I signed up at the last minute. Absolutely no ideas going in. It’ll be fun.
OK, my first chapter is up on my Live Journal page. 882 words. Here.
I know the feeling. I locked myself in our library last night, and when I came out to say goodnight to my roommate, her response was “Okay, see you in December.” :rolleyes: Hey, at least I came out to watch Lost, right?
Dude, that’s a great first chapter. Am I going to have to wait until the end of the month to read the rest?
I’ve always wanted to try something like this, except I’m going to be away as usual for two weeks. I’m not going to take a computer on vactaion to Ireland just to write.
I’m at 5526. I’m trying to get a head start this week because I hardly have anything going on, and that definitely won’t be the case for the rest of the month.
I can’t start until this weekend. Darn you all to heck, I feel intimidated! 
I can’t write my way out of a paper bag, so here’s my idea, and make of it what you will. I imagine an apocalyptic scenario, but in this case the protagonists are on a lengthy ocean voyage, like a trans-Pacific cruise. The ship would arrive a the wrecked port of a wrecked NYC or LA, and the passengers would be forced to disembark though no one would want to, obviously. Right up to disembarkation they would have all the comforts of modern civilization–one last good breakfast, showers, electricity, and the rest, and the world they are forced to disembark into has none of those things.
Alternatively, the people on the ship–passengers and crew–work out a sustainable way to continue existing on the ship (not sure what the details there would be). A micro-society develops aboard the ship, with the extreme punishment for crimes against it being forced disembarkation.
Woo! 6583 words, and I’m well into Chapter 3. I’m really glad I made the outline. I actually had this story in my head for a while, but I’ve actually been highlighting the things in my outline I use, so I know I have plenty more material in case I get stuck. I’m really going to make this!
1860 and for some reason my characters are shopping for a turkey. I have no idea.
Thank you for your kind words, I will put up one chapter a day until I drop.
I’m up to 4000 something right now. My main character is pushing his goat milk to town in a wheel barrow. Something outside of his normal experience is going to happen to him once he gets there. I’m going to be really hard on my protagonist. He already has quite a hardscrabble life, his dream in life is to own three pairs of socks. I have him lament about it for a paragraph or two. Glad I’m not him. He lives in a barn.
I love it! It makes my heroine’s desire to become queen clear as the horribly cliche it is.
No matter. It’s words (3666 at the moment) that count, not quality, right?
Back to my horrible would be queen. Maybe I’ll give her acne.
2903 words in two days… not good, not good. I did better on the first day. Trying to get through 10K by Monday, since my only plans for the weekend are receiving some furniture I ordered in August (I don’t have to assemble it), filling it up, one supermarket trip, NaNoWriMo and WoW.
Heck, the supermarket trip is starting to look like exercise, with plans like those (
me)
1700 at the end of day 2. Falling behind so soon…
I’ll get it back this weekend.
Well, I was all set to do Nano this year - I failed miserably last year. This year, I had an outline! A vague plot that I liked! I was motivated!
I’ve spent the last two days home sick on the sofa, where the computer across the room looked so far away that to go actually use it and think about writing was beyond me. I’m feeling some better today, but being almost three days behind has me debating whether to go ahead and give up or not. But I’ll see how much I manage to get done this weekend, and then decide.
No, no, no! Don’t be discouraged, certainly don’t give up.
Consider this:
The ‘daily minimum’ to finish if you write every day for 30 days is 1,667
The ‘daily minimum’ to finish if you write absolutely nothing for three days?
1851
Not even 200 ‘extra’ words a day needed. Pffft! You can do 200 words during a commercial break, for heavens sake!
If you have Excel, get one of those Nano report card spreadsheets. It’s amazing how seeing all those numbers (percent done, how many words you need tomorrow, etc.) and the ‘done’ slice of your pie chart and so forth helps you keep going.
My girl is an orphan, raised in an orphanage. I’ve gone through a good deal of her backstory, because I needed to set the stage for some things to come. I’ve got her out of the orphanage and into another village and already realizing things are not quite as easy as they seem - it’s pouring rain, her cover isn’t going to work, and she’s alone and starving and soaking wet.
Let’s see where she can go from here. 
I’m almost surprised it’s taken until day three, but I’m doing my charactistic Bad Thing: changing POV. Why can I never start in the POV I’ll eventually decide the story just has to be in? Oh well, I’ll loose ground today, but hopefully I’ll make up for it soon.
7365 words by NaNo’s own count. There’s an excerpt there if anyone wants to take a peek. My per-diem will take a hit tomorrow though as I’m off to a bonfire party, hence sitting up late tonight to get tomorrow’s instalment in first. This is fun!
Now I feel bad. <_< My book’s POV jumps around every few hundred words - there are 4 separate POVs (5 characters, but one come as a unit, just yet) - A singer, a reporter, a doctor, and a pair of lovebirds. Their stories criss-cross, and will begin to blend together in the second half.
I’m at 4843 words so far - I could be further ahead, but I’ve decided to just go until I hit quota - that way I pretty much always have something to ‘prime the pump’ for the next day’s run, which will hopefully keep me from stalling out like I did last year, and the one before.
Also, the dares on the NaNo forums are great ways to add words - I’ve taken two so far, and got 200-300 words out of the resultant scenes, as well as some good characterization for the characters used in them.