It’s modern fantasy for me! It’s a sign – I’ve had a novel wandering around my brain for a good three or four years now, and I just recently realized what I can actually do with it. Still don’t know how I’m going to end it, but I’ve got a few tens of thousands of words before I get there.
Crap! That’s what I’m writing!
I ordered my laptop (won’t get here by the 1st, but I have a desktop), downloaded RoughDraft, am reading The Book, am signed up for a local kick-off…everything’s in place except experience, plot, characters, any idea or clue what I’m doing.
I’m placing all my faith in the assumption that there are stories in all of us. Please tell me I’m right. :dubious: 
Well, I don’t know. I figured I’d keep typing, because otherwise I wouldn’t finish. Last year I found that my single greatest tool for getting down words that didn’t embarrass me was to imagine what’s happening next, in a way that would be really perfect, and then write something completely different. For example, I imagined a scene w/ the main character lost in scary woods, but I knew I’d never get it right, so I had her meet someone instead. The overall notion of the story stayed intact and I wasn’t crippled by the shadow of perfection looming over me.
IIRC, in On Writing Stephen King says that he doesn’t even have a plot worked out before hand, but that it just flows. That makes sense to me; the events have to have some sort of logical progression, otherwise we can’t suspend disbelief, right? It keeps things flowing. I did have an overall goal in mind, and that allowed me to constrain the events toward the final product; i.e., it allowed the story to have an actual ending instead of having everybody be run over by a truck.
This time around my plan is the same. I’ve got a starting point, I’ve got a small cast of characters whom I want in the story, I’ve got a key midpoint element, and I’ve (almost!) got a goal at the end. Beginning, then betrayal (sp?), then (possible) revenge. I think it should work. (Hope!!)
Crap?
That’s what I’m writing, too! 
I’m thinking it should be NaCraWriMo.
Um… probably.
I found out last year, that there were 50,600-something words in me. “Story,” might be stretching the definition a bit. But the words were definitely there. And the words were about characters that did things. So, I guess it was kind of a story.
But you’ll be great!
(Did I mention, I have something that vaguely resembles a plot this year? I’m so excited. Let’s see if it lasts beyond the first 500 words!)
I also bought an alphasmart. I bet it has tons of words in it.
I’m waffling. I did it two years in a row, finished handily each time, and then didn’t do it last year. I spent the year working on short fiction, and wanted to stay with that for a while.
I’m still in short story mode, but NaNo is such a great experience that I really want to do it again. I may cheat and barf out a couple of smaller-scale works that add up to 50K. Or not–I’ve got a half-formed novel idea that’s been needing some fleshing out, and NaNo might be just the thing to do it with.
Incidentally, for people worried about having fifty thousand words in them–there’ve been a couple of good suggestions upthread, but here’s my secret NaNo success formula:
Don’t stop typing.
That’s it. I don’t let my fingers stop for more than thirty seconds. If I’m stuck, or out of steam or ideas or whatever, I type anyway. The character’s got to get through the next five minutes somehow, needs to make lunch or take a shower or walk to work or buy shoes or something. Or maybe it’s time for a nice, long internal monologue about her favorite pet. It doesn’t matter just as long as you’re typing and it’s somehow related to the story. It’s amazing how often this will unstick you, or kick up material that will prove useful down the line. And if it doesn’t, eh, it’s not supposed to be good anyway, just written. At the very worst, the vamping gives you another day to think of where you’re actually going.
Do that every day, for two thousand words, and the words will just pile up.
I’m enjoying the encouragement and suggestions of successful SDMB WriMos.
Today I turned to my as-yet-unread copy of Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, flipped to the chapter called Shitty First Drafts and randomly found this gem, which will probably become my mantra in some form: “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it…For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.”
I can write really, really shitty first drafts too. I just know I can!!
Tried twice, failed twice. Third time’s the charm.
(I’m thinking urban fantasy, possibly about a psychic scientist. Will it be shitty? Oh yes, it will.)
I read a tip for getting ideas for scenes and characters: press “random” repeatedly on LiveJournal.
Well that got me thinking that I can find much smarter and more bizarre scenes and characters right here on SDMB. No Doper is safe during NaNoWriMo!
Btw I’m writing urban fantasy too.
Oh, absolutely! The ‘masturbating like a mother fucker’ scene screams to be put into a novel.
I’m in.
Of course, I have no plot (or anything even resembling a wisp of an idea of a plot) – but I’ll jump in with both feet.
Hey, it’s only 50,000 words, right? Right??!? How hard can it really be??
I already borrowed Doper names last year. Haha!
Whenever I get stuck, I always somehow end up writing porn. So penis definitely ensues.
I peeked in at the erotica forum at NaNo, thinking I might try a couple erotic scenes. Browsing the “what turns you on” thread, I saw everyone trying to outdo each other with strange and bizarre practices (plus I’d never heard of most of those words). I slunk away sheepishly, wondering if any of them had ever tried “intimacy”.
Is that like a Penis Mighter?
I just signed up.
I’ve realized that saying ‘NaNoWriMo’ is fun. In fact, I’ve taken to saying it a lot to myself, and grinning.
NaNoWriMo!
NaNoWriMo!
NaNoWriMo!
NaNoWriMo!
NaNoWriMo!
NaNoWriMo!
NaNoWriMo!
Repeat that 49,993 more times and you’ve won!