General NaNo Chat Thread '10

[Gammock]

I wonder how I'll do next year... This year I'm using up a lot of stuff that's ever happened to me, so I can't do that then. I'll have to come up with.... something new...


*edit a day later*

I'm going to get myself some snacks and write as much as a I can today

*edit*

1k words later. Wondering where to take it next...

*edits again*

Woo, Half Way point!

[Nut]

Nov 12, 2010 1:54:17 GMT -5 Avery said:

Is this what you were looking for, Nut?

I was actually looking for one that was linked from the NaNo site in previous years and was calculated automatically, but that's handy too. Thanks for the link!

I'm getting intimidated by how much catching up I need to do. I was hoping to hit 20,000 in the weekend, but at this point I think I'll be glad to reach 15k.

[Celestial]

<3 Half-way! Admittedly, I've taken a shocking swerve which came out of nowhere in order to pad out my novel but hey, it's NaNo.

[Butterfly]

Bleh, I had one good 2k+ day and now the last two days have been so hard to focus on my story. I think part of it is because I actually sort of know where I want it to go, but I don't know how to quite get there yet. I need to shake things up or something.

*bangs head on keyboard* Which won't do anything for word count since I'm using a pen. *bangs head on pen* Ow, my eye! I can't win. XD

[Tiger]

^^ Rediscovered the wonder of Write or Die the other night, after bemoaning to/with a fellow NaNo-er from real life how lackluster our motivation was. Huzzah for negative reinforcement! =D

[Candy NLI]

Nov 14, 2010 10:09:53 GMT -5 Tiger said:

^^ Rediscovered the wonder of Write or Die the other night, after bemoaning to/with a fellow NaNo-er from real life how lackluster our motivation was. Huzzah for negative reinforcement! =D

I need this. I was wondering what the place was called yesterday. XD


Lool. I did 3,000 words in 2 hours, I'm taking my only pause break now.

[Nut]

Oh yeah, Write or Die is awesome. I discovered it two years ago and have used it for various purposes throughout the year since. The sad thing is that I think I've come to be slightly dependent on it... and I also have a nasty habit of assuming I can write as fast without it as I can with it, which does a number on my long-term planning.

"Oh sure, 4000-word school essay due tomorrow? Three hours, tops."

"Why am I going to bed at five AM again?"

[Sock]

Halfway done and now I get writer's block? Aaargh

[Nut]

You can do it, Sock! I always try to think about things from a new angle when I get stuck; usually my other approach just wasn't working.

Meanwhile, is there anyone else who's way behind but still bound and determined to finish? xD; I need moral support, especially since I've been telling people in real life that I'm doing NaNo, which has been slightly nerve-wracking since I normally keep this a secret.

[Speck]

I'm about 33 pages behind. (I'm one fifth of the way through when I should be one half of the way through.) I am very determined to finish, though.

At the very least, I'd like to have this Seven Ravens first script by the end of the month. That is a very achievable goal, since I'm almost done writing it. I'm not sure if I should slow down and edit it during this month, or continue work on my other scripts...

We can do it!

[Tam]

Me! xD I'm still a little bit ahead of you, from the looks of it, but I'm a good 8500 words away from being caught up. And it's probably going to get worse until about Friday, after I get my last essay handed in.

But I will finish. Can, and will. So will you. And my friend, our stories will be brilliant, because all around them there'll be the sparkle of a completed task that some people thought impossible. =D

[♥ Lulu]

Hey, I'm still at 8k but I'm relying on freeing up some time at some point to catch up VERY unlikely to happen, but let a girl dream, okay? So any moral support you need, I am happy to provide XD

You can also use me so you can say "I'm behind, but I'm not as behind as Lulu!" I find it always helps to do this.

[Omni]

Lulu, I had the same problem the first two times I tried NaNo. I'm trying a different approach this year (even if it is cheating in a sense) because of how badly I did the first two times.

SPOILER: Click to show

Something I encountered that I thought I'd mention: You know how some people try to squeeze out words by making their sentences much more wordy than necessary? Doesn't work for me. I'm one of those people who writes best if they 'tune in' to the characters. If I'm extending sentences, I have to stop and think of the wordiest way possible to make a single sentences, and dialogue ends up not sounding like the character at all, tuning me out. I find it better if I just set the characters in a situation and see how they act out, letting the words flow.

I can sometimes squeeze out words if my changes are small and subtle, like 'aren't' to 'are not,' putting in the word 'that' wherever fitting, and 'ran' to 'did run.' I can also sometimes manage by replacing all instances of a character's name with a somewhat wordier description of them. (The nice part about this is that if you're consistent enough with what you use as a placeholder for a name, you can just edit it out using find/replace once NaNo is over.) But overall, I have to disrupt the flow as little as possible.

Rambley characters tend to help.

I personally tend to have more luck squeezing out extra sentences than I do squeezing extra words into a sentence.

As I mentioned on the 'Bloids, one way to up words is to add in extra description for things that are introduced, whether they be introduced to the characters or to the readers. But again, don't go so far that you're reaching to think of a description, otherwise you're cutting into writing time.

[Jove]

I'm with Nut and Lulu in the way way way behind team. Currently sitting on a pretty 11k or so. And I am constantly getting stuck. I get unstuck by rereading the last few paragraphs of what I wrote and thinking 'Okay, now what's the thing I would expect to happen next after this?' and then doing completely the opposite.

And yeah, I /am/ determined to finish. I wanna gloat. C:

[♥ Lulu]

Aha, well this is my fifth year of NaNo, so I kind of know what I'm doing as it is XD I'm just no thoroughly motivated enough. It's not that I can't do it, rather that I'm lazy and therefore haven't.

But thank you nonetheless ^_^