I am a Serious Author, not one of those dilettantes who plays at writing a novel in a mere 30 days. Proper novels require years, nay, decades of painstaking work to craft each sentence. Why, nothing ready for publication can be produced in a mere month.
Ahem. I have an idea of the events that happen in my NaNo project, but no formal outline. On the other hand, last couple of times it was the other way around, and that didn’t work.
So…did anyone start??
I wrote a little over a thousand words this morning between 5 and 6 AM. Getting another 700 or so today (trying to shoot for 1,700 as an average word count per day) will be tough because of my schedule, but I hope to make up the difference this weekend.
I started early, after my prior post upthread, so on the 28th or four days ago. I did that in part because I know there will be some part of the month I won’t be able to hit the keyboard.
6,800 words so far. Average 1700 per day. And then it ended because, apparently, I was birthing “only” a short story instead of a novel. So I’ll keep writing and see how far I get.
I hemmed and hawed for hours but finally started typing and got my requisite amount done for the day. Phew. First day is, I think, the hardest, especially if you have nothing planned. Now at least I have three characters, a germ of a setup, and an inkling of a tone. It’s something to build on tomorrow and the other 28 days!
Good luck everyone!!
I don’t think much of my story so far. I did my usual seat-of-the-pants unplanned running start, and ended up with a main character who is a faun, going off on a quest of some kind. Maybe she’ll pop through a portal into the Real World. 1650ish words.
345 words, well below the goal. I have three hours blocked out per day for this but that turned into one with last minute errands. It had been a really long time since I’ve written anything and the urge to rewrite the same paragraph over and over snagged me today. But any number greater than zero is a huge victory. I can make it up, I have a short vacation coming up this week.
This will be my third NaNo working on the same project. It’s well over 50k words at this point (although I’ve never come anywhere near 50k words in one month), and my goal for the month is just to finish the damn thing.
Okay, Day 2 down and still on track. Unfortunately nothing terribly interesting has happened yet and if I don’t get some action going tomorrow I’m going to find myself in a rut. Everyone else doing okay?
Woo, 3347 words, on track for a Dec 1 finish. It’s not coming easy, in fact I think I spent about 4 hours on my 1600ish words today, which is pretty unsustainable/unconscionable!
I read one of the “Pep Talk” posts on the homepage, I think it was from James Patterson, who is by no means an idol of mine. But he did say something like, it’s not to late to make an outline, which rang true for me, so I did a very very quick sketch of what chapters 1-5 would look like, which actually really did help me truck along a bit better today. I even have some conflict coming up! I will flesh out a bit more of an outline when the inspiration strikes - or I finish chapter 5, whichever comes first!
467 today. Falling farther behind. One good day can catch me up, but I won’t have the chance for a good day like that until I start vacation. Hopefully I won’t be irreparably behind by that point. I think I may need to change a couple things to give myself a better chance at being productive.
My weekend was… frustrating, and I succeeded in writing absolutely nothing. I will endeavor to get something down on paper today.
Zero yesterday, and 595 today. I wasn’t available yesterday, so throwing that out, I’m at least improving each day. Once I finally unlock the zone where I can type what I think instead of running it through a mental filter a few times before typing, I’ll be golden.
I’ve got a court case this Friday so I’ve given myself the rest of the week off to concentrate on that.
Eek, I had horrid errands to run today, which ate into my novel time. 11pm and less that 300 words down! Hope inspiration strikes…nnnnnnnnnn…nOW!
I’m about 800 words behind where I’m supposed to be, given the 1,666 word-per-day average.
That’s not a problem - I can make that up. Much more of a problem is that I’m completely hating my book: the characters, the “plot”, the tone. Now, according to NaNo philosophy (or at least my own interpretation thereof) I can do something totally crazy within the story to essentially wipe the slate clean, as long as I keep on writing. But in practice I’m finding it hard to do something that drastic. I don’t want to live for 25 more days with these characters, but I don’t want to have them abducted by aliens either. And quitting is not an option. Gotta come up with some creative solution fast. 
The first section is actually a play written by an awful hack. The real characters are the actors being forced to play the terrible characters in the play by a contract they unwisely agreed to. It turns into a murder-mystery-farce when the writer turns up dead in a dramatic fashion, and the actors are free to be themselves, rather than the annoying characters they’ve been so far.
Only 5 days in, and I’m already at 126,000 words! Fear my over-sized fantasy epic!
Ok, so maybe I’ve benefited from a slight head start, having started writing in June…
So far I think I made a wise choice. I’m up to 25k and still thinking happy thoughts about my real novel too. Haven’t wrote a damn word today, though.
You’re supposed to start from scratch!
Just sayin’…