NaNoWriMo 2014: It's Finished!

[narnian_at_heart]

Oh, NW is wonderful!

So I changed my username on NaNoWriMo two or three years ago, which meant I had to get a new account. So I put in my past years, listing myself as participating in 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2014 and winning in 2011.

Well, yesterday, I was digging through my NaNo folder on my computer and found not one, but two 50k+ novels. And I know for a fact that I have never written a novel of that length except during NaNo. The longest I ever wrote before NaNo was about 10k-12k. So after much head scratching, I put in that I won in 2010, even though I knew I didn't win the first year I participated.

Well, I came on here just now and got the bright idea to look at past NaNo threads and my posts in them and try to figure it out.

Lo and behold, my first year was actually 2009, not 2010, and, just as I thought, I did not win that year. But the threads on here showed that I did win in 2010, which I did not remember, as well as 2011. So yay! Now I can accurately put in my stats on the website.

NW is awesome!

BTW: I can start NaNo in 2 hours. I will probably be up until then waiting for my husband to get off work, so I may start writing tonight!

I had my idea all set out, and then when flipping through my NaNo folder, I found my ideas document, which had some cool ideas! So I may switch and do something else.

[SummerSnow]

Hopefully we can get on at the same time to do a word war. I'm hoping to be on a fair amount today, since I won't be able to do much writing next week. Is there a particular time you think will work well?

That's awesome that you discovered you won that year, narnian_at_heart!

Odd, it didn't post until now.

[shastastwin]

Yeah, we've been running around all day so far, so I'm just now sitting down to write anything. I'm up for a word war whenever other folks are on, and will be keeping the chat room up for the next little bit.

Edit: Well, I've got 2k words under my belt now. I'm pleased with that as a start, especially since I'm still not past the first scene I envisioned for this story.

[stargazer]

...while I have a decent plot in line I always get fouled up on the opening paragraph, and the opening sentence in particular. You have to put something in there that will draw the reader in...

I know what you mean, Shadowlander (especially since I abruptly changed story plans just a few days ago). You want a snappy opening, one that grabs people.

I still don't have one. But I just started writing anyway, hoping it will come to mind in the next month or perhaps in the editing process.

I'm coming up on 3k words and am having a good time, but now there's a nagging feeling I don't have enough story for 50k.

[Ithilwen]

End of Day One and I have made two days' worth of word count quotas. My word count is currently 3348. I'd say that's a pretty good day.

And I LOVE my main character. I've fallen in love with the story too. I like it so much that this year I'm actually taking it slower than normal, focusing more on quality than quantity. Instead of writing in order to win NaNo for the sake of winning, I'm using NaNo as encouragement to write my novel. It doesn't matter so much to me that I make 50K by the end of the month as it is to write a good story. So instead of writing 7K of craziness and typos, I'm going slow and putting care into the story. I find that doing it this way is a lot easier and enjoyable.


~Izzy

[wild rose]

I wasn't able to get any writing done on the first day of NaNo, I was overloaded with paperwork. I caught up today, writing 3896 words. I would certainly love to write some more, but don't have the time. There is a lot of stuff happening right now and I haven't got much time for writing.

This year I'm writing a sequel to my CampNaNo novel. It's a western story called Brotherly Love. It's set during the cattle boom in Arizona and (as the name implies) deals with two brothers

Good luck to everyone writing, I hope to be able to catch some of you for some word wars (though these days my internet is more out than on, so getting online is harder than usual for me)

[ChristProclamer]

Aaaaand, I'm joining in at the last minute. Got myself a new username on the site (noahPC) so if anybody wants to add me you can.

I'm a hardcore plotter and I've done nano several times before. I usually win, but as I get older and things get busier, it gets harder to make that wordcount. I enter nano to write a novel, but what really helps me through it is the camraderie with the other writers .

Here's to a month full of mad writing fueled by inspiration, caffeinated beverages and overcompetitive energy!

[Varnafinde]

I've played a few times (as Wise Queen) - won a couple of times, but most times left early. Last year I didn't even try.

This year I'll try again. The book I'm planning may be too biographical to really count as a novel, but it's meant to be told as a story - and as the NaNo mods say, if you feel you have written a novel, then you have written a novel!

So we'll see when it's finished, whether it still feels like a novel

It's 2nd November here now and I haven't started yet, so we'll also see whether I get there at all

[stargazer]

Did someone say 'caffeinated beverages' ? Here, that means Mountain Dew.

Day 2 and I find I'm already distracted. And the NaNo forums are providing some of that distraction, between the Reference Desk (people asking for real-life information about things), its G&B equivalent, and some other threads. I just have to sit down and write.

I find, however, that the creative ideas almost invariably come after I've shut down the computer for the night and am thinking about sleep. I've filled a number of notecards with ideas since I don't trust myself to remember them by morning.

Anyone else have tips and tricks to offer? How's it going as we approach the middle of week 1?

[shastastwin]

gazer, I've found some difficulty in getting words down as well. I feel like a lot of what I'm writing is a lot worse than what I've been doing lately, but a lot of that is the switch from multiple first person perspectives in my other novel to an omniscient POV in my NaNo.

I also haven't outlined much at this point, and I'd like to sit down and map out more of my plot before I get much further into it. I'm also packing an awful lot of worldbuilding and history into these opening chapters at the moment in order to establish the differences between this novel and the much later-set time when most of my novels are set (in this world); a lot of that will probably be trimmed or relocated and kept as background for myself.

I'm also running into the trouble of not having a lot of names handy for my characters, particularly names that match the naming conventions established for each race in my other novels in this world, so there are a number of blanks in my writing that are to be filled in with names once I have them. I've been meaning to brainstorm a list of names for each group so I don't have to sit there stumped when I'm writing. I suppose I should go do that (and outline) instead of posting here.

I'd say keeping notes either on cards or in a notebook is the best thing to do, gazer, because then you can incorporate those once you sit down again to write. If you organize them by character or chronological order, it may help as well.

[Varnafinde]

I've finally started - only a couple hundred words, though. But I've been thinking for the last month about where to start and not been happy with my thoughts, and I've finally found a version that I'm happy with - and that should make things easier for me (when I find time to sit down with writing).

[Shadowlander]

I tend to mentally plot out how the overall story will go and where each part will take place. I usually visualize how a scene (in movie terms ) will go, but sometimes when I'm writing the characters sort of develop on their own, or I'll end up writing story for a character or two that I hadn't originally intended to that for. Today I managed to keep my kid involved with Sesame Street long enough to pound out a couple thousand words When you have a 3 year old that's pretty challenging!

My biggest fear is dialogue. I am terrified of writing dialogue and particularly a-feared of female dialogue because, despite having 3 older sisters, a wife, a daughter, and a boat load of female relatives and friends, I still haven't figured out how the female thought process goes. With that said I tend to worry I write them wrong. I'm also worried it'll be clunky and unnatural no matter who's mouth the dialogue comes out of. Any of you have that issue?

[Gymfan15]

And on the fourth day of NaNo, after two years off...Gymfan15 decided that she wanted to do NaNoWriMo this year after all.



I must be insane! LOL!

[Shadowlander]

I like your book cover Gymmie!

I haven't written in the past two days, partly because of stuff I've needed to get done in and out of the house, but mostly because I just felt lazy . So I'm playing catchup now. I've written 2,000 words so far today and I'm still going strong, so here's to hoping I can at least get on par with where I'm supposed to be today...which is almost 2k distant.

[shastastwin]

*cheers SL on*

I've actually managed to stay a little ahead this year, which is surprising for me. Something else surprising about this year's NaNo is the change in main characters and emphasis that the novel has taken from what I've always envisioned as this story. I'd always imagined it as being mainly the story of this orphan girl and the family of Centaurs that adopts her, with the story of the world's Big Bad and his descent into darkness as the backdrop and one of my mystery figures from the series making an appearance in the later sections. As I've been writing, however, it's beginning to reverse all of that, with the Big Bad and the mystery figure as the main plotlines and the orphan/Centaur plotline as background. I think they may balance out once I get a bit further into the story, but it's going to be much larger than I'd originally planned (I'm thinking upwards of 100k if I spend the time on everything that I need to; this is possibly my first real foray into "epic" fantasy). I've also added a prologue which is a fair bit darker than I'd anticipated. I'd actually like to run that section by you, SL, to see what you think of it.

[Shadowlander]

I love prologues! Yeah, pass it over this way and I'll give it a gander. My "hero" character is in the middle of a chase right now. There's a giant mystery critter just crawled up out of nowhere and he's tracking it down with a hunter to see what it is. The battle is just about to start. I have a hard time writing melee combat...I want it to read like it's real but I worry it all ends up looking like a 4 year old is explaining it. "Big monster got hit by axe. Then he said "OOOWWW", etc.