Write a novel in a month! NaNoWriMo 2006 for CoH
By
Accel,
Posted on: 2006-10-26 14:40 in Multi-Media Fan Creations
Pfft... 2000 words in a day? I've done about 4 hours work on mine all together.. and about 5500 words... I'm not worried... Fastest route to writers block, is to worry about your wordcount! Just write, create, express yourself, and worry not about how many words you write!
Whether you succeed or fail is irrelevant, what matters is enjoying the journey, and NOT writing something Mills & Boon would print! 
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
[ QUOTE ]
Bridger: FFM is pretty much spot on
Shades: take FFM's advice 
[/ QUOTE ]
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
Some people seem to have hit the block. NaNoWriMo's way is to battle that block with wordcount and get the novel done instead of dreaming maybe one day completing it. If some folks can generate huge amounts of quality text at will all the better for them, but not all can. I'm one of those people. I need either a rush of inspiration or an external motivator, such as a nice shiny freshly printed certificate that says I achieved something. That I get to do it with loads of other kindred souls makes it that much more special.
Each writes his own way of course, and as long as new words appear all is good.
However, in NaNoWriMo the goal is to get a certain wordcount, so it matters. Maybe not to all, but to a lot of people. To me at least and hopefully to most of those who signed on for some once-a-year creative novel writing frenzy.
Keep it up, good folks. Keep it up. One quarter is behind already.
i find my work's become more quality since picking up a pen and my trust book of lined paper and leaving the word behind.. gone is the handy word count tool and distracting green and red squiggly lines. gone is the mind block of the day as i watch my multi-coloured inks flow from the felt nib onto my lovely clean, crisp paper. Gone is the feeling that you eyes may fall out from watching the light of the computer screen start to flash against your retina...
Join me brothers and sister!!
Lay down your keyboards! Let you harddrives defrag as you craft a work of art with your own nimble fingers!
Repent!
Just shy of 20,000 words, and my plot bunny still doesn't seem to want to show himself. I've tried coaxing him out with juicy open-ended scenarios twice now, and both times he's stayed lurking at the back of my mind refusing to come out until the time is right.
At this speed, he won't appear until I'm at 49,995 words, and I'll still be writing this same story come next year's NaNoWriMo.
I've sunk so low, I've started killing off one of my main characters, just so he'll pop up and save her before I lose the entire point of the story.
He'd better be perfect, y'know?
And then cry when the time comes to type it up, and you can't read your own handwriting!
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
[ QUOTE ]
I've sunk so low, I've started killing off one of my main characters, just so he'll pop up and save her before I lose the entire point of the story.
He'd better be perfect, y'know?
[/ QUOTE ]
Ha. You are Joss Whedon and I claim my ten dollars. Now get back to writing Wonder Woman you scamp and make sure that she isn't just a Buffy rip off!!!
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
Myopic Aardvark on Twitter
[ QUOTE ]
And then cry when the time comes to type it up, and you can't read your own handwriting!
[/ QUOTE ]
actually i have insanely neat handwriting, when writing fast all that changes is my writing goes a bit italic but is still neat
I'm still on target, despite a day's rest, should reach 27,500 or so by the end of Sunday. I'm not going to rush myself and add to the wordcount though, as that'll just mess things up completely. I'm pacing myself so I have a reasonable amount to write each day, and once it's done, I have an evening free to do things that don't involve writing.
There's no way I could write with a pad and pen these days. My old (old) English teacher would kill me if she saw me doing it but I tend to write the parts I have inspiration for and then cut and paste them in to the story where they belong. I find it a lot better than trying to write in order because if I get the block on one bit I can just switch to another bit later on in the story.
Maybe doing it this way will bite me in the bum later but it's working pretty good so far.
I don't think I could get my head around copy+pasting parts of a story around. I just start from the beginning of each chapter, and write as it comes to me. Heck, the chapter I'm writing right now won't have Ethan, the main character, in it at all, but I didn't think of that until 10 minutes ago or so, and so will continue the chapter in that way.
well ts is crud.. won't work.. gunna try opening the computer *gasp* and seeing what's blown up... after i eat poptarts
Authors have all kinds of different methods of writing their stories. Some start from the beginning and write their way through it, I remember one (published, so he must know something?) telling how he writes the first and last chapter at first and then fills out the story in between, and quite many write bits and pieces here and then arrange it to chronological order.
Personally, I tend to write linearly, and then come back and tweak it around quite a bit, but I can also write non-linear way if I'm hitting a block of one part of the story.
So worry not, your way of writing is just as good as any other that fits someone else.
Blackdove
Now at 18,200 words, so 700 above target so far. As usual, the next chapter is up to read in the 'Dark Heart' thread.
(And if anyone here is reading it, please comment if you have anything to say. I can't make the story better if you don't say what's wrong with it. )
I'm aiming to ding 15k before I hit the sack tonight. Hopefully that'll wrap up four of the five chapters I've been working on which'll clear the way to starting on a few others that desperately need to get underway.
So many threads so little time
I have stared at the screen for half an hour, managed 176 words of utter pap and then exploded.
Bah.
The Purple Party Pagan of Paragon
Globals: @Morgana Fiolett / @Genevieve Moore
Altoholic with too many characters to count now I have all these shiny servers...
Got up to 5799 words tonight, not really worried about making it TBH.. I'm having fun, and that's what counts!
Chapter two is done.. might post it up later...
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
667 words short of tonight's target atm and they won't be enough to close the last two chapters I wanted to finish. Not too bad a thing really, having read it over again my chapter 10 has a couple of possible starting points so I can leave that until chapter 9 has run its course. Chapter 5 needs a bit of a rewrite in one part so I'll basically be swapping out some wordage there for new stuff.
Chapter's 1 and 2 are done now and ahead of a small amount of keyhole surgery I can safely say I'm proud of them.
I'll take a break for cup of coffee and an episode of Monkey now then it's full steam to 15,000
34,992 words to go
Chapter 5 is proving problematic so I ended up provisionally cutting a wedge out of it and writing a chunk of chapter 3 instead.
And now, sleep.
I was stalled at 13740. The entire afternoon + evening was spent with zerglings with simply no way to produce fiction. In the evening I more or less edited slightly a bigger chapter into two parts and pushed the first one out (as well as the next one on a different timeline).
Oh well, more words today. Missing quota just means more for some other day.
Oh hey, yay! It's 7 past 9 and there's coffee available. I'll go sneak and nick a mug.
Yesterday's troubled mind put me down so that I need 5,000 by the end of today to catch up. Better get writing, just as soon as the house gets back above 16 degrees.bbbbrrrrrr.
Some of you have received this already. Some may have not. Hear hear, this is the gospel. Chris Baty from NaNoWriMo.org spoke thusly:
****************
Dear NaNoWriMo Participant,
Hi there! It's Chris Baty again. And if you accepted the challenge in last week's email, you opened a comfortable word-count lead right out of the gate, increased that lead in the first weekend, and are now sailing far ahead of pace, preparing to plunge into the 20,000s.
You are looking good, feeling great, and your back is slowly accumulating an array of "kick me" signs, placed there by your fellow participants as you sprinted past us. A few signs, though, are a small price to pay for victory. And you *are* going to be victorious. If you are a day or less from 20K, you have everything it takes to win, and win big. Keep it up. Don't slow down. We admire you, even if you made us feel so bad about ourselves that we had to put those signs on you.
But this email is not for those doing exceptionally well. It's for the rest of us---authors with underdeveloped word counts, overdeveloped novel-guilt complexes, and sensational procrastinating abilities. Because we are the ones who are going to begin having serious misgivings about this whole escapade in the next seven days.
Why?
Because it turns out we are too busy to do this.
Or because a crisis has brought some novel-eating turmoil into our lives.
Or because our stories are really, really bad, and we're wondering why we're sacrificing so much of our time to produce a consistently crappy book.
It all adds up to the fabled Week Two Wall---a low-point of energy, enthusiasm, and joie de novel that strikes most NaNoWriMo participants between days 7 and 14. This is when our inner editors, who largely turned a blind eye to our novel flailings in Week One, return to see how things are going. And their assessments are never kind.
The plot is draggy. The characters are boring. The dialogue is pointless, and the prose has all the panache of something dashed off by a distracted kindergartner.
If you're feeling any of these things---or find yourself starting to feel them this week---know that nothing is wrong. In fact, you're likely on track for a great NaNoWriMo. Just lower your head, pick up your pace, and write straight into the maw of your misgivings. If you are thinking about quitting, DO NOT DO IT IN WEEK TWO.
If you have to quit, do it in Week Three.
I'm serious.
Because if you quit in Week Two, you're going to miss an amazing moment---the moment when your novel begins to click. You'll miss a genius plot twist you can't foresee right now that will suddenly elevate your book from a distressing mess to a sort-of-tolerable mess. And then you'll miss the euphoric breakthrough that follows that twist, when your book improves itself all the way to not-half-bad.
Not-half-bad will make you scream, it feels so good.
And you know what? The more you write, the better it gets. So make it a priority to write in torrents this week. Allow your characters to change, and have change forced upon them. Follow your intuition, even if it leads away from where you thought your book was heading. And know that writing a novel is like building a car. Your only job this month is to create a clunky machine that will eventually move people from one place to another. If your beast rolls at all at this point, you're doing great. Pretty prose, snappy dialogue, brilliant metaphors---they're all part of the high-gloss paint job and finishing touches we put on *after* the body is built.
In December, we'll have nothing but time for adding flames to our hoods and airbrushing a majestic eagle or pair of sunrise stallions on the sides of our new rides. For now, the 20,000s are calling, and we can't get distracted by the small stuff if we're going to get there. In the challenging confines of Week Two, our books will truly be built. Characters will evolve. Plots will unfold. It's going to be difficult at times, but once we make it into (and out of) the 20,000s, everything gets much easier. And envious tales of our literary feat-in-the-making will begin circulating amongst our friends, family, and co-workers.
At which point, we'll probably find a note or two on our backs as well.
It'll be awesome.
Keep plowing onward, brave writer! Good things are coming. I'll be back next Wednesday for some thoughts on Week Three.
Dreaming about my airbrushed eagle,
Chris
NaNoWriMo
8400 words and counting
*************************
This is the spirit, folks! Write, write hard. Don't mind the quality because the whole point of NaNoWriMo is to get to the fabled 50k. You have the rest of your lives to write quality, this is your shot to being a Novelist. This year. This month.
Dare to dream.
A dearly departed friend of mine once said
"We are the Myth Makers, We struggle with the Id, and having defeated it, return to the normal life."
GL with your battles. 
I got that email this morning and it came at exactly the right time. My original plan was to have 3 roughly equal size parts, the first set in Stalingrad, the last in Berlin and the middle one following H Company's adventures as they advance west.
Trouble is the Stalingrad section is heading somewhere other than I intended, leaving me with the uncomfortable choice of chopping a wodge out of what I've got so far and leaving a few key characters hanging, or running with it and see how it pans out. Happily, getting that email made the choice for me
This is the second week now and the magical barrier of 10k is behind for most of us. The initial fuel has been used and the actual work begins. Now it's time to press on, grit the teeth and muster the fury to carry on despite hardships!
The second week. There is still the echo of the good results from the week one. You think this is hard? Wait until week 3 hits you in the face. That's the desert time with no water. That's the period when the end is far and the workload weights the heaviest. So I present you now with an additional challenge.
By the end of this week we should be at 25k by schedule. That's with the initial fervor of the first week compared against the roughest of all, the third week. I challenge you all to make a good dash right now when the second week is going on! Don't aim for 25k, aim for 30k! That's right, allow yourself some slack in the second half of NaNoWriMo. Struggle now, take it easier later.
Think about it, just 10k per week for the rest of the month. That's just 1430 words a day. Surely a nice break considering it'll get harder before it gets easier.
For me this means getting over 2000 words per day for this week. Am I going to do it? I sure as all nether realms will give it my best shot! When the enthusiasm fails rely on spirit. When spirit fails, rely on grit.
Don't give up, fellow writers. Press on. Remember, amidst all the drek there will be an infinite amount of beauty. Dare to dream on and strive for the finish. Just imagine - your own novel. How it feels at the end of the month. Thousands set out to do it. Thousands did it. And you're one of them. A proud, tired but of so very proud NaNoWriMo winner! You print that certificate out and scribble your name on it and the world is your oyster.
The only one you are competing against is you. Don't let yourself win. Win it yourself!
I have been slacking today, writing up some timelines that don't really matter that much. It's time to turn back to fiction. A whole lot of words need to appear on the screen today.
How about you guys?