# NaNoWriMo 2011 **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 30, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312 "2011-10-30T21:00:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/141 "2011-11-21T20:44:46Z")
Wachoo! _Snorrk!_ Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/142 "2011-11-21T23:50:40Z")
I’m afraid being 33kb into a story still called “untitled” says bad things about my level of commitment to it. Titles aren’t usually this much of a struggle, but I’m having a really hard time coming up with something that’s both a. interesting b. not too revealing. On my list O’ random phrases/lines/ideas for stories, I do have “a candle to hold back the dark[ness]” which _could_ fit, but only if the story takes a much darker turn than it has so far. Maybe it needs to… ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/143 "2011-11-22T00:12:12Z")
I like “Hold Back the Dark” from that, which would also suit a lighter story. ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_Tyger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Silver\_Tyger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Tyger)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/144 "2011-11-22T00:12:13Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I’m afraid being 33kb into a story still called “untitled” says bad things about my level of commitment to it. Titles aren’t usually this much of a struggle, but I’m having a really hard time coming up with something that’s both a. interesting b. not too revealing. On my list O’ random phrases/lines/ideas for stories, I do have “a candle to hold back the dark[ness]” which _could_ fit, but only if the story takes a much darker turn than it has so far. Maybe it needs to… Hey, one of my stories is just called ‘Peter and the Tentacle Monster’. Of course, I’m generally terrible with titles (I usually just name them after the main character). And nooo… don’t make it dark. Dark stories are overdone! Add penguins! ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/145 "2011-11-22T00:55:52Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I’m afraid being 33kb into a story still called “untitled” says bad things about my level of commitment to it. Titles aren’t usually this much of a struggle, but I’m having a really hard time coming up with something that’s both a. interesting b. not too revealing. On my list O’ random phrases/lines/ideas for stories, I do have “a candle to hold back the dark[ness]” which _could_ fit, but only if the story takes a much darker turn than it has so far. Maybe it needs to… _A Single Star To Guide Them_? > [@Silver\_Tyger](#): > > And nooo… don’t make it dark. Dark stories are overdone! Add penguins! Or, in this case, werepenguins. Obligatory: There, penguins. There, iceberg. ---
**Author:** ![LVBoPeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/858c86/32.png) [@LVBoPeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LVBoPeep)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/146 "2011-11-22T00:58:41Z")
I hate to say it but I have to throw in the towel too this year. I got to 22K but I just am not that happy about my story. Definitely not enough to try to fit in almost 30K in less than 10 days. Won the last three years so I think I’m going to have to miss this one and get my sanity back. Good luck to everyone else (and no, I never did name the damn dog LOL). ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_Tyger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Silver\_Tyger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Tyger)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/147 "2011-11-22T16:30:21Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > Obligatory: There, penguins. There, iceberg. (I laughed) **LVBoPeep** , I wanted to tell you to take a day and edit it a bit, see if you can ram it in a different direction, but it’s your story and you’d know best if it’s not working. I’m not really feeling the next issue, but I think when I get writing it, it’ll come together. I think the problem is it’s a bit darker than the ferret issues, so I’ll just throw some silliness in there at some point (I hate unrelentingly dark comics - it’s on my DO NOT DO list, along with pointless T&A (originally spelled T&Q on my list [???]) and a bunch of other things. Also I’ve been enjoying writing the porn story, but that gets a bit weird when I’m around family… ---
**Author:** ![ArrMatey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/arrmatey/32/3522_2.png) [@ArrMatey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArrMatey)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/148 "2011-11-22T18:14:44Z")
_slams head into desk_ It was going so well. I’m less than 8k words to my 50k, and my creativity just… Left. I’m at the climax to the story, and everything I’m writing seems hackneyed and not-flowing. I can’t even put together the action scene without re-writing it over and over and over, and it just doesn’t seem to flow right at all. I’ve been told to just put it down and not write today, but that makes me worry about being able to pick it up again. Arrrrgh! ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/149 "2011-11-22T18:52:52Z")
> [@ArrMatey](#): > > _slams head into desk_ > I can’t even put together the action scene without re-writing it over and over and over, and it just doesn’t seem to flow right at all. I’ve been told to just put it down and not write today, but that makes me worry about being able to pick it up again. Arrrrgh! Don’t rewrite it. If you can’t bring yourself to put it down, write whatever hackneyed scene is coming out of your fingers. Get it out of your system. You can delete it tomorrow, if it’s really so bad you can’t stand it–and it may not look as bad with a night’s sleep between fingers and eyes. (This is one of my habits–I rewrite and tweak over and over as I go, trying to make each word perfect. It’s a major reason my writing output is so low, and exactly the wrong thing to do in NaNo.) ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/150 "2011-11-22T19:04:48Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > Don’t rewrite it. If you can’t bring yourself to put it down, write whatever hackneyed scene is coming out of your fingers. Get it out of your system. You can delete it tomorrow, if it’s really so bad you can’t stand it–and it may not look as bad with a night’s sleep between fingers and eyes. > > (This is one of my habits–I rewrite and tweak over and over as I go, trying to make each word perfect. It’s a major reason my writing output is so low, and exactly the wrong thing to do in NaNo.) I agree. I’ve had to do the same thing in my story–just turn off your inner editor and write whatever comes out. In some cases, when I read over what I’d written, which I thought was slow and boring and took _forever_ to set up, I realized that that was just the tortured process of getting it down in the first place and it actually read fairly quick and breezy. Sometimes you just gotta put your head down and plow through the blocks. ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_Tyger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Silver\_Tyger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Tyger)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/151 "2011-11-22T21:27:39Z")
Been there, man. If you can’t put up with writing dreck, write a summary of what’s supposed to happen. I usually put notes like that in brackets so I don’t get confused. Take a walk, eat something, get the blood flowing, then try again. ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/152 "2011-11-22T22:08:24Z")
> [@Silver\_Tyger](#): > > Been there, man. If you can’t put up with writing dreck, write a summary of what’s supposed to happen. I usually put notes like that in brackets so I don’t get confused. > > Take a walk, eat something, get the blood flowing, then try again. Good advice! Today I just didn’t feel like writing the chapter that came ‘next’ in my story. So I simply skipped ahead to an event that appealed more. (Love how easy Scrivener makes it to write out of order without scrambling your story.) Hey, I’m never going to bother finishing this particular book, so why not indulge in all the ‘dessert’ scenes and let the boring vegetable ones go? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/153 "2011-11-22T23:46:20Z")
I think I’m going to bow to Dragon Naturally Speaking’s wisdom, and spell Cillian the way it wants me to. I say Cillian, it writes Killian. I train to learn how to write Cillian. It writes Killian. Both spellings are valid, and since it’s meant to be pronounced with a K sound anyway…he’s the pookah, by the way 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_Tyger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Silver\_Tyger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Tyger)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/154 "2011-11-23T03:10:07Z")
I’m actually getting excited about the upcoming issue. Well, I’m going to rearrange things a bit - this’ll actually be issue two, and the ferret issues will be three and four. But I’ve figured out the why of the story. And there’s going to be a cthuloid as a cameo (or rather, as he puts it ‘:mad: I’ve got a squid for a head :mad:’ ) ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/155 "2011-11-25T07:23:38Z")
Welp, I’m at 44.5K words, and I’m in kind of weird position because the book really only has another chapter and an epilogue left, which will probably be, say, 3K words max. As it is I’m gonna need to cut quite a bit, since my publisher’s specification is about 45K words. So I might not _need_ to hit 50K, at least not wth this book. I really don’t want to have to pad it out any more than it already is; that seems a waste of effort/time to me. Of course, since I really do want to hit 50K to make it official, I could always make up the difference by adding a few 1K scenes to my online serial, which I haven’t written in a shamefuly long while. I know there are no real hard-and-fast rules to NaNo, but is it unkosher if I include two different projects in my final wordcount? ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/156 "2011-11-25T08:35:35Z")
Perfectly kosher. They even have a forum (rebel?) for people who aren’t working on a standard project, but still intend doing 50k. ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/157 "2011-11-25T17:55:15Z")
Yep, not even gray. One year I ‘finished’ early, so I started in on a sequel. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2011, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/158 "2011-11-27T05:06:54Z")
Awesome, thanks, guys. I finished the novel tonight (well the first draft of it, anyway) at 46,539 words, or 93.08% of the 50K. I’m pretty happy with it, though God knows it needs plenty of editing. Not gonna think about that yet! So with just over 3.5K left I guess I’ll turn my attention to my serial. I’m in a groove and don’t want to slack off now. Hope everyone else is going at it! ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2011, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/159 "2011-11-27T06:02:33Z")
So, I figured out my story. At 35000 words and with 4 days to go. All along, I’ve been thinking it didn’t work and wasn’t good and I’d never look at it again after November. But today I realized I’d written it wrong and one of the main characters is off and the focus needs to be tweaked, and if I do it all, there’s theoretically something there. So now, I kind of want to do this story again after I finish it. Not edit it, but fix it. ---
**Author:** ![liberty3701](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@liberty3701](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liberty3701)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2011, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312/160 "2011-11-27T22:47:35Z")
I just finished! I wrote 50,000 totally unusable words, but I’m not complaining. This was a lot of fun, and showed me that I do have the wherewithal to finish my dissertation in the coming year. Yay! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanowrimo-2011/601312.md?page=9)