NaNoWriMo 2009

here we can talk about NaNoWriMo 2009.

I got 2064 words done last night after midnight, hope to double that today. Missed the local kickoff yesterday but I am aiming to buy a laptop this week and might go some some local write-ins.

I just had a look at an attempt I made about two or three years ago. I remember now how depressing it was to come up with this seemingly huge chunk of text and then look at the word count: 579. I wish I could just think of a good standard plot to copy, something noir-ish with established characters and strong twists, and then start scaffolding around that. Every time I try to think of a plot I'd like to steal my mind goes blank. Any ideas?

past 5300 words now, hoping to stay at least 1 day ahead of the prescribed daily count for the course of the month.

mm, haven't actually started yet, may not be able to until sunday... this is not looking great.

Well, I'm at 4,404 words. Unfortunately so far it reads like an episode of Melrose Place. The NEW Melrose Place.

mine reads like melrose place as typed by monkeys

Merlin Mann OTM again:

http://www.43folders.com/2009/11/02/nanowrimo-advice

i am writing a short story for the first time in ages. since i'm also in thesis hell mode, i don't have time for a novel. but bon chance to all of you...!

Been meaning to do this for 2 years now. I really don't see much point apart from achieving better fluency and consistency in later works, I mean A Tale of Two Cities wasn't written on a rainy day. I'm as much as a hermit now (with uni work, etc) as I'll ever be though, so I might actually try it out.

ARGH I was gonna do this, this year.

But I've lost 4 days due to the craziness this past weekend. I tend to write quite quickly, so can I make up the time?

When I'm into something, I can write 10,000 words in a day. But I need focus and no interruptions in order to get that kind of speed up.

People who haven't started yet can definitely catch up, all it takes is one good day of everyone leaving you the hell alone to get in the game. Last year a fortuitous weekend house-sitting pushed me from 30K to done!

Anyway if you're doing the "write 1666 words a day" method, you only need to have ~5000 words by the end of today, that's not too crazy.

can I make up the time?

I take it the whole point of NaNoWriMo is to obliterate the process of overthinking what you write. In which case, I suggest just start the dang thang and keep going until you are done. Go back and read it afterward, if you must, but while you're writing, just forge ahead and damn the torpedos! You'll make up the 'lost' time.

Yeah, you can catch up. Last year I worked on a political campaign in the middle of the month for 2 weeks and only had 18,000 by the last week but managed to win with 50,400 or so at the end.

This year I am trying to build an early cushion - 8,000+ already, hope to finish the day at 10,000.

The point is definitely to get past over thinking and also to build confidence - the advice liked upthread is good: Writers Write. the arbitrary deadline forces you to keep writing for the sake of it, and by the end you start to believe that yes, you can write, no matter how unreadable the end result may be.

Well, I get my laptop back tonight so I can start work on it TONIGHT.

My boss is in Glasgow today, so I'm wondering if I can cheekily get started at work. Hrmmmmm...

I suppose I can at least do background character and plot research while I'm at work so I can keep all my at-home-time for just bashing it out.

I started yesterday, which... is something. I figure once I get into it, it will go a bit smoother.

finally hit 2k. which is rubbish but at least i now feel like i have started and can sit down and type and be cool with doing this. scary blank page was scary.

also lol at me saying 'i started yesterday' three days ago. that was about 100 words iirc.

I am actually managing to do mad catch-up this weekend. I had only 1032 words by Thursday night, but I've just leapt up to 9200 today, and I'm sure I'll crack 10,000 this evening, and be back on track by tomorrow.

It really helps not having a life.

Already, it's changed from what I thought it would be. I was going to write a straight horror story, but I've got a little bit too much into "meet the nice victims" and it's taken on class satire aspects and got into black humour already. I dislike both my main characters so much at this point, the smug bastards, that I'm really going to enjoy feeding them to a monster or whatever twists this story will take.

Just keep on writing, let the story take over, and you'll be away.

I just went over 13,000, which is the best I've ever done in a NaNo. So I guess the pressure's off. LOL

word to the wise: never re-read your work. it's all shit. :-(

Yeah be careful with rereading.

Aiming to close out at 15,000 tonight.

I'm at 11K and it's all still the same scene. Like, 1/5 of this book is the same three characters having a conversation in the same room. It's like a novelization of the world's worst one-act play.

This is the thing with NaNoWriMo. It's not usually inability that kills novels - it's easy to churn out a couple of thousand words a day. It's self doubt that kills you, when you look back and hate everything you've written - that's what stops you. With NaNoWriMo, you just have to keep going.

(Thing is, I've got to used to writing FF, and with that, by the time you get to this point, you've posted a couple of chapters and had some nice comments (hopefully) just because people automatically like the characters ahead of time so you've got an easier job.)

With this, it's just you and your big bad ole negative self esteem.

ok miss i-write-for-a-living :) for us simpletons this is actually hard work

also, today i found a bunch of ol' plan bs and was wondering what you write under while i waste time flipping through them later

eh? I don't write for a living. I'm a blinkin' mathematician for a living!

I live to write, not write to live, heh heh.

My problem is, I *have* to go back and read what I wrote before to prevent continuity errors. 5000 words in, I changed the name of the town where it all happens. 8000 words in, I changed whose idea it was to actually go and live there, so I had to go back and adjust the beginning.

My problem is, I very much *do* have a story arc in my head, and even though this always changes when you actually get your characters down on paper and start bringing them to life, I have to adjust previous things (especially the foreshadowings) when bits of that story arc change.

Anyway, I'm gonna stop posting megalong posts to ILX and get back to writing. After breakfast.

Right. We are going to be doing extraordinary feets of multitasking this Saturday - two of the DJs at Crafternoons are going to attempt to DJ and NaNoWriMo SIMULTANEOUSLY AT THE SAME TIME.

Should be fine if we stick to 18 minute Patrick Cowley remixes, right?

Big-ups to those doing this! I started one basically because a girl I really liked was doing it. Then we finally got together this weekend. But I am still going to finish it, not just for her, but because I'm quite happy with how it's going. It's a sort of political ghost-story! :D

I hit 16k last night and feeling quite smug coz I'm ahead of all my writing buddies.

Of course now I completely want to rewrite the whole thing, but I've got to push through and keep going.

That's pretty impressive. I'm on about 10,000 (was ahead of schedule with 9,000 on Friday but y'know how it goes). Gonna be a busy week. And yes, push through! Don't delete a word. Unless it's grammatically extraneous.

It's really impressive considering I only started on Thursday and was at 2000 words Friday lunchtime! If there's one thing I can do, it's spit out verbiage.

closing in on the 1/2 way mark. I'm closing in on 27,000 right now!

a paltry 12,700. but my gf and i are having a massive day of wordcount obliteration tomorrow.

get a room

i have already described our NaNo attentions as 'like polyamory, but with more adverbs'

I was doing great, best ever, before losing two days to an abrupt appearance of the Black Dog. Dammit. But it seems to be passing, and I will return to writing. I do swear by Grabthar's Hammer!

i'm on track quantity wise, albeit sleepy

I got about 10k posts ahead of schedule (I'm 30k and change now) and started feeling smug. I took last night off due to tiredness and I'm gonna have to take tonight off due to socialising - gotta watch to not let that lead slip.

However, I've decided to give up any pretense of a plot for the next 20k words and just turn it into shameless Aphex Twin fan fiction - that seems the most appropriate thing for a horror story that needs some sex to spice it up. Not like anyone will know.

Oh, the freedom of staying a few days ahead of the minimum count!

Fail. Fail. I fail. I am fail. Dammit.

Ha ha, I've been interviewed for NaNoWriMo:

http://london.blog.qype.com/2009/11/nanolondon-making-november-less-dismal-part-2/

(too bad the interview didn't count towards my word count)

The East London hipster version

so er how's everyone's novelling going

spent the morning about to write my first word

i went to a meetup this week, in an ice cream shop. it was alright.

I am stalled in the low 40k area.

I knew this would happen. There is so much that needs to happen NEXT but I've spent so much on build-up I don't know how to get there.

I know NaNoWriMo say to skip to the good bits, no reason to write in order, but I find it so HARD to write out of order.

only at about 10k...

< 10k

wondering if i can double it between meetings. 6k for this saturday, 12k for the following weds, 25k the saturday after, finish by the it's-over 'party'

< 10

I'm not in it this year, but I was messing around on the Internet Anagram Server and found this quote...

Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way. E.L. Doctorow

Except some people reckon you should start with a map:

http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_5452236_plan-novel-using-snowflake-method.html?cr=1

Wrote 12 words this week. Mind you, they're quality words.

what are they?

Started today. Knuckled down and got a couple of thousand done this afternoon. Forgot that I'd already written this chapter before. However, buoyed by finding that I'd saved it in a document with another chapter of the same story. A crafty bit of cut & paste and I'm at 3700.

I'm stuck at about 13,000. Well, I say stuck. I've given up on NaNoWriMo and decided to concentrate upon a) my term's journalism work and b) writing a novel that is good

it should be done by late december/some time in january

for some reason i lied to my friend about my wordcount but she has started reading it so i have been super motivated just to make it up to the number i said i got to and am finally in rhythm with a couple thou a day.

its not good, in fact it is proper gash. just wanna know i can do it more than anything, have always been caught in teh fear of inability before.

And I quote...

"Please tell me you didn't expect gratitude. Even you aren't that stupid."

Hold the applause. Thank you. Just send money. I'll be here all week. And the week after. And most likely the week after that, as well.

haha.
Just past 40,000 myself. would love to close it out this weekend!

I just hit 46k last night.

I think I'm going to win tonight. Maybe. I hope. Definitely this weekend.

past 42k now, definitely aiming for a Sunday finish.

I don't hate any of you. I don't, really. *glaring at my stalled-out 15K doc*

48101!!!!!

I am so winning this tonight!

(only halfway through actual plot, so I have to keep going anyway, but still.)

just hit 50243!!!

I WIN I WIN I WIN!!!! I wasn't expecting that to happen so early. Does that mean I can kick back and spend the rest of the weekend just writing Aphex Twin smut fanfic instead of banging out the rest of this story?

well done kate! i however have written 200 words today, when i was planning on doing 4k. still all night left to look at my blank screen drinking whisky.

Sorry, 150 words.

I can give you some of mine - I still have loads to spare. :-D

I am determined to finish this novel, although I think it may take until January. And then I'll delete it and start again, knowing what not to do next time.

I think, also, I have just found the pivotal bit of my novel to get me from Now to the Climax.

One of those completely random things that only ever happens when you are in the flow of writing. Two of the main characters were driving down a dark road (read an interesting quote recently that writing is like driving at night - you can only ever see as far ahead as the headlights) and encountered one of the minor characters broken down at the side of the road.

He was really just a prop for one of the characters to get out of the conversation she didn't want to be having, but I've realised that he can play the pivotal role.

I need my female lead to do something really stupid and flakey to trigger off the important events that will provide the climax. Now, she is stupid and flakey and frequently stoned, but I needed to get her to do something that is a massive display of stupidity, even for her. This minor character can provide that push. And now I know why he kept turning up in the story.

the plot has got to speed up, though. this is getting ridiculous, how long it takes for anything to happen.

why not just make it happen then? you are in charge.

I'm not in charge. That's the thing that lot's of people don't really understand about writing fiction. You're not always in charge. Your characters are.

um

if my main character was in charge of anything, i think it would end up being the movie scanners.

you're in charge

yuh, if someone else is typing yr novel they won and not you

Seriously, I'm not in charge. Well, I am, in that I created the characters. But characters are kinda like children. You create them, but they take on their own lives, and you really can't force them to do anything that's against their natures. Or rather, you shouldn't. The work will be totally implausible if you do.

OK, the plot of this novel, involving sea monsters and cthulhu, is fairly implausible. But I hope that my characters react to the things I'm about to throw at them, in a way that is plausibly in keeping with who they are and what their personalities are.

However, one of my main characters is a completely fucking blethering stoner/computer programmer/noize dude type who can't smoke his way out of a paper bag. And my lead is an annoying woman who stepped off the pages of the Guardian's Have Your Say, and between the pair of them, they get NOTHING done.

what's cthulhu?

I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL

http://roberthood.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/cthulhu.jpg

go for it, you'd only inherit severe laziness, an inability to write anything dec and an awkward crush on my best friend

you'd also start to like jazz

hey, it's not ME that eats souls, it's Cthulhu up there! ^^^^^^^

Now stop mucking about on the internets and get back to your wordcount. I can muck about, I've already won. But you need to get back to the grindstone!

Hey, Cosmic Dentistry (Masonic Boom) --- I know exactly what you mean about how you don't write the story, the characters do. That's how it works for me, too. I generally have a rough idea of the direction I want them to go in, but many's the time I've ended up way off in another direction entirely. And it turns out that was the right way to go.

Yeah. Damn uppity fictions. Insisting on having their own minds and making their own (largely stupid) decisions.

Seriously, though... I do think a lot of writing, especially when you're in the zone, in the flow, whatever you call it, comes straight out of the subconscious without bothering to show any passports at the border of consciousness. It's coming from me, but from a part of me that I don't have normal diplomatic relations with.

That's my theory, anyway. Your mileage may vary.

That's a very good way of putting it, actually, HJ.

Though, after years of pyschotherapy you'd think I'd have better border relations with my subconscious, and for the most part, I do. But it can still surprise me. (more often in songwriting, where I tend to write songs without knowing what they mean - only to find, a few months later, that I'm in the exactly situation that my subconscious saw coming but I didn't.)

But eating all that cheese yesterday worked. I had a good bout of dreaming, even managed to attain a brief stretch of semi-lucid dreaming where the last links fell into place.

you ever start to think yr writing voice is that of a retard who doesn't understand the english language? re-reading is the devil and i am starting again.

I reached that point last year. I was too lazy to start again, so what I did instead was tell myself "ha ha I'm going to show the world what a terrible writer I am!". It's a technique called paradoxical intention which I first read about in Victor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning". I use it for a lot of things, everything from songwriting to trying to get to sleep ("ha ha I'm going to show the world how well I can stay awake all night!" a few minutes later ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ).

Sweet jesus.

I already hit 50k last night, but I couldn't stop writing today.

have just leapt from 53k to 67k in under 24 hours. I don't think I've ever written anything that fast before, in my life. And I am a fast writer. But 15k in a day... OK, I haven't bathed or done the laundry and I've only eaten once this morning, but that's just...

Christ, it's fucking mental shit, as well. Totally unpublishable. Except for an *incredibly* esoterick market I'm not sure I would ever want to get involved with. It's reached levels of wrongness I don't really want to contemplate, how the hell they came out of my brain. I really should probably be locked up.

daaaaaaaaaaamn girl

no, really. DAMNED girl.

have you ever given any serious thought to what Cthulhu's penis would look like? Here's a clue.

DON'T. It will drive you mad just contemplating it.

I'm gonna try and eat something but I'm really having trouble engaging with reality right now.

though, that said, actually "really, I'm an atheist" is kinda the funniest thing you could possibly say to Cthulhu at the moment of climax.

Finished tonight, and gained an extra 800 words or something when I validated. I guess the website is counting some character as a word that my own computer skipped over. oh well!

I donated too, which I feel good about. The website with the little bars, tracking my progress, helps me write and the least I can do is help them keep going - I'm glad they're doing it.

Congratulations Kate!

For real, that's amazing!

So, uh, 8 hours to go. I wrote 8K last night and have 10K left. I'm pretty sure I can do it, but man is this book going to be tonally lopsided.

Most of my "writing buddies" on the NaNo website have been done for days, the competent bastards.

This month was tough. My father died. As a result, I fell far behind on the word count. In a way though, I started at some point to feel that he would have wanted me to finish this, so...I wrote. And wrote. And eventually, or to be precise last night, I posted the big messy thing and 'won'. Good luck to all who are making that final push tonight, and congrats to ALL.

daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn

*hugz*

thank you, and *hugz back*

Oh man. I'm so sorry for your loss, and that's impressive as hell that you made it through to the end.