Good work!! Glad you are sticking with it.
I am up to 7693 now, so I am doing pretty well--slightly ahead of schedule, just the way I like it. I know I'm going to lag around Thanksgiving so a little padding should help.
National Novel Writing Month
- Thread starter Robert Maxwell
- Start date
Good work!! Glad you are sticking with it.
I am up to 7693 now, so I am doing pretty well--slightly ahead of schedule, just the way I like it. I know I'm going to lag around Thanksgiving so a little padding should help.
^ Nice! I got a lot done at the kickoff party (and met some neat people), so I'm at 7730 right now. Might write a little bit more later tonight, we'll see. I'd kinda like to get down 300-ish more words by midnight, so that I will have written more than 3000 in one day (since I'm at 2718 for today right now) 
Hm, funny thing is that not a lot happens around Thanksgiving for me anymore. We used to have the whole family dinner thing, but now everyone that's left in the area does their own thing. Sometimes I'll be with my dad on the actual evening, and we'll have dinner with some friends or something, but nothing huge, and I almost never travel around that time. So for me, Thanksgiving means time off to write! It's been a "big push" time for me every Nano, especially if I'm behind going into it.
Hm, funny thing is that not a lot happens around Thanksgiving for me anymore. We used to have the whole family dinner thing, but now everyone that's left in the area does their own thing. Sometimes I'll be with my dad on the actual evening, and we'll have dinner with some friends or something, but nothing huge, and I almost never travel around that time. So for me, Thanksgiving means time off to write!
It's been a "big push" time for me every Nano, especially if I'm behind going into it.
It's not like anyone's going to be monitoring you. The important thing is to try!
And just so you know, there are National Novel Writing Months for every month of the year. The November one is the "original" and is the most well-known. Last year I did a book in July. Although it ended up taking until September to get it all written.
The idea is just to get you writing, not to put you on some unbearable schedule.
I'm in graduate school plus working part time in a retail store. There's a chance I'll have to move again soon. I might go for a story in December, but I'm not the best writer.
My writing can be dry, factual and have a tendency to drag on. I used to be accused of plagarism in college by some profs with "There's no way you wrote like this on your own".
That is one of the creepiest things I've ever seen.
Up to 9405 now. Things are moving right along. 
2488 today, so my total is 11893. I am officially a day ahead, but I can't afford to slack. How are the rest of you doing? Too distracted by the election to write today? 
2488 today, so my total is 11893. I am officially a day ahead, but I can't afford to slack. How are the rest of you doing? Too distracted by the election to write today?
Kinda.
But I did get some done after it was more or less over - just over 1000. So I am now a bit behind, but only by like... 600 words or so. So not too bad.
The reason I was set up to be behind in the first place was because of Monday - there was just a lot of stuff going on that evening, I didn't get ANY writing done. So I'm glad I built up a small buffer by writing over 3000 on Sunday! Write-ins really do work, at least for me.
One of the things I'm currently wrestling with regarding my own writing (my hoped-for novel still very much in the planning stages) is how to incorporate important information about my setting without slipping into infodumps or awkward dialogue. Ideally, I'd want to build up this world in the backdrop, but moving the information from my (extensive!) notes into the actual writing, and ensuring the right details are established well enough for certain essential points of the plot to have impact, is going to be tough. I've got the novel and its background - plot, characters, themes, setting - like a model of a finished building in my mind, but actually bringing it into being is going to be tough.
I've got the novel and its background - plot, characters, themes, setting - like a model of a finished building in my mind, but actually bringing it into being is going to be tough.I have no stories to tell, but I'm really good at editing. I'm editing a friend's novel, she has LOTS of stories in her head but can't detach to edit. She's trying to get it published, first in a series of Dark/Young Adult fiction. The story's actually pretty good (Hubby liked it) and she's been willing to accept "suggestions" beyond the grammar/typo/punctuation stuff. Like "delete this scene, it ruins the tension you've built so well over the last 6 pages." She did and the story tightened up nicely there.
One of the things I'm currently wrestling with regarding my own writing (my hoped-for novel still very much in the planning stages) is how to incorporate important information about my setting without slipping into infodumps or awkward dialogue. Ideally, I'd want to build up this world in the backdrop, but moving the information from my (extensive!) notes into the actual writing, and ensuring the right details are established well enough for certain essential points of the plot to have impact, is going to be tough.
You should give me a yell sometime. It's probably too complex to do here in forum posts, but we could chat about it. I am a ruthless plotter. I love world-building, but I think I've gotten very good at figuring out what details flesh out your world while adding to the story, and which ones just devolve your narrative into authorial masturbation.
Oh, and I am up to 15,233 words now!
One of the things I'm currently wrestling with regarding my own writing (my hoped-for novel still very much in the planning stages) is how to incorporate important information about my setting without slipping into infodumps or awkward dialogue. Ideally, I'd want to build up this world in the backdrop, but moving the information from my (extensive!) notes into the actual writing, and ensuring the right details are established well enough for certain essential points of the plot to have impact, is going to be tough.
You should give me a yell sometime. It's probably too complex to do here in forum posts, but we could chat about it. I am a ruthless plotter. I love world-building, but I think I've gotten very good at figuring out what details flesh out your world while adding to the story, and which ones just devolve your narrative into authorial masturbation.
Thanks for the offer.
I might well take you up on it at some point.
Guh, I've found it hard to get in writing time these last several days. I'm only at 13k+, which puts me off-pace by about 5000. There has been a lot going on, but I've found it hard to stay motivated. Not to stay motivated to write at all; I like this story, and I've been writing here and there. But hard to stay motivated to write Nano-style, specifically, i.e. the rush-mode, daily quota stuff, and I've found that my mind drifts between this and other projects I want to work on as well. So I dunno... I'm not quitting yet, and I do think this story is going somewhere, but I'm behind and that's clearly not changing anytime soon, so we'll see.
Don't feel too bad. I didn't write anything on Saturday or Sunday, which puts me about a day behind (I was a day ahead before.) I plan to catch up this week.
Don't worry about being behind, either. Just try to do some writing each day. Progress is progress, even if it's slow.
Don't worry about being behind, either. Just try to do some writing each day. Progress is progress, even if it's slow.
Yeah, that's how I've been trying to proceed. I got a little antsy about it last night, feeling like I should've written more over the weekend, but then I tried to just relax and not worry about it, and let the writing come when it would.
Then I wrote a total of 3509 for today, so that seemed to work.
Still behind, but finally making some good progress again! Might attend the write-in over in Berkeley tomorrow night, see if I can get some solid writing time in there.Good luck on your catching up as well!
Yeah, that's how I've been trying to proceed. I got a little antsy about it last night, feeling like I should've written more over the weekend, but then I tried to just relax and not worry about it, and let the writing come when it would.
Then I wrote a total of 3509 for today, so that seemed to work.
Good luck on your catching up as well!
I got pretty close yesterday, but then some other things happened and I just wasn't in the right mood to write what I needed to write, so I put it aside. Hoping it will go better today. I'm starting to get to the "good stuff" and I need to give it the right attention!
I decided to begin writing the first draft of my novel, on the reasoning that I had nothing to lose by just diving in and working it out as I go. I've done enough planning to know the basics of what I'm aiming for, and I don't want to lock myself into too rigid a plan in case the story starts developing in other directions and I lose my creative flow by trying to tug it back onto the original frame. I'm pleased to say I've gotten past my initial block and written the prologue chapter (about 2,000 words) as well as the opening paragraphs of the first regular chapter. I wasn't sure how to begin - I knew the scenes I wanted to write and the purpose of each, but couldn't decide how to open. Now, though, I'm off and running, though it will take long, long past the end of November for this to be finished. Still, a good night's work.
I've done enough planning to know the basics of what I'm aiming for, and I don't want to lock myself into too rigid a plan in case the story starts developing in other directions and I lose my creative flow by trying to tug it back onto the original frame. I'm pleased to say I've gotten past my initial block and written the prologue chapter (about 2,000 words) as well as the opening paragraphs of the first regular chapter. I wasn't sure how to begin - I knew the scenes I wanted to write and the purpose of each, but couldn't decide how to open. Now, though, I'm off and running, though it will take long, long past the end of November for this to be finished. Still, a good night's work.Similar threads
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