Write a novel in a month! NaNoWriMo 2006 for CoH
By
Accel,
Posted on: 2006-10-26 14:40 in Multi-Media Fan Creations
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YOu can do it, Coile! if I knew where you lived, I'd come make you a cup of tea to help you on your way!
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Thanks Jakey. It's not that I couldn't do it, with the same quota and just upping the needed wordcount and days. With an extra week and extra words needed I'd certainly get there.
I get sometimes ups and downs, and on downs I just get disheartened momentarily. I doubt the sanity of witing, running an SG or doing plots, even playing at all. Usually it gets over soon, and if by evening the downer isn't gone I just opt to shoot a few pixels and let the mind wander and get into rp mentality in an hour. But with writing that means a day lost. At this point I'm facing IRL situation and a realistic goal of words per day that I can produce, and it's not all that much. Pushing today's quota to the remaining days might prove to be an impossibility. Maybe. And there's no guarantees that the downer goes away even tomorrow.
I had a short talk about the story and the direction, or the lack of it, both over msn and by PMs and I'm slightly more back on track. The main story, the Timeline Prime, has stalled and its progress is dependent on IG actions. Al lother pieces are refelected on it and build towards it. Now I have 3-4 timelines running towards - what? I suddenly don't know. IG events that are taking now place are very interesting but they don't build on the main storyline, they if anything offer even more tendrils that I know I have to cover to create the whole story.
I guess it's about persisting today. Writing even if the feeling is not up there. It would be daft to quit now, this close. It's 7 pm and I have 500 words down. A thousand more and I stay in the zone. If I make it up to 2k today I'm that much closer to the target, hoping the up-draft begins at least tomorrow.
Oh, I tend to listen to some music while I write. Rock, metal, that sort of stuff. Ranging from Beach Boys to Manowar and from Jean-Michel Jarre to Moonspell. I guess I need some good tunes and see what's cooking.
Now, zergling time.
I mostly listened to Edguy and Iron Maiden for mine. Though sometimes I like to mix it up with some Vivaldi. I usually like to find an album for a story so I associate the mental images with the music and then when I play the music, it reminds me of the things and feelings I thought of.
I get what you mean about the downs though. I crashed last week some time and didn't even WANT to get back up. 
back now though.
Sounds like you're well on your way though. I'm just here to offer incessant cheerleading ... uh ... thingy. Encouragement! That's the one. (I'm such a good word think gooder)
*waves pompoms or something*
Of course, now I'm done with my Nano and I'm only gadding about to cheer on the others ... I should starting doing my SG christmas presents ... I hope they don't recruit anyone new while I'm doing this, or my list of gifts to make is going to streeeeeeetch and it'll be Blackdove's Art Challenge, December edition.
Don't ask me about joining Honourable United, I'm lazy. Ask Captain Cathode.
http://www.onthejazz.co.uk/honu/
"If I had a punch, I would so hit that guy." - Millenium (because drinking nail varnish remover is for real men)
Well, I've already got the idea for my Screen Frenzy.
After the dark horror of "An Angel Lies With Us Now.", I'll be heading into the Suprising Adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Ceaser or something of that ilk.
(WARNING: Link contains bad language, drug references and two vile characters )
Edguy is always a good choice! I especially like songs Vain Glory Opera and Theater of Salvation, and of course Roses to No One is perfect for moody pieces. For cheering up their video Superheroes is superb!
Today while eating and hassling with zerglings I put some old lp's to play and got a dose of older Bon Jovi and a collection's worth of Deep Purple.
Consequently I finished my chapter at 2182 words telling finally the tale what happened to ND-1. I think just to celebrate the effort I'll post that to Creative.
45k cracked. 3 days to go. Just... what to write next?
I'm back at the keyboard after two days of no writing and have over 7,800 words to write in three days. That's far enough away to be painful and too close to not finish. Wish I'd got some more done yesterday though.
I read what I've written so far last night and there's some diablolical writing in it. I keep having to remind myself that its only the first draft and that next month it'll get a lot tighter. There're also a couple of chapters that are necessarily bitty but need to be restructured so they don't come over as disjointed. Hehe, I can almost hear my inner editor counting off the seconds until midnight on Thursday 
Hmmm, it's looking distinctly unlikely that I'll make the 50k by tomorrow night now. I've got over 6,000 words to write and a busy day tomorrow so writing that much will be difficult, especially since I seem to have lost my thread on the bit I've been working on.
Unless I get a spurt of inspiration this evening I'm gonna call it quits on hitting the wordcount for tomorrow and start the editing process ready for December's NaNoFiMo.
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* NaNoWriMo: 50588/50000 words
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You were going to mention this, when?
Congratulations!
T-minus 18 hours.
Thanks. 
Actually, I hit the mark but there's still the issue about an uncompleted dare. I ran my timelines side by side only to realise that to get to the event where the dare comes to play I had to commit to one single timeline at the end. Which worked quite well as firts time in a week or maybe two I'm telling a story instead of shooting at story pieces all over the place hoping they make sense to someone.
One more day, one more chapter.
Just to mention, tho I'm not sure how many actually cares, from the moment I accepted the dare I've known where to use it. It's one of the traumatizing moments that define the character and tie into the whole life situation that has made him the shy, socially somewhat inept guy who just don't know how to accept compliment or attention from a girl. It's not supposed to be fun or off the cuff or useless piece and I hope that I find today the creativity to do it justice.
Last night I wrote the chapter about his first encounter with the Rikti and likewise it should show why he has this troubled relationship with the alien invaders. All in all I'm trying to have this whole story tell who Andre (Coile) is the man that he is, where the drives that push him are coming from, where all the traumas have their origin at and why he is so obsessed with some things.
Enough procrastination and back to work. On coffee break it's time to start the chapter.
Must say BF, I was really surprised by this excerpt. I thought that your writing style wasclear and concise (the prose not too flowerey) and your dialogue was very believeable.
IMHO you appear (in this extract at least) to have overcome two of the biggest hurdles in delivering a well written story.
Gratz on completion, Coile
Gratz to Stasis and Coile; think I'm gonna hit 40,000 realistically, but I've had fun and am gonna continue into December.
Now just to prepare for ScreenFrenzy.
I just can't get me into a typing for long periods of time mood, but i'm going to plan a whole lot better for next year since i've found out what needs to be done.
* send out letters and emails that no-one is to phone up to go out at any time in november
* hide the Sims (pc) and the Sims 2 for the xbox so i don't get tempted to waste time.
* hide dungeon keeper games
* hide all dvds.. hell.. hide the tv full stop
* actually have notes on the story
* have names for the characters before i start so that i don't waste two days trying to think of non-stupid names
* make sure my city sub runs out for nov 1st ^_-
* not get tempted to hand write which makes it difficult and awkward to word count
anymore?
<ul type="square">[*]Keep munchies close[*]Keep Kettle Closer[*]When you come to something that will need you to think, research put Square brackets and write a 1-2 word description of what needs to go in there. E.G. He handed over some [COINAGE][*]Do it at the same time every day[*]Keep your writing area secure. No games. No Nothing.[*]Plan for at least one day when you really can't be bothered. Then berate yourself that entire day.[/list]
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Plan for at least one day when you really can't be bothered. Then berate yourself that entire day
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hehe
* train vicious attack monkeys to go nuts and attack you when the Tap tap tap sound of a keyboard stops. Alternatively train them to attack at the sound of self-pity
Gratz to Coile and Stasis and everyone else who finished.
I've not had much opportunity to right since Saturday with one thing and another so I'm taking my 43k+ words and starting the editing process. It's a shame not to hit the 50k after getting so close but I'm more than happy with getting this far. The biggest problems I had all stem from not having a plan beyond a few cool ideas and really vague here-to-there story. What I've got now is a whole universe of WW2 dieselpunk loveliness, around ten solid characters and over 40k words of the story that introduces it all.
Thanks for the compliment Mutha, that excerpt is one of the bits that wrote itself. The bits that I sweated over are the ugly parts
Well done to everyone who finished!
And it's time toooo ... relax.
Don't ask me about joining Honourable United, I'm lazy. Ask Captain Cathode.
http://www.onthejazz.co.uk/honu/
"If I had a punch, I would so hit that guy." - Millenium (because drinking nail varnish remover is for real men)
Might have finished if it were not for the laptop [censored]-up last week, and the fact the past three days I've been so ill it makes me queasy to look at a computer screen, let alone type at one for four hours a day. 
In a maths related follow up, I worked something out.
Given I spend the amoun of time preparing for work and being at work actually writing;
and that I can be bothered.
I would actually be able to write 2 novels a week...
I'm so in the wrong job.
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I failed......miserably.....I suck
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lol don't worry I did too. only got up to 9k words and then my life began to overwhelm me. apparently my parents and stupid job courses don't accept the NaNoWriMo as an excuse to do nothing...also the computers at the course where MS word when I only have MS works. damn crappy program. But atleast it got me into carrying on the rest of my writeing.
Yep I'm in the failure club... for this year. Next year! Next year I willl book holiday and write nonsense, but lots of it!
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...
I would be lying if I said my 50k didn't make me happy. But, is it the most important thing I took with me from NaNoWriMo? I'm going to say no.
I first wrote 25 chapters of... stuff. Some of it was decent, some less so. Then with two days to go something clicked with chapter 26. I found a voice with which to tell the whole story. I have to rewrite most of those 25 chapters and the story is a looong way from being told, let alone finished, so I'll be doing this for at least two months to come.
...OMG! I'm committing myself to a project that ran for a month already, will be at least two more, and I found again the passion for writing.
I would have gotten that with 49k too, but I was on a roll.
That's what I got from NaNoWriMo. *That* is the victory, the success of it all. Some arbitrary wordcount pales to a footnote.
Now, are you guys sure you didn't get anything from it? At all? If you did, you're winners too. Take a peek in the mirror and see a glimpse of NaNoWriMo brilliance.
Now, get back to writing already.
The weird thing is, after about 2000 words, I just couldn't get the plt right in my head! I knew rouighly what I wanted but couldn't get that important twist to come through at all.......then RL kicked in, work got mentally busy, the wife struggled with pregnancy a lot more and I ran out of time.
And annoyingly, this afternoon, whilst fetching the kids from school.....the twist clicked in my head and the entire started to unfold!!
Gahhhhhh!
Ah well, I might just have to try and finish this novel anyway
We built this city on Rock and Roll!
I got quite a few Creative Genius nominations from it (and for the pictures too.) 
Seeing as this is the only time I'm ever going to contribute to the Creative forum, I'm hoping it's going to be a victory.
Never mind, Morgana, there's always next year.
and really, it's all about having fun whether you make the word count or not. I know I didn't get my word count last year, but I did have a lot of fun writing a very silly and dramatic ending (there was a pyramid underground and cat people, XD I went there).
YOu can do it, Coile! if I knew where you lived, I'd come make you a cup of tea to help you on your way!
Max - the old exam excuse huh? It's okay, it's okay if you don't want to write. XD I'll be sure to read your novel when I find it. Good luck with your exam!
Don't ask me about joining Honourable United, I'm lazy. Ask Captain Cathode.
http://www.onthejazz.co.uk/honu/
"If I had a punch, I would so hit that guy." - Millenium (because drinking nail varnish remover is for real men)