I won’t be doing it. I have a novel coming out of “time out” on November 2, for final polishing and release on November 26. I’ll probably make some plodding progress on the current WIP too, but not turbo-progress. So I’m out.
I am going to try again this year. I have an idea and some time carved out each day. Fortunately for me, I am working 4-midnight until the end of the month. That gives me lots of time during the day when everyone I know is at work. No distractions. Yet. I am sure I can come up with one or two.
me. I haven’t tried the last couple of years, but I had a 5 or 6 year non-winning streak. I’ve got an idea this year, but may not have the time. closest I ever came was about 20k.
First day down, and though I cheated by having a large amount of the words actually come in the form of character descriptions, I did actually write over 2000 words today, including about a third of the first chapter. I mark that as a success.
dons turban topped with a forlorn feather, hangs out shingle
If anyone gets stuck, the Ball is open for business. Names, McGuffins, worldbuilding, subplots, you name it. Prophecies and other doggerel verse a specialty. When your gears get jammed, I’ll bring the toast. 
First day done, at least over on this side of the Atlantic. I did a little over 2K.
A couple of hundred shy of the average. It felt like a natural stopping point. I hope so, anyway, and not that it’s a precursor of things to come.
Hey there! It occurred to me there might be a thread in Cafe Society about NaNorWriMo, and indeed there is.
I’ve been working on a book on and off for a year. I’ve really turned up the pace in the last couple of months and this is my first month participating in NaNoWriMo. I’m not used to talking about or sharing my writing, but I suppose that’s gotta happen.
So far I’m at around 9,000 words. Not bad for 5 days (And I’ve still got time tonight to wrap up day 5.)
I’m working on a fantasy novel with no supernatural elements. I have never attempted so much as a short story in fantasy before and it is seriously fucking hard to write a fantasy novel. I’ve never been so challenged or frustrated with a project in all my life. But that of course makes it all the more rewarding when I see real progress happen.
So far I’ve got about 20 consecutive chapters, another 10 chapters of possible future scenes that may or may not become a part of the book, and 16,000 words of cut/deleted/rewritten material. So it’s, you know, it’s happening. At this particular moment I’m rewriting all of the earliest chapters to try to flesh out the story and give it some more substance. I feel this is necessary before I move on to later chapters.
How are ya’ll doing?
I’m only at ~6000 words. I’m failing fast. I have loads of excuses for why, but it’s still down to me to get past those.
I figure this will be an occasional thing, finding the quiet time wherever I can squeeze it in, weekends and such, or after midnight binge sessions, and hope that I’m inspired or motivated enough to stick it out when those moments appear.
I’m envious of those who have pleasant controlled environments to work in.
I’m extremely lucky in that regard, because I don’t currently have a day job. But I’m going to be starting a full-time grant-writing contract within the next few days. For that reason I’m trying to get as much done as possible before I start having actual responsibilities again.
Honestly, this is a pretty punishing pace. I rather scoffed at 50,000 words in a month, but procrastination and distraction are so easy even when you have all the time in the world.
If those stolen moments are all you have, give 'em all you’ve got. It’s not like there are any real consequences if you turn out less than 50,000 words. I love the idea of setting aside a month for wild writing abandon. But the idea is you participate however you can.
I’m exactly the same right now, right down to the same word count. If this post counted, I’d be hitting 6000 right now, lol.
Good luck with it everyone!
I’ve won several years but I’m sitting this year out. A. I don’t want to start another novel rather than work on something I’m already writing and B. a week-long business trip next week would pretty much ensure I wouldn’t win anyway.
I do wish those participating the best of luck, though 
If the excuses are about the material–being stuck on some detail or something–post about them, and we’ll break out the crowbars. If they’re of the “No time to write now, I’ve got to milk the caribou!” stripe, I’m afraid you’re on your own.
It’s the latter. I’m in a share-house, and last week the residency had thinned to just two of us, so I had expected a quiet November. Then in the space of one weekend, four new people moved in and brought the tradition of the social evening with them, so every day since has been a lot of annoying people traipsing around guzzling a lot of beer. It makes for a complicated environment that I haven’t found the best way to negotiate my introverted self around yet.
I expect I will have story problems later, but I hope to do the “ignore the problems, just write a lot of crap and push the story forward” method, so I can fix those issues in the second draft (which will probably never happen).
Me too. I write in three situations:
- with a three-year-old literally hanging from my elbow
- with my husband talking at me, usually about tube amplifiers
- in the hour between everyone else’s bedtime and my own.
I save the Big Important scenes for time #3.
SMASHING THINGS
No really, it’s going great.
I’m officially behind schedule now (and I was hoping to ‘‘win’’ this month) because I’m writing a really stressful scene and it’s not shaking out right. I did a complete rewrite on Chapter 6 and it unexpectedly revealed gaping character flaws in my protagonists. Which is, uh, good I guess. But painful, as I’m trying to poke around with these flaws to see if they result in a more interesting/compelling story.
Part of the issue I have with NaNoWriMo is the emphasis on volume, because I’m needing to go back and nitpick through all the shit I just wrote before I feel like I can move on with the story. I’m an extremely linear thinker (though not always a linear writer) so it’s going to drive me ape shit to move on without nailing it. I have to feel like the emotional temperature between the characters is right before I move on to the next scene.
I’ve never had so much of an issue with two characters interacting in my life. I have just reams and reams of deleted scenes trying to understand how they work together. Every moment between them is like tuning a goddamn piano.
I’m exactly like this, but I’ve been doing my best to ignore it. I have scenes which follow from other scenes which make no sense now because I changed my mind for the former but aren’t going to actually change it yet. It’s a struggle.
My issue now right now is that I just yesterday realised I have a big plot hole that’s been sitting out in the open for a while. Also I still wish that I was better at voice.
Well, this has turned into a big fat failure.
Oh well. I was half-expecting that might happen, and I do seem to be in common company.
I’m terrible about this. I have a bad habit of constantly editing as I go. “I can’t write the next sentence, blast it, this one isn’t perfect yet!” So I tweak and tune, and my progress makes a glacier look sprightly.
Word.
I am almost at par tonight (15,000) and if I resume writing now I can probably hit par. So I’ve made a comeback! Too bad like 1,000 of my words were useless. The next few chapters I write, however, will be all new material bridging the gap to a future chapter. So hopefully it will be mostly useful stuff.