I’m at 8,050 words and am feeling good about the story so far. How are the rest of you faring?
This is my sixth year, and I decided to take the whole first week of November off to really get going. I’m just over 15K right now, and I’m really hoping that I can continue to do 5K per day while on vacation, and then use the rest of November to tack on the last 10. Unfortunately, I typically start having a very hard time around 35K. Of the five years I’ve done it so far, I’ve only failed once, so I’m mostly optimistic. However, I have a tendency to write 50K, then decide I’m not going to actually finish the novel because, eff that, I already have 50K.
One of these days, I’m actually going to finish something. 
Good luck, everybody!
I’m at around 3600 words and am sticking pretty carefully to the 1,667 per day goal. More than that and I’ll get cocky and burn out (I know myself too damn well). This way I’ve got a reachable goal that takes me about an hour each night. If I do more, great, but I’m not counting on it.
I’m kind of cheating NaNo anyway because my project is ongoing and not a complete novel. But 50,000 words is 50,000 words, so to me, it counts!
8,500 words, which is the farthest I’ve ever been ahead this early. I’d like to crack 10,000 before bed. I’m trying to make the most of this week, since I have it off from work.
I am just over 12K and I really like my story but I know I should slow down. My major problem when I write is that once I get one good scene over, I like to rush to the next plot point and am not very patient with descriptions and building the story. I have it all right in my head, it’s just putting it on paper. I guess that is for the edit…hopefully.
Just past 4,800 last night. Tonight will be my first timing conflict, so I’m hoping to do a couple of hundred to keep ahead of average.
Nonstarter. I just got the job and have to pack to fly back to Saudi.
I’m at 5300 words, and I will be starting my third chapter tommorrow. I wanted to try to get a bit higher today, but I reached a logical end of chapter two and I didn’t want to start the new chapter tonight.
My story is coming together but I fear that I’m getting into long talky sections again, too much dialog, too much dialog. I just start writing, and all of a sudden I realize someone is going off on a monolog.
Luckily, the talking and getting things on the road part is kinda coming to an end, at least on Story thread 1. Now the action will start to finally get going, probably tommorrow.
Story thread 2 is set in a College of Magic and will take longer to get action filled, but at least I can try to make it interesting, and I think I have with the characterization of one of the teachers, who is kinda a Dead Poet’s Society, Rebellious sort of guy.
This is actually okay, IMO. December is for going back and trimming the fat; November is about keeping rolling and creating nice stopping places you can trim between later.
6,400.
I came to the realization today how badly my writing suffers when I allow too many distractions. I just wrote 4K that I am really happy with, 4K out of 15K that I feel is pretty decent and I know it’s because I turned off everything and just wrote. I can hear my characters think!
I have to thank you all for inspiring me to actually join in this time. Every year I watch it whooshing past and tell myself I’ll do it some time - well, hell! If you Dopes can do it, I can too! 
Besides, it’s a nice substitution for working on my dissertation.
I’m 2k words into an overambitious metafiction thing as of this post.
Current word count: 12625
Act I has closed and Act II started with a lengthy flashback which gave some needed character backstory and a touch of foreshadowing too. I worked through Act I pretty well as I had written out some ideas for plot points that I could work towards. I just did the same thing for Act II and I hope to stay ahead of the curve by getting to at least 20K this weekend. The writing is coming easier since I’ve committed to ignoring any editing problems, I’ve even been ok with creating the word “seemedly” and continuing on.
I’ve assigned backstory to some characters by giving them “theme music” . I put the iPod on random and picked one of the first three songs to come up. This is helped (at least in my mind) in making the character have more depth as the song would be a nice twist on a stale villain.
Has anyone else posted an excerpt from their story yet? I finally got around to posting mine tonight.
Nothing on the site, although I’ve got the first chapter up at my DA. I really should post something to the site, though I can’t decide what. I’m quite happy with my plot and characterization, but my prose is utter crap.
But I’m getting to play with a lot of ideas I’ve had stirring in my brain for a while, as well as coming up with new ones. Working in a superhero universe gives a lot of leeway.
I’m dead on track, so far (10238 words…which is pretty good, considering I conked out at just over 6k yesterday!)
I think most people just go with their opening scene like I did. I could be wrong, though, but it’s the impression I’ve gotten from reading excerpts over the years.
Every year I idly wonder if I could manage NaNoWriMo…this year I decided to find out. My story is the oral history of a fictional rock band, based in London, that rose to fame out of nowhere and almost immediately discovered the trials and tribulations of having a very mentally unstable and somewhat cult-like fanbase. I’m not sure exactly what is going to happen, but I think that’s the fun of it.
That’s what I usually do, but this year I’m playing in a different universe than usual, so the lack of John means the opening doesn’t have quite the ‘punch’ she gives. (Well, actually, I’ve got an alternate version of John, but she’s pushing 60, and her daughter’s the one with an active role in the story.)
Do their drummers keep dying in mysterious gardening accidents?
Seriously though, I’ve been working on a novel for a while but there’s no way I could throw one together in a month. Even if I was given infinite sums of money and the world’s fastest internet connection, there’s no way I could do it.
That and where would I get the result published?
For the last couple years (and this year too), all of the winners of NaNoWriMo get a free printed copy of their book courtesy of Create Space which apparently could also be sold on Amazon.com.
(Currently at 14452 words and heading to a write-in today)
I never got around to editing mine from last year for the Create a Space offer but I might try to get this year’s fixed up for it. For the REALLY ambitious, there’s this …
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200291600
I believe two Wrimos got to the semi-finals stage last year according to the website.
One lady in our group did her 2005 Nano published “for real” and will probably be publishing a second one soon.