NaNoWriMo

As Na No Wri Mo approaches, I was wondering how prepared other people are. Personally, I'm still working on the plot and some characters, but I should be ready by Na No Wri Mo. How 'bout you?

Not nearly prepared enough, I expect. I should probably be doing more writing exercises, but I feel sort of worried about 'using up' my creativity. But if it's in danger of getting used up by a few exercises, what hope do I have to keep it going for a month? At the moment I'm trying to get as much planning (i.e. staring into space) as possible done in advance because that's what tends to suck up the time while I'm writing. I'm on step 5 of the snowflake method, and steps 6 and 7 are supposed to take a week each so that's not gonna happen, but it might help a bit.

My story is actually pretty planned. My idea for this year is actually my idea from last year; I just supplanted last year's idea with another one at the last minute. So I'm just kind of gliding along, waiting for November.

Planning? Bah. I throw words on the page and see what happens.

But this time I actually bothered to plot out the basic concept and rules for the story, so that's something.

I prepared poorly. I didn't actually sign up for Na No Wri Mo until four days into it. I made it 600 words into my story before I realized that I would have to deal with my greatest foe:

Dialogue.

I can't even manage a good conversation in Real Life interacting with other people, how am I supposed to manage this for a whole book?

For me, I'm finding it to be actions that frame dialogue.

Seriously, you can make a drinking game out of how many times my characters look, do something with their eyes or hands, and so on. I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with them.

I am wondering; is it okay to insert subjects that might be considered taboo or offensive in NNWM work?

Also, do I have to sign up for anything?

I'm discovering that dialogue is absolutely God's gift to wordcounts. Sure, it's often not very entertaining to read, but it's fun to write and once your characters are up and running you can just churn it out.

d Roy, I think it's sort of up to you? There's the NaNoWriMo website where you can track wordcounts and submit things at the end for a certificate but as I understand it the important thing is just to participate in whatever way works best for you. Judging from a lot of the topics I've seen taboo and offensive seem to be pretty much the norm.

edited 5th Nov '12 10:25:12 AM by Kesteven

I see.

So far I have been just working on my Word document and I was wondering if I had to actually submit whatever I write daily.

Heh, at the end of my second day of writing, I'm up to 3600 words. I've decided to just bulldog my way through the dialogue and find somneone to help me fix it later. Starting to think I should change this from 3rd person to 1st person.

It's six days in and I haven't written/typed a single word for my story. I either fall asleep or just say I'll do it tomorrow. I plan on writing at least the opening tonight, at least.

Yeah seriously, just sit down and start writing. In fact, do it right now. It's actually really easy to meet the daily target if you just do it instead of procrastinating, but the longer you leave it the more daunting it seems.

I keep thinking 'oh but I'll be more inspired to write after I've done <activity that's not writing>'. Wrong.

edited 6th Nov '12 4:41:15 PM by Kesteven

I've decided to participate this year to finally prove to myself I can finish a book, and it's been going well so far. I'm just a little over a fifth of the way to my goal, and it's really difficult to resist the urge to go back and edit things until I think they're near perfect.

I'm convinced that by the time I hit 50,000 words, I'll probably end up having to go back and chop out 40,000 of the words to get a coherent story. So far there hasn't been any witty narration like I was expecting, just a sort of flow-of-conciousness of a story based on events I can't quite remember any more (writing a story based on my experiences in Basic, which was over 5 years ago and was by its very nature a very hectic and sleep-deprived affair).

Currently 10,200 words. I am trying to write at least 1,700 words per day.

Right now, the main character is in a very large library, fighting off a demented offspring of Barbie and Slendyman with combination of Sig SAUER P226, Smith and Wesson combat knife, and general not-giving-a-fuckery.

It is pretty disjointed, to say the least.

I plan on doing this in a non-serious fashion.

Probably once I get done with a dozen other things I MUST DO.

The first rule of Na No Wri Mo is that everything that isn't Na No Wri Mo is optional. EVERYTHING.

The past few days, I keep getting home late, so I'm technically a day late on my word counts. I'll get back in working order soon, I think.

Plus side: My novel is going very well! I'm pleased with how it's turning out. Originally it was practice in starting quickly without my characteristic amounts of buildup; it inadvertently became practice in "How much foreshadowing can I stuff into a single seemingly-innocent line." So far, the answer has been "pretty dang much." I have gone absolutely foreshadowing-bonkers in this one. I even included foreshadowing in one of the Deviant Art descriptions I wrote for one of the chapters I did, wherein I linked to a song that more or less exactly describes the turning point in my plot and some major events that occur in the later half of the story, in not-exactly-subtle terms. So far, no one who's commented on it seems to have clicked on the song, and if they did, they just seem to think it's me talking about my writing music.

50,000 words. 103 pages. 9 1/2 days. 1 manuscript.

Writin' books...like a BOSS.

Holy fuck, man.

Woot, I finally started today... 239 words, so far!

However, that was the first half of the opening poem, so I'm not actually unhappy with the pace in this case.

Never really having systematically written poetry before, I made an interesting observation, too: I can't do it while listening to music with lyrics. The lines, which I normally don't even consciously notice when doing any other kind of mental work, completely throw me off when trying to versesmith. Once I switched to instrumental, the problem disappeared right away. Heh.

I'm rather far behind. My goal had been to write 2,000 words a day and at this moment I'm about... 19,000 words behind. Got to love procrastination. That preparation thing didn't work out for me, as I decided to throw it all out, and then just go with the flow. I've also noticed that writing the intro was rather hard, but I sped up a bit after that. Anyone else have that?

17K!

Decided to start a sequel since I still have three weeks. 2,000 words this morning. Hehe, I like writing detective novels.

Damn, DS, you scary.