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Novel Writing-Age: NaNoWriMo 2015

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WC: 24510

Progress was finally made yesterday and last night. Gettin' clooooooose to that benchmark. Maybe a little more today.
 
WC: 31354

Missed a day on Saturday when I went to NYC, but I've been catching up slowly. I need to finish by the 25th! THE RACE IS ON!
 
WC: 35166

Ahead on Word count/Behind on Chapter Outline Goals... :-/ Just have to remind myself that I'm doing this long haul (I'm essentially doing double NaNoWriMo, 100k words before 12/30)

Sequels are hard...

Anyway Congratulations to everyone that's still keeping it up! And especially to the winners!
 
Always weird to me that people write out of order. I mean, it makes sense and is probably what almost everyone does, but I just write start to finish for roughly 99% of it unless I just think of a good scene. It's probably foolish to do it this way.
 
Cade said:
Always weird to me that people write out of order. I mean, it makes sense and is probably what almost everyone does, but I just write start to finish for roughly 99% of it unless I just think of a good scene. It's probably foolish to do it this way.
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I can't keep things straight in my head unless I write chronologically. But like you say, everyone's got their process.
 
WC: 28623

No idea what I'm doing with this chapter. Hopefully I can knock it out quickly so I can move on to the next one, where I have a better idea of what I want.
 
Cade said:
Always weird to me that people write out of order. I mean, it makes sense and is probably what almost everyone does, but I just write start to finish for roughly 99% of it unless I just think of a good scene. It's probably foolish to do it this way.
Click to expand...

I ended up putting myself out of order actually. I had a idea of how it would flow but it was not working as I wanted it.
 
WC: 28377

Still on track. Here's a snippet, with a bit of a cliffhanger.

Gradually, they made their way into the town, being careful not to appear out of place. The citizens didn’t seem to notice them, as they were more concern with avoiding the gaze of the soldiers that patrolled through the streets. The tallest building they could see was the church; it stood there in the centre, towering above everything else, the fire sitting calmly in its courtyard. The second tallest building, which became their destination, was a large building four or five stories tall. It looked like a hotel, perhaps it was somewhere they could get information on this village. Its name would be the most useful thing they could find out. As they approached the hotel, moving through the cobbled streets, they saw all the lights inside were turned on. As they got even closer, Philip heard laughter coming from inside.

Finally, he thought to himself, joy seemed to exist in some capacity here. They walked through the open doors into the hotel, but as soon as they entered inside, all the gaiety they’d previously heard seemed to dry up in an instant. Inside the building was a group of six German soldiers and one officer playing cards. The place, now that they could see it from the inside, looked abandoned. Chairs were stacked up on every table but the one the Nazis were using to play their game, and there was nobody behind the bar. In fact, there was nobody else at all in the building but them and the Germans.

This place wasn’t a hotel at all, it seemed. From the German presence in the room, and the general sense he felt that they’d co-opted the place for their own purposes, he hazarded a guess that this was the permanent lodging for the soldiers ordered to watch the village. It was unlikely many of the villagers would welcome them with open arms, even if they were French, and they still needed a place to stay. From the amount of soldiers he’d seen walking the streets on the way here; this also seemed like the only building capable of holding them all.

Realizing his grave mistake, Philip turned around and was about to walk through the door when he heard one of the soldiers call out for him to stop. He felt something catch in his throat, making it difficult for him to swallow, as he slowly turned around to look at the Germans. The officer got up from his chair, and approached him.
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By the way, I was wondering if this is happening to anybody else, but it seems that as the month goes on, the quality of my writing seems to get worse. I was thinking it's maybe due to people sticking to what they feel is safer as they go further and further into the month, and are more unsure of what comes next. I also feel like I'm getting somewhat lazy when it comes to synonyms, since I've been using Germans and Nazis a lot to describe the bad guys.

I also planned out my story, and after Chapter 2, I found that I occasionally needed to make changes to the plot in order to keep it working.
 
WC: 14051

Something of a bust today, since I'm not only starting a new chapter with renewed focus on the protagonist, but also nitpicking locations as I ease into the Villain of the Week format that will be used for the first half of the story. Will try to double up sometime this week, ideally by tomorrow, to make up the difference.
Cade said:
Always weird to me that people write out of order. I mean, it makes sense and is probably what almost everyone does, but I just write start to finish for roughly 99% of it unless I just think of a good scene. It's probably foolish to do it this way.
Click to expand...
I think that this describes my mindset/work method better.
Cyan said:
I can't keep things straight in my head unless I write chronologically. But like you say, everyone's got their process.
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I've wondered for a while how one might go about writing a story told out of sequence, but it's not really something I've committed to attempting as of yet.
 
The Scollard said:
By the way, I was wondering if this is happening to anybody else, but it seems that as the month goes on, the quality of my writing seems to get worse. I was thinking it's maybe due to people sticking to what they feel is safer as they go further and further into the month, and are more unsure of what comes next. I also feel like I'm getting somewhat lazy when it comes to synonyms, since I've been using Germans and Nazis a lot to describe the bad guys.
Click to expand...

This happens to me every year, yeah. I think what's going on with me is that for the early stuff, I've already thought about it a lot. I might not know exactly what happens as things go along, but there've been enough things banging around in my head that some of it is going to be cool and interesting. And then later in the month, the well dries up a bit. There's not so much bubbling to the surface, not so much that I've already gotten a chance to think through. And so I have to force it a bit more.
 
Don't worry, you aren't alone. Everytime I look at this story, I think of how it gets worse and worse but that's first draft syndrome, it's supposed to be rough.
 
WC: 28771

I try to write chronologically, if only so I can reference past scenes more specifically, but today I was all over the place. Figured out one scene I could write, and one I could poke at, neither of which are the thing that happens next. (Might make that second scene a full chapter. How's that for long?)
 
The Scollard said:
By the way, I was wondering if this is happening to anybody else, but it seems that as the month goes on, the quality of my writing seems to get worse. I was thinking it's maybe due to people sticking to what they feel is safer as they go further and further into the month, and are more unsure of what comes next. I also feel like I'm getting somewhat lazy when it comes to synonyms, since I've been using Germans and Nazis a lot to describe the bad guys.
Click to expand...

I actually feel like as I get further into it and I'm needing to pad slightly without just using filler, I'm getting a lot better at writing non-dialogue and scene-setting as we go on. I'm a lot more confident in my day 10 writing than my day 1, at least right now
 
Timu said:
My goodness, some of you are at 40k already!!!
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I set a minimum goal of 3k words a day. Writing on my TV, full screen, using Focus Writer. I average between 2-3 hours a day and that's with messing around, checking my phone, twitch, neogaf, reddit, etc. The breaks have been really helpful, I know that people say focus, but if I take a break and see something it can give me an idea or two. Only bad thing is it's a different keyboard I write with.

now I can't type on thjis keypbard lol <- how I just typed that and most of this post.
 
Here guys, have a snippet. Never posted an excerpt the other years, but fifth time's the charm, right?
The Point McCreary cemetery was not, at first blush, a scary place. Tall, arching iron gates in the center of a six-foot fence of thick bars, pointy on top like spears. Henry imagined that during the summertime, it would be a pretty, secluded spot, but in the snow it looked like a monstrous garden of stone, the flowers carved with names and dates and memories. They jutted from the blanket of white, most of them plain, but there was a couple tall decorative gravestones with angels on them, faces raised to the sky, covered in a light dusting of snow.

At the back of the graveyard, there were a couple buildings, one on either side. The one on the right was flat on top and appeared to just be a shed, but the one on the left was larger, with a steeply sloping roof and it was flanked by frozen angels.
They got out of the car and each closed their door quietly without thinking about it, as though not to awaken anything. They all exchanged glances over the roof of the tiny rental and traded nervous smiles. This was a terrible idea, Henry thought, the latest link in a chain of terrible ideas that began with his decision to come here and ended, most likely, with disaster. He steeled himself, pulled up his jacket against the wind, and headed up the sloping hill to the gates.

They were chained and padlocked, but the chain was rusty and the lock was old. He nodded at it, and Mark stepped up to it. He hefted the sledgehammer, tightened his grip on it, wood handle firmly in his thick gloves.
One swift downward motion. One clang as metal met metal. One soft, nearly inaudible thump as the lock hit the snow, followed by another as the chain followed suit.
One more round of glances.

Henry pushed open the left-hand gate, struggling slightly to push it past the thick snow, the hinges creaking as they worked. He stepped through and into the cemetery, resisting the urge to look back and make sure his group had followed. Mark and Louise exchanged glances, then followed him single-file, subconsciously placing their boots in the indentations he had left behind.
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Forgive any mistakes or weird double-spacing, I had to paragraph separate weird or it looked like a mess in the quote. And I haven't super proofread so I might have double of's or something.

WC:31999

Checked my word count and thought stopping on 999 was a good spot. Plus apparently my average per day is now 1999 too.

EDIT: joshcryer, focuswriter bros. I started using the separation / ## thing this year and it's a godsend for easily checking what chapter and rechecking various stuff.
 
Cade said:
Always weird to me that people write out of order. I mean, it makes sense and is probably what almost everyone does, but I just write start to finish for roughly 99% of it unless I just think of a good scene. It's probably foolish to do it this way.
Click to expand...

Wait, people do that?
 
Already spotted a mistake in that snippet but I won't edit! You can't make me.


Cyan said:
:D
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That's how I felt after writing today before I realized I'd only written a tiny amount and so I had to put in a lot of effort to get any more writing done before midnight.
LegendX48 said:
Wait, people do that?
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Yeah!

I admit that when I'm writing for non-Nano stuff a lot of times I just think of a scene unanchored to anything, write it up, put it somewhere and tell myself I'll write the rest of the book later (I usually don't), but for Nano it's A to B usually.
 
wc:21349

Hit the daily last night. Getting a bit tough again. My vague as shit outline is bitting me in the ass as I dither about what's to happen next. I have a new POV character. He's someone I could kill but it would have to be something grand. Maybe he'll survive. I've already had a bit of a cull of character.
 
joshcryer said:
I set a minimum goal of 3k words a day. Writing on my TV, full screen, using Focus Writer. I average between 2-3 hours a day and that's with messing around, checking my phone, twitch, neogaf, reddit, etc. The breaks have been really helpful, I know that people say focus, but if I take a break and see something it can give me an idea or two. Only bad thing is it's a different keyboard I write with.

now I can't type on thjis keypbard lol <- how I just typed that and most of this post.
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3k a day...I should start doing that.
 
WC: 33055

Finally got my chapters in order. ( well for the first draft) Villian duo starts to wonder why they should kill the good guys after being around them for a week and being welcomed into their group. Think that's a bit fast? I have it where the two villians just havent been around normal people so simply playing out a normal life is changing them. Also because of a bit of mind tampering but yeah.
 
Woke up this morning, realised I'd been using the wrong viewpoint character. For 53 thousand words.

It's okay though. I hate writing, but I love rewriting so it's all good. Going to push on through to the end of the first draft before I do anything about it though.
 
I know I haven't said what I'm writing about, but it is completely out of my zone in every way. I mean, every way. I'm going to publish it under a pseudonym and if it sells even a dozen copies (it's a very specific subset of fiction) then I'll at least know I can write well enough for people to like it (especially in this super saturated Kindle publishing world).

I may give a clue as to what subset it is, but it's pretty narrow, but if I become another E. L. James people could figure it out, haha.

pitcairn55 said:
Woke up this morning, realised I'd been using the wrong viewpoint character. For 53 thousand words.

It's okay though. I hate writing, but I love rewriting so it's all good. Going to push on through to the end of the first draft before I do anything about it though.
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Could you explain what you mean by that? You meant it to be third person but it's first person? Or one of the characters you intended to be the primary character is in fact secondary?
 
joshcryer said:
Could you explain what you mean by that? You meant it to be third person but it's first person? Or one of the characters you intended to be the primary character is in fact secondary?
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The plot would be better served if I had used the third person, and alternated between the two main characters as far as viewpoint is concerned.

The story is essentially about the relationship between a mother and her daughter, and at the moment it's been told entirely from the daughter's point of view, in the first person. The way the plot has developed means that viewpoint now feels limiting.

I guess it's a result of doing no planning before I started to write!
 
pitcairn55 said:
The story is essentially about the relationship between a mother and her daughter, and at the moment it's been told entirely from the daughter's point of view, in the first person. The way the plot has developed means that viewpoint now feels limiting.
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Nice, I find the first person really limiting but I've been reading The Martian and he's managed to do it really well, alternating between the two.
 
WC: 35309

I'm down under the "1,000 per day needed to finish" line, which obviously means I should start creeping up from 2,000 per day to 3,000.
 
WC: 26809

I THINK I've gotten my real life computer crap worked out. We'll see. Apparently the old one started magically working again so the fix-it types couldn't find out which fan was going barmy. I didn't have Scrivener lock up tonight on the new computer, so that may be fixed as well. Knock on particle board.

Upshot of all of this is I spent my writing time the last two days on an idea I had during the forced downtime on how to bring a character back into the plot. The way I did it also suggested a possible ending. Assuming I don't decide to screw Sergei over, that is.
 
Skipped yesterday, so today's the double menu. I got to post this beforehand so I can be held accountable for my actions, heh. :P
 
I was struggling to find a good hook for my cannibal tribe and I just had a great* idea about this post apocalyptic cult based on a faded collection of Lovecraft stories called the Necronomicon. They think the Old Gods are real and use this thing as a bible!

*Or extremely cheesey and wont make the second draft.
 
WC: 29305

Gonna have to stick to writing this down physically and retyping things now, since I'm not gonna have consistent computer access for some time :/
 
Evilisk said:
WC: 29305

Gonna have to stick to writing this down physically and retyping things now, since I'm not gonna have consistent computer access for some time :/
Click to expand...

Sometimes writing things out on pen and paper is fun though... but I'm wincing just thinking about how you're gonna check that word count.
 
WC: 43493

Gotten through a really boring long piece of writing last couple of days, feels like as soon as I take a look at this thing once its complete it will be something I can excise with a couple of well chosen lines of exposition, but I couldn't figure it out today so I just carried on writing till I was done with it. Now Im back to the part of the story I actually enjoy writing again which will be nice come tomorrow!
 
Is it too cheesy if my main character, who is a bit of a tech nerd, saves the day through her knowledge of Lovecraft???

Carlisle said:
Sometimes writing things out on pen and paper is fun though... but I'm wincing just thinking about how you're gonna check that word count.
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My style completely changes when writing with pen and paper. It ends up sounding a little like something from Anne Rice, god help me... :D
 
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