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That is true. I know I'm going to hit 50,000 but it wouldn't feel too good if I didn't get to tell most of the story. Been setting up the environment with a lot of dialogue and thinking because I've had a habit in the past of information dumping at the beginning. I don't think I can accomplish all of the things I have planned without rushing too much in one month but if I can get through most of the first large chunk I'll be happy. Will hopefully finish ten days early or so and maybe that'll be enough time for some extra writing.
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Nov 10, 2015 23:21
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The Strangest Finch posted:Nice work!
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Nov 10, 2015 23:54
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I make sure I have enough to right by breaking things up into ~30 chunks. Some of it will get combined into chapters, some split off to other chapters with more added. Some have pretty several sentences of summary so I know what points i wanted to hit, some are single sentences or even just something like "Argument about space toilet." Slogged my way to 17,339. Whodathunk that writing about people coming out of suspended animation in a facility like a capsule hotel would make me sympathetically tired and slightly claustrophobic?
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Nov 11, 2015 01:51
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Juanito posted:I'm worried that I'm going to have the opposite problem. I came up with a 3 page plot summary to use as guidance for Nanowrimo, and I'm near 17k words right now, and about part of the way through the third page of the summary that I have. I feel like I've got enough story to get to 30k, but not sure what I'm going to do. This isn't a short story, but probably more barebones then I intended. Maybe I'll have to go back through and flesh things out to reach 50k... I'm a little worried that I'll lose steam doing that. I can see how that would be really frustrating. Maybe start flagging sections where you think you might be able to add more now? That way once you've finished the narrative you have at least an idea of where to head back to to embellish?
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Nov 11, 2015 05:17
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Knocked out 5000 words today, which would be awesome if it wasn't a complete do-over from the start of the book.
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Nov 11, 2015 07:03
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Wooo, sitting at 27k! I always feel better once I get over the halfway point. Nowhere to go but up!
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Nov 11, 2015 07:12
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zonohedron posted:I know this wasn't directed to me, but I have a Silence Toad in my novel now. He is a baker. That's awesome! I'm so happy my name is spreading. (As in, the name I came up with. It's not my name.) In other Silence Toad news, my Silence (she dislikes the "Toad" part) can close her eyes, block out all sounds, and listen to the voices of ghosts. They mostly shout, call her fat and stupid, and clamour for being listened to because noone else can listen to ghosts and they can't do anything but speak. I swear I had no plan whatsoever on anybody doing this in my novel, and specifically the name "Silence" was not chosen for thematic purposes. It was very organic, and suddenly Silence had silence- and listening-based superpowers. That chapter helped me catch up after being away for the weekend, so now I'm at 16k. We're having a local write-in today, and I'm free to say there for like 6 hours. Tonight I'm finally gonna get ahead of that diagonal line!
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Nov 11, 2015 10:51
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Hey WriMo goons! I got a wild hair up my rear end and decided on 11/1 that I was going to do NaNoWriMo this year, even though I have zero writing experience and I pretty much always commit to doing something and then massively fail to follow through. I'm super behind because I realized how much I don't know about writing a good story, and I had not done any sort of preparation. I've been leaning pretty heavily on http://www.novel-writing-help.com which has been really useful and eye opening, and just finished transferring my scribbles over to Scrivener. I'm way, way behind and can't imagine how I will possibly reach 50,000 words, but I have a pretty good outline and am getting on track with the actual writing now. http://nanowrimo.org/participants/paxjordana My story is about a girl who was raised by wolves and returns to the world of humans to discover her past. I sent a friend an excerpt a few days ago, and I'm pretty sure they're too embarrassed to respond now, so  . Never again!
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Nov 11, 2015 16:16
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I have such a love-hate relationship with NaNo  My problem is that I have won every single year I've tried (this is my seventh!) and now I don't want to break the streak. So no matter how busy November is (and it's always very busy) I force myself to not only do it but also to win.On the plus side I've edited a few of them up and chucked them on Amazon for beer money so I guess it works out. Sitting at 18k right now on this year's little project. I just want to play video games, man. Edit: and yeah I can't say enough good things about Scrivener. Been using it for a couple years and I dunno how I lived without it. They'll probably hand out a 50% off coupon at the end of the event again so if anyone wants it let me know in December 
Pikestaff fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Nov 12, 2015 |
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Nov 12, 2015 01:02
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11 days in and I'm sitting (relatively) pretty on 18741 words. I've got extra time today some I'm hoping (hah!) to get a double stint done in case the weekend goes pear-shaped, which is entirely possible. I've got no plot and no plan, just going with "Hmm, what should character xyz get up to today" and seeing where things lead. For example, this morning involves an exit interview that requires an audit-approved green folder and a Glock.
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Nov 12, 2015 01:09
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Lost a fair bit of my buffer when I petered out and ended up taking a quick nap while writing. But I'm still got to 18,540 so I'm still doing all right. Also that was a good nap. I've decided to start keeping track of my quick research bouts. So far I'm at: - Altitude Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier - Distance between Tau Ceti and Delta Pavonis - Time to travel that distance at .7c (with and without time dilation factored in - Thanks, Wolfram|Alpha) - How the computer for the Apollo spacecraft was built - Canaanite deities - Pictures of capsule hotels - Philistine names - Pictures of a B-29 cockpit - Lifespan of crows and ravens
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Nov 12, 2015 01:41
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25k! I'm only slightly ahead of schedule but it's going.
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Nov 12, 2015 04:04
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Pikestaff posted:
This is the first year I've used Scrivener for Nano, I picked it up at the end of November a couple years back and have been using it for everything since. It really does make organizing the big projects easier, though I can't say it does much for me with short projects. Do you use the tag function at all?
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Nov 12, 2015 04:51
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I'm writing in first-person POV, and it's driving me nuts. It's almost impossible to write first-person without sounding like a YA novel. Or maybe it's just me. I'm at 17K. I did some solid work a couple days ago and then life got in the way of writing. Hoping to get back on track over the next few days.
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Nov 12, 2015 05:49
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The Strangest Finch posted:Do you use the tag function at all? I actually don't; I get the feeling that there are a ton of things in Scrivener that I haven't figured out/don't use because it's that in-depth of a program. Anyone who wants to share their tips and tricks please do so!
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Nov 12, 2015 11:12
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One tip for Scrivener that I think some people miss -- there is a project-level find and replace function! You don't have to go scene by scene. You can also add project level notes and scene level notes. Tags I'm still up in the air on. I haven't figured out the best way to utilize them.
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Nov 12, 2015 15:31
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RedTonic posted:One tip for Scrivener that I think some people miss -- there is a project-level find and replace function! You don't have to go scene by scene. Initially, I'd update the affected chapters, (Chapter 5: Willy to Chapter 1: Willy) but after a week of that, I had to find a better solution. I was in a writer's group and was sending compiled chapters every two weeks. It got messy when people said "you already sent us chapter 22, but it was called "CH 22: Jim Blows A Chimp", not "CH 22: Claire Stubs Her Toe". Another tip is using the icons and colors to help visualize your pacing. My story is a thriller, and at some point I wanted to know how often a chapter got violent (exciting). I went through and updated the icon color to red for the violent chapters, green for connecting chapters, (poo poo that happened in order to get to the good stuff). It's almost impossible for me to remember the complete sequence of events in my story, even after spending a year revising the drat thing. The colors, and various icons, helped me visualize the flow/pacing. Later, when I was determined to lock down my revisions, I changed all the colors to Red, and as I started a final pass on a chapter, I'd change that color to yellow, and then green when I wanted to stop messing with it.
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Nov 12, 2015 18:53
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Ok, back on the horse. Wrote several thousand words tonight. Have tomorrow (or today... man it's late,) off, so I plan to do many thousand more. By the time the weekend's through, I should be almost back on track, I think.
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Nov 13, 2015 10:13
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Had a bit of a slump the past couple days. I was still writing but only the bare minimum I had to do to hit the day's goal on the Nano sites chart. Today, though? Back in the swing of it. Shat out almost 2,000 words about Zeno's paradoxes, Medieval Christian dietary rules, Alcubierre drives, wormholes and exotic matter, and to cap it all off, I introduced a sentient crow spaceship designer. I'm at 22,109 now.
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Nov 14, 2015 01:33
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 25,607 - half way!I'm also realizing that I need to add like at least one more scene in for testing the space ship's FTL system. Also that I'm bad at physics and have no idea how much the Coriolis effect would influence a game of curling held on a space station. But screw it, I'll worry about that later.
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Nov 16, 2015 01:13
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Cthulu Carl posted:
In terms of Nano, the answer is "exactly as much as you want it to." That's what December edits are for!
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Nov 16, 2015 02:20
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Cthulu Carl posted:
 Ending the night at 26,078 myself. I would have liked more of a buffer but I've had a couple of off days. And yeah, "Fix it in December" is my motto for NaNo. One thing that I do to keep my momentum up is put notes to myself in brackets right in the middle of the text... mid-sentence if I have to. "[go back and double check this later]", "[add more backstory for this later]", etc. etc. It's free word count plus a note to yourself when you get around to edits later.
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Nov 16, 2015 02:41
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Cthulu Carl posted:
Understand 1000%. I'm at 24,063 as of now. I went to the Halfway Party after the sunday write-in today. Then landed at the 24 hour coffee place after I left there. Right now, I'm in the process of writing another pointless flashback that I'll probably chop to hell in December. Woo NaNo!
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Nov 16, 2015 03:03
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Is it just me, or are they not doing anywhere near the amount of emails and cool pep talks as last year? Last year, it was like two or three pep talks or cool emails and site messages a day. This year, one every two days if you're lucky.
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Nov 16, 2015 03:24
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Pikestaff posted:And yeah, "Fix it in December" is my motto for NaNo. One thing that I do to keep my momentum up is put notes to myself in brackets right in the middle of the text... mid-sentence if I have to. "[go back and double check this later]", "[add more backstory for this later]", etc. etc. It's free word count plus a note to yourself when you get around to edits later. In the past, I'd always get off course easily with "research", but now I'll make up a value in brackets, or just BS something, so that I don't head to Google or Wikipedia. Huge timesaver. I'm at 27,007.
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Nov 16, 2015 12:34
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I've got a long night ahead of me. I'm at 20,137 after skipping a few too many chances to write. I doubt I'll get up to 27K tonight, but I'm hoping to cut the gap in half, and pick up the difference tomorrow. Because I'm just that methodical after the fact.
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Nov 17, 2015 04:22
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magnificent7 posted:I've got a long night ahead of me. I'm at 20,137 after skipping a few too many chances to write. I doubt I'll get up to 27K tonight, but I'm hoping to cut the gap in half, and pick up the difference tomorrow. Because I'm just that methodical after the fact. Eyy we're at about the same point.
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Nov 17, 2015 04:43
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RedTonic posted:Eyy we're at about the same point. The biggest obstacle? "Imma get online for just a sec to update my word count hey what's up on FB/SA" HOURS LOST.
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Nov 17, 2015 04:49
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I just cranked out just under a thousand words to go over 25K. I'm over the halfway point and it feels great. Which means no guilt watching The Daily Show. That's how that works right? E: I made myself stay up after watching and got more lovely words down. Hit 26,700. I keep realizing that to make this "good", I'll need to go back and add in so much more detail and stuff to make plot points stick and feel satisfying. I don't think I'd have this much if it wasn't for NaNo making me say, "It's poo poo and will probably still be poo poo after many revisions. Make more poo poo rather than making this poo poo into slightly different poo poo. You have a (lovely) word count to get to." its no big deal fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 05:14
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I'm still pretty stuck on the same scene I've been at for the last few days. I'm at 8,000 words, so still about 10,000 behind. I just feel like I don't know what kinds of flaws my character is working through, or what kind of arc she should have. This is a point where it seems she would work through that, she's in a dark pit talking to a very creepy snake-dragon thing. Sadly it feels like this confrontation is just the same confrontation as the final one where she has to push through despite it being hard in order to succeed. I like the idea that the snake is this sort of knowledge collector/scrying thing that knows a lot of her secrets, and so a lot of what he says to hurt her, and possibly prevent her from progressing is in fact true, so she has to confront that. One idea was she had set out on her own to get a job in a town away from her family as a way of proving her independence, but the snake confronts her with the fact that really she never expected to succeed, that she kind of wanted to fail. I'm not sure this makes much sense, or really fits with the character. right now he's zapping her, hurting her and saying that this is a taste of the pain of what the BBG can do and he's just doing it to realize what a mistake she's making, but as I said, the resolution feels too same-ish as the final confrontation with the BBG.
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Nov 17, 2015 08:07
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My NaNo originally started out as an attempt at a "serious" fantasy story, but at some point it got ridiculous so I decided to run with it and now it's some sort of absurd Dwarf Fortress parody. I have no idea how I'm going to salvage this but at least I'm at 27,764 words, damnit!
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Nov 17, 2015 11:13
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I was sleepy as hell today and kept getting texts from my sister asking painfully vague questions about sci-fi novels that I was still able to answer in like ten seconds. Still managed to get to 28,637, though. And I keep thinking of more things to insert so I might be axing the flashback space mutiny crap sooner than I thought (still keeping it for word count).
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Nov 18, 2015 03:30
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Running around 29,000 words right now. I wish I could get further ahead of the curve so I won't feel bad about slacking off Thanksgiving while bloated on turkey. I've been trying to write more than my own average every day, but only going ~100 words over doesn't move the pointer that much at this point.
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Nov 18, 2015 16:44
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My goal for the remainder of this week is to completely catch up (I think I'm sitting around 21k atm). On day's I've been able to write I've been keeping pace, but a mid-November hiking trip and a (non-related) bit of illness nuked my production for a couple days. Hopefully by the time Monday rolls around I'll be on point. All that said, I'm actually happier with this story than I have been in previous years. I went the "heavy planning" way this time around, something I normally only do for really short pieces, and so the story I'm trying to tell hasn't really wavered as I write. I know that "story-drift" is actually more of a feature of Nano than a bug, but it bothered me in previous years when I'd end up with a novel that really didn't tell the story I'd wanted to tell.
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Nov 18, 2015 19:57
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magnificent7 posted:The biggest obstacle? "Imma get online for just a sec to update my word count hey what's up on FB/SA" Pretty much! This is stupid, but the thing that has been helping me catch up is writing (well, typing) with my eyes closed or while looking away from the screen. Obviously you have to be comfortable with touch-typing for this to be useful. I'm too self-conscious to do dictation, so this has helped improve my speed.
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Nov 18, 2015 20:18
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My power was out for 24 hours, thank you fall PNW storm. I have written 2k to cover yesterday, so I'm sitting at 46,263. I will write at least another 2k to cover today. Because gently caress BEING BEHIND ON MY WORD COUNT.
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Nov 19, 2015 00:20
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I didn't lose power but it was flickering all day. The rain sounds probably help me write. Still ahead of me, though. I just passed 45,000 so I guess it's probably finally happening this year.
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Nov 19, 2015 02:23
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We had some serious wind all day up here in Montana. You could hear it howling through the trees  I passed 30k so it's finally all downhill from here though!
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Nov 19, 2015 02:25
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Kinda half-assed things today, but still got to 30,072 Should do better tomorrow when the poo poo Hits the Fan.
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Nov 19, 2015 03:08
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Cthulu Carl posted:Kinda half-assed things today, but still got to 30,072
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Nov 19, 2015 23:34
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