Whaddya mean you can’t write? Pick your dozen favourite dysfunctional Dopers (I know, tautology and all that) and imagine them crash-landing on an island in the Pacific, and take it from there. (You might have to come up with some pseudonyms, of course. 
)
Today I have crept up to 22505. It would have been exactly 22500, not by design, but then I found that the five asterisks I’m putting in as scene-break markers count as five words. I think that means I’m honour-bound to overshoot by a hundred-odd. There was a few hours of panic when I seemed to be running low on plot, but I think I have enough to waffle on with now. But I’m still sticking with no direct speech.
Loosing interest. Loosing drive. This is not good.
No, no – that’s just Sophmore Slump speaking. Did you read Chris’s Week 2 post? We have to keep slogging, one word after another, until we reach the Promised Land of Week 3.
Or something like that. Right now it’s 11:50 p.m. local time, and I haven’t written word one yet today, and I’m really tempted to just say to hell with it and go to bed. Soooo tired.
But I’m making a deal with myself: I have to open the file and write 500 words. I can stop after that, but I HAVE to do the 500.
I"ll let you know how it turns out.
I had that today. I sat for 3 hours before I got anything, and slogged through writing in fits and starts - stopping every once in a while to read or watch TV.
Finally managed to force my way across the quota line for today (1700 words - had a few slow days the first week that the guage I was using hid) at 11.
I didn’t write anything yesterday. But tonight, I barricade myself in with my computer. With any luck, I won’t leave the house all weekend except to go to Starbucks for fuel (a three minute walk). 
I’m so tired at the moment. At my writing desk by 6am. Off to work a 7:30. This morning I just couldn’t do it. Got 1000 words down on the bus and over lunch though so I’m not too far off the 1700 word pace and hopefully this weekend I can get a bit ahead.
I’m up to 14600. My goal is to break 16000 by the end of the day, and break 25000 by the end of the weekend.
I just did about 800 words of NOTHING. A long conversation between two characters mostly giving their reactions to other characters stories. A fun scene (I love writing these two, they’re so cute), but totally expendable.
Reporting in on last night’s efforts: I managed to bleed out 890 completely useless words.
I mean, they didn’t advance the plot, enhance characterization, or even fill out the background. Just two never before seen characters chewing the fat. At the very best, you could call the scene breathing room for the reader, since the previous scene was a nail-biting action bit. (At least, I hope it’ll be that once it has been rewritten, er, edited some.)
No, I didn’t delete the words. I did turn them RED so I can find and kill them in December.
Anyhoo, I’m a hair past 19 thou, and like jsgoddess, my goal is to hit 2500 this weekend.
Past 25,000, but I want to find some writing time this weekend and push that on a bit. I have the added challenge of trying to keep this project away from Mrs Trunky-Want-A-Bun? (The interrogative is part of the proper name.) Time enough to share after I have got there, and meanwhile I don’t need advice or constructive criticism.
I went back to an old trick yesterday, and it worked so well I can’t think why I ever stopped.
See, my biggest problem that I get overwhelmed at the idea of cranking out 2000 words (or whatever the daily goal needs) and so I procrastinate madly when I sit down at the computer. I collect my email, check out a couple of boards, follow an interesting link or two. Then, oh, maybe I’ll work the daily Sudoku puzzle, or see if any of my friends have posted to their blogs… IOW, my ‘writing’ sessions can be two hours long BEFORE I write word one…and then there’s the little ‘breaks’ I throw in…
The result, of course, is that it has taken me FOUR HOURS to churn out a measly 4k words, and that makes me even more reluctant to start writing the next day. I mean, FOUR HOURS? I want to have a life, too, you know.
So the ‘trick’ I went back to was telling myself I only had to write 500 words just then. (I call 500 words a ‘chunk’.) In fact, the rule was I could ONLY write 500 words. As soon as I did a word count and it showed I was at or over 500 words I ** HAD ** to stop writing, no matter if I was on a roll or not. Three chunks (plus the inevitable overage words) would pretty much take care of the daily minimum.
Now, I don’t find the idea of 500 words at all scary. I know from experience I can knock them off in 20 minutes – much less, of course, if I can completely turn off the Inner Editor. I can be disciplined for 20 minutes at a stretch.
So I sat down at 7 and whipped t hrough 500 words. Then I stuck a load of laundry in and read the paper. Then I shifted the washed load to the dryer and stuck another in to wash…and figured, might as well get the next chunk out of the way. And back to the computer, without feeling any reluctance at all. Straight to writing, found myself with nearly 600 words when I checked fifteen minutes later.
Then I speed watched an episode of Earl. Folded the dried clothes, shoved the second load into the dryer…and back to the computer for another easy chunk.
And I just kept doing that through out the evening. A totally painless melange of chunks of writing, minor household tasks, and ‘fun stuff’ like TV and chatting with hubby and playing with the cats.
This month I’ve been falling into bed way past my normal hour, feeling totally exhausted and with my brain feeling drained of all ability to create, with maybe two thousand words added to my Nano.
Yesterday? I went to bed with a good part of the ‘weekly’ household chores done, three broadcast hours of TV watched, and nearly FOUR THOUSAND words written…and I didn’t feel the least bit drained. Physically tired and sleepy, yes, but not mentally worn out. I could still mull over my plot points without feeling revulsion.
And today, well, I’ve just finished my third chunk. 1:30, and I’ve already got almost 1800 words done. Plus I’ve done the grocery shopping for the week and stowed the results away, put in an hour raking and hauling leaves, and spent at least an hour playing Zuma. And it’s not like I got up at dawn. 
I’m thinking I’ll do another four or so chunks today, and take the entire evening off to go out to dinner and a movie.
I’m upgrading my goal for this weekend: 30,000 by Monday morning!
(Feeling so good maybe I should call it manic.)
I’m feeling pretty manic myself. I broke through the 20,000 mark just now. my goal is to be at least three days ahead of schedule by Thanksgiving. I’m going on a trip to visit my parents and won’t be able to writ much for a few days. I think I can get two days ahead by the end of today (21671 words, by my calendar).
Hey, that’s a good suggestion–make a calendar with your daily goal. I am a horrible procrastinator, but I find that little goals make me keep moving. Also, a change of scenery helps. I can’t write from the “end” all the time–I go back and write from the middle a lot. There’s no reason why I can’t have a bunch of little stories strung together, or scenes of something else woven into a larger story. Also, I winnow down my “daily word quota” by keeping my novel open in a window on my work computer and adding in words and sentences wherever I can fit them. Almost ever day I have several fifteen-minute spans where i can take a small break from work and relax, and there’s also lunch break. By the time I get home, I realize I wrote 600 words at work and only have to write a thousand more!
Plaudits to Starving and a quick bump just to make sure the thread sticks around to encourage people. Slow weekend but still 27,241 - over half-way and still not dead!
Dang. How come you always post a w.c. just a little larger than mine? :mad:
I can deal with the freaks who have whipped out 100k words by day 2, but someone who is just a little more productinve turns me all “Why didn’t you write just 15 more minutes?”
(26,849 for the record. 30,000 by midnight still seems feasible.)
I died way back at the end of the first week - I got completely distracted, and not even by anything particularly noteworthy. But this weekend, by dint of determination and complete lack of social life, I went from a gut-wrenchingly measly 2 015 words to 14 063. Phew.
I’m still way behind. But I now have hope. I’ve never written anything so big or so crappy. I’m learning that I don’t need to re-read the whole thing every time I open the file. My characters are awful, horrible people. They keep going camping so I can waffle on about the birds and plants they walk past. The whole Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse schtick I had going is petering out, mostly because I got the Horsemen WRONG. (Fire? Fire isn’t a Horseman? Who knew?! Remind me to stay away from eschatology in the future.)
Tonight? Maybe I’ll crack 20K. I’m going to try.
Well, I didn’t even come close to my goal, but I did get to 21,478. And I finally managed to make my character say something funny, so that’s good.
It’s not my fault. If I’d had a bit more private time over the weekend I’d have posted a much higher one - but I was playing at a Festival of Remembrance on Friday evening and Mrs Trunky decided she wanted to do her sudoku in the study yesterday evening instead of watching TV in bed like she usually does. Otherwise I’d have been past 30k by now. Hey, a man’s got to accumulate his “Kick Me” signs, y’know.
Hopefully I’ll be able to steal some time from my employer today.
Verified word count is 33,410. I can take some time off and still make it!
Now all I got to do is win WWII in 17,000 words.
I had decided my goal for the weekend was 30K. Then I decided that that was reaching, and scaled it back to 25K. Friday night, I took my computer up to my bedroom where the wireless doesn’t penetrate so I couldn’t be distracted by that pretty interweb thing.
I managed to hit 25K by midnight Friday, 30K on Saturday, and yesterday I stalled out at 31 and rearranged my bedroom furniture instead.
I also made seven trips to Starbucks over the weekend.
Okay, so this time it’s Draelin who is a bit ahead of me. (30,375 as of midnight.)
But I beat Malacandra, so pffffffthththth!
Are the rest of you using those spiffy excel report cards? I realized last night that I’ve made a mental flop in how I view the pie chart. It used to be I saw it as a pie of words to be eaten/written, with the area I’d done “missing”, as in pie that had already eaten/written.
Last night I saw it as a pie being built, with only a slice yet to create.
Hmm. Don’t know if that mades sense, but it really felt like a mental flop, like when you shift from seeing the old lady to the young girl, or from the bunny to the duck.