day 5: I think this is a record for me and my plot is going smoothly.
I finished 3k today, putting me at 4k total. I’m pretty happy about that.
I also introduced two other characters, one of which is remarkably fun to write. Though I need to be careful about avoiding the pitfall of reducing her to her most prominent characteristic.
Also from today, I realized that I really want to write this thing fast, faster than I’m going and probably faster than necesary to win on time. Because I really want this story to happen, I want to see where it goes and I want to see this at higher speed than I usually do.
Oh, and I meant to note: I got 2k of that in one hour, by finding an hour’s worth of exciting instrumental music, blasting that at a slightly louder volume than I usually would, and then just writing until the music ran out. ‘Twas fun.
Didn’t I have another post? What happened to that one?
I did post that, right?
The spam filter mysteriously caught it. It’s back now.
Huh. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. Well, I’m glad I’m not crazy, anyway.
Wow, I just wrote a thousand words in half an hour. I’m three DAYS ahead of schedule.
I wrote eight hundred words today, total.
My problem is that I’m just not devoting enough time to writing. I don’t believe I’ll actually fail, because, after all, I made it the last four years, it’s not like I’m going to not make it on my fifth year. Except that’s exactly what will happen if I don’t shape up. And yet I believe I’m going to shape up in time strongly enough that I don’t feel the need to shape up now.
…Yeah, I need to take this year more seriously. I really do want to write this story, I just always have reasons not to.
I’ve found several accounts on outside sites that do word sprints: they give a time limit and an optional prompt, so you set anywhere from five to thirty minutes aside to get to your goal. An hour and a half of sprinting generally gets me to my 1.6k, and if you don’t want to actually find these web things you can set up sprints for yourself. They’ve really helped me manage my time.
Bonus: some of my best thinking comes out of sprints. The limit doesn’t allow me time to second-guess, and something about the speed sets my mind free. Fifteen minutes or so at a time seems to work best for that.
Ah, much better. After an hour and a half of dedicated writing time with minimal distractions, I have 2.5k more than I did, for a total of 7.5k. Still like four thousand behind, but that’s better than it was, at least.
I’ve now reached 10k. So quickly, and yet I’m behind. NaNo feels kind of strange sometimes.
I’ve decided I’m officially going for 100k this year. It’s my fifth year, after all. Kind of uncertain that I’ll actually make it, but hey, I’ll give it my best effort.
As part of that best effort, I’m also aiming for 25k this weekend. Wish me luck!
I missed all of the higher goals I set for myself, but I still got 7k today, which I think is a new personal best for one day.
I possibly could have gotten more, but first thing in the morning, I sat down and wrote for an hour straight, and I ended up writing 3k within that hour. Which I was very happy and proud of, but I think it sort of burned me out for much of the rest of the day, because I couldn’t focus at all after that.
I feel slightly guilty for posting five times in a row, ignoring replies, but a) I’ve always regretted not having more thorough records of my NaNo month and b) Pretty sure I’m not bothering more than about one other person, because the NaNo turnout for this year is depressingly small.
Anyway, today was basically entirely void as far as wordcount went. I eked out 1k, partly this morning and partly in the last hour, but my enthusiasm was gone all afternoon. On the good side, the chance encounter between two of my viewpoint characters ended in a misunderstanding which amused me highly. That was basically the reason I actually got the thousand this evening, I think.
Total count: 18081 words.
One thing that has always encouraged me during NaNoWriMo is that you don’t have to produce a masterpiece, and that it should be fun to write. I always used to get stuck in my plot or run out of ideas in the middle of a conversation, and then I realized that anything can happen. A thief can enter the room in the middle of that decaying conversation. The scene can end and you can write something else. Writing a romance novel? Running out of ideas? They can be abducted by aliens, or go on a road trip, or be recruited for a top-secret spying mission. November is an exercise to get the creative juices flowing.
So far, I’m very far ahead, at roughly 26000 words. Also, my plot is coming along swimmingly (no pun intended, hah, it’s about a lake) and there are actual signs of plot cohesion and character development.
Yesterday: 2k, written over about an hour and a half, which was basically the only free time I had that day, so that was sort of acceptable.
Today: 1k, written spread out through the entire day in miniscule chunks. Because I had no enthusiasm, despite an entire day which was unexpectedly free of activities, which should have been a much more productive time. On the plus side, schoolwork was more productive.
If I’m serious about this double NaNo thing, I really need to pick up the pace. And I do want to do this. I mean, I’m five years in now, and this NaNo just isn’t really a challenge. I feel unmotivated and unethusiastic and I’m still a thousand words ahead and that’s after a bad day. If I convince myself to sit down and type, I get two thousand words in an hour with little trouble, just focus. That’s not what I want out of NaNo. I want to struggle and fight and fit in every bit of writing time I can and come out of this having worked for what I get.
But right now that means writing 9k a day to get back on track of where I want to be, which may be outside my reach.
Tomorrow: New character, new subplot, new something. New outlook.
Another day with nothing accomplished. See that little figure disappearing off in the distance? That’s my dream of more than 50k.
Tomorrow, I sprint after it.
I hope.
600 words done today, and I’m proud of myself for just opening the text file.
I found the perfect quote to describe my situation, though: “I have the syrup, but it won’t pour.” It’s from Gertrude Stein, apparently.
For some reason, I agreed to spend the better part of this weekend with my grandmother, where no words get written ever. Oh, and now my keyboard’s out of batteries.
This might not be a great weekend for catching up. At least my motivation is returning.
Motivation is all that counts! Good luck with your keyboard, though. That’s always been an issue with me in years past.
I… just killed off a major character. That was kind of draining, even though I knew it was coming since I planned the novel.
I did nothing over the weekend, as I rather expected.
Now I’m running another motivation issue. It’s peculiar, because it’s so different from any past motivation issues. Always before, I’ve run out of motivation on my story and I had to change something. This time, I still like my story well enough, the characters are intriguing enough for me, the plot could be interesting, I just don’t want to work on it. I’ve got enough enthusiasm for my story, I just can’t work up the enthusiasm for NaNo itself. That’s never happened before. I always was very motivated to do NaNo, even if the story wasn’t going well. This year I’m not, not right now anyway.
I need to figure out a way to reverse this. If nothing else, as a gift to my future self. I really don’t want to look back over my NaNo career and have this blotch of unfinished work on it.
Yes, YES! Finally wrote the introduction!
Knowing me, though, I’ll probably take a few-week break before I begin the first chapter.
Still, it’s great that you got a start!
Current wordcount: 24,601.
You know that post I made about drifting a while back? I took a giant break right in the middle of the month, came back to the page, and discovered that the amount I needed to write every day to catch up was easily less than an hour’s worth of work. Which makes it rather difficult to motivate myself.
I hit 26k today. My plot is finally starting to pick up. I probably have pacing problems. I definitely have motivation problems.
Slightly strangely, today I had probably my first glimmer of doubts about my plot and characters and so forth. Hopefully it’s temporary.
Another day filled with dawdling, with two thousand words hammered out in the last hour and a half before midnight. On the good side, I know I can do this consistently and easily, without putting that much time in. On the bad side, this really doesn’t feel like NaNo.
Ah, well. I hit 28k, and maybe I’ll do something more tomorrow.
Another day, another two thousand words late at night put down for the sake of getting them down. I haven’t picked up my ‘estimated finish time’ for several days, it’s been hanging consistently at December 6th.
Yeah, I need to do something about this. Weekend marathons, I guess?
I’ve moved up to December 9th after languishing in 2014 until this week. Lots of 15-minute sprints were key. Lots more to come.
One guess at how many words I got today, and when I wrote them.
On the good side, I got lots of school done as well, and I just discovered that tomorrow will probably have a lot more time than I expected for writing. I might get something in during the daytime, at that.
Also exciting: I decided to introduce a new character. Which probably won’t help my plot’s pacing to pick up, but seriously, this character is going to be great.
Actually got just over 2k today, and did a lot of work earlier in the day. New character is still being very fun to write, and her interactions with the other characters are going to be amusing, I know they are. Also, I worked out some logical consequences of past actions, and the plot is coming together nicely now!
…Still going to be away from home for basically all of the rest of November, so that’s less than ideal. I never get as much work done here. ON the plus side, if today is any sign, I might get more done than I normally do when away from home.
I’ve been ahead for every day this month and I’ll probably finish over Thanksgiving break… I wrote the ending about a week ago. When I had the idea for this novel, I knew exactly what would happen in the beginning and the end. Now I just have to fill in the middle, which is a crescendo of panic and emotional angst. I was stuck on that a bit, but I think I’m having fun. It’s not as easy to write as last year’s novel, which was a bit of a mess, because that one was written with no idea where it would go and through the viewpoints of several characters. But this one seems to be pretty solid and has, I think, characters that make sense and have distinct personalities and motives. Also, I think I’ll actually edit it this year, which I have tried and failed to do in years past, and I have a friend who says he’ll be my editor.
I’m at 44,000 words at the moment, so it’s just a race to the finish line!
Ah, been writing up a storm! Stayed up until 3:01 last night working.
I just have one question, in my story, the proper greeting to royalty is to call out “Hail the palace, boy / sir / m’lady!” I just want to know if that greeting is already taken, or if I can use it. I’m pretty careful about those things y’know…
I don’t think I’ve heard that one before!
Well, fifty thousand words- and this year I found someone to edit my novel!
42k. I may have managed to convince myself that if I don’t pick up the pace, I’ll fail this. I may even have started caring about that idea. 8k in one day is a bit of a stretch, but I think I can do it. I hope so, anyway. I really, really, hope I have the motivation to make this work. For myself today, and for my future self.
During the last few days, I’ve been mostly not working much. My keyboard died again, so I spent a few days writing on paper, which I thought was actually helpful, but actually it turns out that I went much slower than I thought I was going, so that wasn’t great. And there were days of not writing at all working against me. I’m sort of amazed I’m this close at all.
Eight thousand to go. I’ve made almost that much this month. I can do that.
As long as I just start working.
(I’ve never been this close to failing before. I’ve never been so apathetic about failing, either.)
For someone who faced so many setbacks early in the month, you’ve made a great comeback. 8K in one day is definitely possible, but it won’t be easy: I wish you luck!
I believe in you! You can do it if you just set your mind to it, we both know that. You’re so close something I think you really want: now you just need to reach out and grab it.
So the NaNo people are talking about all the inspirational 10k sprints they’re seeing and how impressive they are. Meanwhile, I’m over here saying “Meh, I only have eight thousand to write, no big deal”.
Even though I don’t think I’ve ever actually written that much in one day. It’s the last day of NaNo and I still haven’t really started writing. I really need to write something. Like, now.
But I’m sort of waiting until I get into the car to drive home and my parents keep putting off our departure. Pretty sure I’m going to just go out there right now, and stop waiting.
Two thousand in two and a half hours. I have enough time, at this pace, I think. Hopefully I’ll be somewhat faster than this, though.
Also, don’t you love it when Shuffle cooperates with your mood? I turned on Les Mis soundtrack, and the first song to come up was One Day More, which 1. is my favorite song on the entire disc and 2. is perfectly appropriate for other reasons.
Two thousand in two and a half hours is really good! *encouraging pies*
By the way, thank you for all the encouraging words, Agent Lightning and Bookgirl! I really appreciate them.
I’m at 47k now, having just inflicted horrible emotional pain on one protagonist. I almost want to finish up with a 3k hour, but I think I’d rather finish up with more quality writing, if I can.
What is with this apathy? Shouldn’t I be excited, anxious, enthusiastic? Shouldn’t I care about this? I mean, I’ve called this month my favorite of the entire year. I always look forward to this event, but this year it’s like I can’t even be bothered to care. Maybe I’ll be happier when I actually win. Probably not. Probably I don’t care enough because I always knew I was going to be able to do it, in the end. I almost want to fail this year, because maybe then next year I won’t take it for granted. Or maybe I’ll just try to do more than the minimum next year.
Five more hours. Three more thousand. I think probably by the time I finish, my main characters will actually be more or less on the same page, and have met each other and everything. For the first time.
So I made it! With an hour and a half to spare. Cutting it closer than ever before, I believe, but a win is a win. Five years in a row, now.
My dad got like 3k more than I did. I could be competitive about that, but I honestly don’t have the energy. Just the thought of writing that makes me tired.
Great job, Errata!
*cheers*
*throws confetti*
Everyone else got confetti, too, right? Confetti for Agent Lightning! Confetti for Catwings! Confetti for Rebecca!
Wheeee! (or is that Whewwww!) Thanks, Errata! Confetti for you, too!
Yay! Great job, Errata! I knew you could do it!
Well done Errata!
I’m… actually looking into options for publishing this thing once I’ve finished editing the manuscript. This is a little scary.
I wish I could say something actually intelligent and helpful, but all I can say is good luck!