I’ve cracked 10,000. I’m actually surprised again, I think that word maybe in every few paragraphs. I lost one romantic interest and gained another. I never under stood what they meant by something taking a life of its own until now. This has been quite a learning experience.
Congratulations!
For me there are five great turning points to celebrate during Nanowrimo:
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Completing your first sentence.
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Breaking into five digits (passing 10,000 words)
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Crossing the hump (passing 25,000 words)
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Dropping back to 4 digits (passing 40,000 words)
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Winning! (hitting 50,000)
Potentially there’s a sixth – actually getting to 'The End ', however many more words that takes to complete your novel – but I’ve never managed that during a November.
Maybe this year! 
I’ve come around to the no-outline school of thinking, I think. I have a couple of events, sort of set-pieces, that I know are going to happen one way or another, but just about everything else is being made up on the way. That includes character histories, villains, and all kinds of other things.
The only disadvantage that I’ve found is that I’m ending up dawdling along with big blocks of exposition as I work things out in “real time”. But it’s putting words on the page. I figure in editing a lot of these sections will collapse down, or turn into flashbacks, or become more succinct in some other way.
8200 and rolling.
I’m living vicariously through my husband’s participation in this, as I kick ass at short short stories, but don’t have a novel in me. So I’m celebrating the fact that he just broke 10,000! 10,100, actually.
He won’t let me read it till it’s done.
10,638. I’ve just rewritten the lost section, but I’m a little behind schedule now, and won’t have much catch-up time this week. Still, there’s plenty of month to go.
I’m bumping this because I’m late to the party. I realized it was November, went, “Oh, crap!” and started scribbling. So far, I’m about 10,000 words behind schedule.
My novel is tentatively called “A River Darkly Flowing” and is a Gothic Victorian fantasy romance. There is time travel and resurrection and folk songs. Also, nudity, industrial revolution and a coalition of meddling aunts, but not all at once. It’s based on a dream I had a few months ago.
Is anybody looking for a writing buddy? I’d love to have someone to compete against in this thing, or, you know, exchange ridiculousness with.
I’m way behind schedule without the excuse of starting late. I’m at 3893 words.
But if you can stand to read a mystery, which is what I’m writing, I’ll be your buddy, buddy. PM or email me if you want.
Up over 18k!
This is my third year, and the first without outlines, although I thought about it a lot. I skip around.
I wasn’t sure my story would get me to 50k, but now I’m adding a looong flashback to a scene in a snowed in lookout during a war. They run out of food. Someone did me a favor this week and I offered to name the person who gets eaten after him.
Thank goodness for the foul-mouthed character – he sure helps the wordcount.
[merrily2 on NaNo]
How do you find folks on NaNo by username? I’m clueless.
If anyone wants to buddy me there, I’m jsgoddess there, too. But I don’t really grasp what the writing buddies on NaNo are for.
You don’t, or at least you don’t right now.
The yearly website problems are worse than usual this year - so, if you have someone’s userid number (you can get it from the profile url - mine is 50771) you can add them - but if you only have their username, you can’t.
I’m going back and forth between doing really well and doing really badly. I’m only about 800 words behind right now (I don’t have the actual count on me, I’m right under 11000) but I seem to only be able to write every other day, and I’m not sure where my story is going - which for me tends to mean it isn’t going anywhere and is just going to get mired down in doldrums, and I’m not sure if it’ll last 50000 words.
And I really need a manicure because my left middle fingernail is bothering me when I type for any length of time.
I’ve just added jsgoddess as a buddy using the link to profile.
Hi Buddy!
It should give you the option of adding me to your buddy list when it notifies you. I’m maggenpye there, too.
I finally caught up with the average word count last night, but only by having three writing sessions during the day and getting almost 1k in each.
I can’t believe how many odd distractions there have been this month! The pressure is really on as I’m just hitting the target for 50k, but my personal goal is 70-75k.
If anyone’s interested http://www.kiwiwriters.org/ also runs a 50k competition in June. We’re keeping in touch more through ths site than nano at the moment and we have a thriving USA community. It’s smaller than the nano site and runs much quicker!
Hi Buddy!
I’m going to word war on the :00 for 15 minutes. I’ve found that really helps me to churn out some deliciously bad prose.
Excellent. I haven’t been able to get into those. Doesn’t seem to fit my style of writing. I am deeply envious of the word counts reported. Have fun.
With two 15 minute word wars, I at least got up over 5000, which is better than it was!
According to my Firefox NaNo extension, by the end of November I’ll have 21,600 words. Uh, just a tad short of my goal.
Merrily2, I think I’m going to use you for my rabbit this year: you’re significantly ahead, but no so insanely ahead that I’ll despair at catching you.
I’m BethCutter on Nanao, if anyone wants to friend me.
I’m up to 14000. I’ve slowed down over the last two days, I was up by a full day, now I’m right on pace. I know where I want to go, but I’ve just not wanted to write as much. I think I ran into a problem when I wrote my sex scene, I didn’t want to write it at work so I had to wait until I got home. Then I just didn’t get much further. Hopefully I can kick myself in the butt and get some writing done.
I finally made it over 10000! I’m at 10123 right now, and I really need to go to bed because I have to work early tomorrow.
This has not been such a good NaNo week for me. My story got very bogged down and boring. I found a way to skip ahead a bit and now it is flowing much much better, but I am really going to need to play catch-up this weekend.
Well, if you want to talk boring…
I’m one quarter of the way through the word count, on what is supposed to be a horror/thriller story.
So far I’ve…killed five rats. Seriously, that’s the total of the mayhem.
Do you think I’m not cut out for this genre? I do. I wonder if it’s too late to turn it into a romantic comedy or something.
Well, it worked for “Arachnophobia.” Only with spiders, which I find far less frightening than rats. No bubonic plague!
I’m Miss Purl McKnittington on NaNo, should anyone want to friend me.
Off to battle in a word war.
Help help, I’m being side tracked by research I should have done last month!
But, last month I didn’t know about the mid 18th century rosewood desk with the hidden compartments so I wasted my time finding out about coastal native vegetation - and they’ve just walked inland!
Damn these characters. Damn them to hell!