It took me about five years to finish my overgrown NaNo project (ultimately over 100,000 words), and I still need to revise it. I was hoping to do so during NaNo last year but didn’t have much energy for it between being overloaded at work and dealing with some health problems. This year unfortunately may be a repeat (although this year I have different health problems that are thankfully much less serious), but I intend to at least make an attempt.
Before writing my monster I’d made several previous NaNo attempts that I abandoned after just a few hundred words. So while I’m probably not a good NaNo role model, but if it’s helpful to anyone, how I finally got through that was to approach the novel like I was writing a serial. I took it one chapter at a time. If I had ideas for things that were going to happen later on then I’d jot them down, and I had a general idea for the overall plot, but I mostly tried to focus on just getting the current chapter done.
So we’re nearly at the end of Week 1 - how is everyone doing?
I’ve had some spare time over the weekend as I’ve been on a couple of long train journeys so I managed to get up to 10,700 words done. That’s a rare achievement for me, in fact it’s about 2/3 of what I did for the whole thing last year!
I’m late to the party for the thread, but I figure Nano is as good of incentive as any to finally get the novel I have been batting around for years on to paper. I have to catch myself editing along the way, and tell myself that edits can be done later, right now, it’s all about volume.
As far as outline goes, I have had one in my head for a long time, and have some loose notes, and know the general plot. Now it’s about filling in all of the blanks, and hopefully it does not end up looking like a third grader went mad libs style for a book. About 5900 words in so far, so behind pace, but at least there is work being done.
If you’re interested in connecting with the SDMB thread on the NaNo site, PM me and I’ll send you the link. (It’s not terribly active, but it may pick up later).
As for myself (hangs head), even though I started this thread, I haven’t started writing anything. Yet. I’m a bad person.
I have written a prologue, which may get trashed but my daughter likes it (there’s a puppy), and the first chapter, and other bits. I am way behind schedule, but at least I’m moving.
I have to look for the NaNo plug-in in Scrivener to prove that words are happening.
