I just had to point out this thread over on the NaNo boards which makes me thoroughly sick. 
Anyone over here even close to finishing 50k yet? I thought I was crazy when last year I finished on Nov. 19, and I’m nowhere near that this year.
Oh, I’m so close to 20k now, but I’m tired. Feh.
I was over 20K, but then realized that the story wasn’t supposed to go that way, so I’m back down to 17. sigh
You didn’t get rid of the smut, did you? Please tell me you didn’t get rid of the smut. Sometimes… smut… is all we have. All you need is smut! Smut lift us up where we belong!
Okay, I’ll be good now.
All you need is an extended dream sequence!
The smut’s in a different file–and you bet I kept it. A couple weeks ago, I bought a book called The Best American Erotica, or something like that. It is most assuredly not the best, and the fact that I wrote something better when not even trying proves it.
And you forgot “Give me smut or give me death!” 
I’d just like to, at this juncture, point out that the SDMB email functionality for my account is enabled, should you require any proofreading of the material.
Where’s a halo smiley when you need one?
Hey, I’m still embarrassed to read it myself, let alone send it to anyone. I wouldn’t want to ruin your high opinion of me by showing you the filthy insides of my mind.
Clearly, you do not yet understand the workings of my mind, for this… is an impossibility.
Those people worry me … I thought I was doing fairly well, but reading that thread is just depressing.
If I knew one of those people I’d simply have to hate them. Oh, and steal a few thousand words. They have so many, how could they miss 5000?
14,302 and counting.
19,303. You may hate me.
(And my characters are finally about to do something, instead of just talking all the bloody time. Which is nice.)
Whoa, whoa. You have dialogue? Well, look who’s getting all uppity! Next thing you know you’ll have things like exposition and subplots!
So, uh, can I borrow summa’dat dialogue? Please? I can’t write a conversation between two amoebas.
Oh, rest assured that I do. I do.
The one thing I can do is write dialogue. Lots and lots of dialogue. The idea of settings and description is completely beyond me, however.
Not to mention
Sometime this weekend, my brain shut down and I wrote a long scene in which my main character smokes a joint, eats a sundae, and watches Pretty in Pink. I don’t know where it came from, or why it happened, but I’ve been writing much better since then. I think I just needed to get it out of my system.
Nightwatch Trailer, believe me, you do not want to borrow any of my characters’ dialogue! I’m doing a high fantasy, in the style of Lord Dunsany (except, if he wrote like me, he wouldn’t even be Second Assistant Manure Carrier Dunsany), and the whole sorry bunch of them talk in an impossibly high-flown, courtly, elaborate style …
OK, it’s good for the word count, but I’m positively looking forward to the moment where one of them catches an arrow in the throat. (And, even when that happens, instead of just saying "akkkk… " or something plausible, it’ll be "Alas, my friends, it seems to me that I shall be unable to continue upon our quest, for the wound inflicted by this missile shall, assuredly, prove fatal … " You see what I mean?)
Finally broke four thousand words, which I think is pretty reasonable for starting anew 36 hours ago, and if I want to stay on par to complete this, I need to get over 4500 tonight.
Just gotta talk some more about that zombie chastity belt…
I’m beginning to believe that there is a curse laid upon me. I write novels and computers crash. Sometimes permanently. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish, now.
I’m willing to accept pity gifts of money, delicacies, and 35-40 thousand words.
Well, damn, jsgoddess - all sympathies from over here. I think I’d cry if something like that happened to me.
Don’t think I’ve got 35,000 words to lend you, but I’ve got some excessively verbose characters you could borrow …
I don’t even have those.
My characters are dull, their lives are dull. Nothing happens.
In a drama class, in school once, I had something incredibly obvious pointed out to me. In a play, all of the characters had lives before the start of the play, and the ones who don’t die will have lives after the end of the play. But something happens at a specific time to make a small, brief section of their lives worth watching.
My characters seem to be stuck in the before part. I keep trying to give them something to do, but they take it in stride. Life just goes on for them -
and they don’t talk much, either.