National Novel Writing Month

[Robert Maxwell]

I haven't worked on mine for the past four days, which is about what I expected, given that I was out of town and otherwise indisposed, but I've thought about my story quite a bit and I'm in the "home stretch." I've been gradually massaging the conclusion I had in mind so it can be satisfying and complete. I plan to get back to writing it tonight.

[Saito S]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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I haven't worked on mine for the past four days, which is about what I expected, given that I was out of town and otherwise indisposed, but I've thought about my story quite a bit and I'm in the "home stretch." I've been gradually massaging the conclusion I had in mind so it can be satisfying and complete. I plan to get back to writing it tonight.

So you actually write a complete, coherent story in November? Not me. I have trouble thinking of any plot idea I've ever had and attempted to develop with any real effort that would fit within 50,000 words. Nano, for me, is always "the first draft of the first segment of this overarching plotline."

But yes, home stretch time! Go go!

So, I am ahead now. I was ahead as of yesterday morning, after attending a write-in and managing almost 2500 words while there.

Then, after I got home, I accidentally copied FROM my USB memory stick, instead of TOO it, overwriting the (newer) version of my novel that was on my hard drive in a moment of carelessness. Erased all the work I had done at the write-in. After staring at the screen in shock for a few moments, followed by trying to kick down a couple walls, I contemplated just giving up entirely. Nano 2012: called off at 41k on account of rain.

But then I decided I'd rather try to get through it, so I wrote down half-assed, typo-ridden synopses of every scene I'd lost, as quickly as I could while they were still somewhat fresh in my mind. From those, I managed to re-write the full scenes, not EXACTLY as they had been before of course, but close enough. Went on a tear and wrote 2600 words in an hour and a half. So I guess the moral of the story is never give up!

[Robert Maxwell]

I've actually had close calls like that, too. One day I wasn't at my usual computer, but I wanted to work on my story, so I downloaded this program that had a word target feature, so I could at least write to the number of needed words.

When it came time to save, the program crashed. It didn't save. I was lucky that it was, however, keeping backups in a different location every couple minutes, so in the end I only lost a couple paragraphs.

I also use a version control system so I have multiple backups and don't lose any work over time. Worst case, I might lose what I was writing at that moment, but not what I wrote before...

[Saito S]

^ Yeah, that's definitely prudent.

The worst part is that Word has an auto-backup feature. I thought I had turned it on ages ago. But when I looked, the box wasn't checked. I hadn't ever needed it before, so I hadn't noticed that it wasn't doing it.

If you can believe it, I lost some work yesterday evening, as well - not on my Nano novel, but on this map concept I've been working on in Gimp, as part of a fictional city-creation project. I wasn't really paying attention to how long it had been, and for some reason wasn't saving every few minutes like I normally do, and then Gimp crashed. Twice in one day I lost progress! Fortunately, the vast majority of the work I'd been doing in Gimp was experimenting, trying different things on the map to see how they looked, then erasing them and trying something else, etc. So recreating the final map I had right before it crashed only took about twenty minutes.

But still! The entire day was a pointed reminder to SAVE OFTEN when working on anything like this, and be careful when copying and overwriting files!

[Owain Taggart]

Moral of the story: Save, save, and save again!

Hah, man, those are definitely close calls. Good trick on writing the outlines of what you had lost. I'll need to use that the next time it happens to me

[Saito S]

Crossed the finish line!

50,075 words according to MS Word (50,124 according to the validator on the Nano site, but whatever, it's over 50k either way).

Whew, I'm tired! I really like this story, and I enjoy Nano (wouldn't bother otherwise), but it will be nice to not have that "must write X amount before bed" feeling hanging on. Now I can really turn my attention to some other things that I have been neglecting!

[Robert Maxwell]

I forgot to come update here!

Congrats, Saito! I didn't quite hit 50K. I basically didn't write for 8 days out of the month, but still hit about 45K, so I didn't do too badly.

I am still working on my story, though. I plan to finish the first draft this week, and it will be around 50K, maybe a bit more.

Great job, everyone!