Nanowrimo 2009: or 50,000 words is more than I thought. - Page 8

Creole Ned · 11-18-2009, 12:31 AM

I think the easiest way to finish is to just think in terms of quantity and ignore the quality -- you know, like well-established authors do. ;) If what you're writing now doesn't match up with what you wrote last week, don't worry about it, just keep going.

For me, the impulse to go back and fix things is sometimes too strong to ignore. I can't proceed until I at least hammer out some of the problems I see. I've done this about three times in the past week and it's cost me most of the progress of each day I've done it. Today I went back and removed a major new element I'd introduced nearly 4/5ths into the story. With just a little reflection I could see it didn't fit the story at all. I could have just ignored it and changed it later but it became a big block in my mind and I *had* to deal with it.

I still ended up ahead of where I was yesterday, though. If I put in three consecutive strong writing sessions I could be done the first draft by Friday.

I will say at this point the story is not at all like the way I imagined it at the start.

Matt Bowyer · 11-18-2009, 06:43 AM

Oh, I'm going to finish. I'm going to kick this story's ass. There's really no other way I can do this -- if I'm serious about being a writer, which I am, 50K words isn't going to be too many in a month. I'm going to try and keep at this pace even after November. I've got a lot more than 50K to write. Hitting 2500 words yesterday and not feeling like I pushed myself hard at all was encouraging, and makes up for the occasional slow days I've fought through. My concern now is Thanksgiving weekend -- with two tabletop gaming sessions and one day of turkey and football planned, I'm hoping I don't get behind. Maybe I'll lock myself in the computer room Saturday and not come out until I've written 20,000 words.

I have two documents I'm doing right now. The first is my Nano document, which has everything I've written. The other is the Edits document, where I jot down all the crap I know I need to fix later. This seems to satiate my inner editor.

A friend of mine who's doing this emailed me today to mention that he has more writing to do after this month if he wants to finish. "I'm halfway through my word count, but not halfway through my plot."

My reply: "I've written three and a half chapters of 24. I'll be doing this FOREVER."

Oh, and while I don't have a demon mages living in an active volcano, I do have a church built out of a colossal harp, where instead of bells chiming the hour, beautiful music is played that reverberates throughout the city. That's not as cool, though -- I dig the volcano mages.

I find that I love writing fantasy novels. It's much easier to come up with something and just work it in. I don't have to figure out the science about it. I make sure it makes sense in the fiction I've created here, and there's an internal ruleset to make sense of first, but if I really want to use something and I can't figure out how it works -- it's magic! I'll probably figure out why it works and what the magic's deal is later. I need to also keep track of random plot threads I've devised since I started.

Rimbo · 11-18-2009, 12:02 PM

A church built out of a harp? That's pretty fucking awesome, actually.

Yeah, I'm finding that I have a lot of trouble not thinking about how things work. I probably have more of a hard SF nature than a true fantasy nature. There's a big ol' massive "That's just not possible" element to my story, and I know it's there, and I'm not going to be able to let it rest. So the answer I come up with that is gonna be reaaaaaaaaaaaaal tricky.

Although honestly, if I were to end my day job, I suspect I'd have the most success with horror.

russellmz00 · 11-18-2009, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rimbo

42,400. In tonight's episode: Barack Obama dooms us all to a fiery death. And he seemed like such a nice guy...

boycott!

Rimbo · 11-18-2009, 11:16 PM

Odd. Went from 42,400 to 44,200. I swear, I didn't plan that or anything.

Slowing down somewhat because I need to think through the next bit a little.

Creole Ned · 11-19-2009, 01:19 AM

42,175. A pretty good day, in all. I am very close to writing the final scene.

Rimbo · 11-19-2009, 11:14 PM

sooooooo close. I'm actually worried that I might end the novel before I hit 50k. Well, I can always go back and expand on things, I guess!

Probably going to need to, anyway.

Equis · 11-19-2009, 11:43 PM

I'm not participating in NanoWrimo this year, but any chance you folks are going to post all your stories online to read?

Rimbo · 11-20-2009, 12:24 AM

Yep! Although I already know I need to edit what I wrote tonight.

Rimbo · 11-21-2009, 12:05 AM

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

50,670 BITCHES!!! And totally confirmed.

And, even better, I got to the end of the story. Although I could probably write a bit more. In fact, I could probably write a whole book more.

Whew! Wow.

Good luck everyone else! I hope you all finish, too! Well, all of you who are able to. Which at this point is basically Jeff Green, KidSocrates and Creole Ned. I'm cheering for all of you!

Tracy Baker · 11-21-2009, 12:22 AM

Grats, Rimbo!

Creole Ned · 11-21-2009, 01:16 AM

I'll finish. I am 45,000+ right now and am working on the final "big" scene, which will be followed by a smaller one to wrap it all up. I should come out to 50,000 at least and once I take care of some of the issues with consistency earlier in the story I'm sure I'll pass 50,000 easily.

If it wasn't already late I'd push to finish it tonight.

Congrats, Rimbo!

EDIT: 45,133 before packing it in tonight. Last night I only put a 1,000 or so in as I ironed out the details (re: went back and edited yet again) for the final stretch.

Matt Bowyer · 11-21-2009, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rimbo

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

50,670 BITCHES!!! And totally confirmed.

And, even better, I got to the end of the story. Although I could probably write a bit more. In fact, I could probably write a whole book more.

Whew! Wow.

Good luck everyone else! I hope you all finish, too! Well, all of you who are able to. Which at this point is basically Jeff Green, KidSocrates and Creole Ned. I'm cheering for all of you!

Congratulations, Rimbo! That's awesome!

I am way behind in the count, but taking this weekend and Thanksgiving break to finish. I think these two chapters will flow easily, it's stuff I've been wanting to write for a year.

Rimbo · 11-21-2009, 11:15 AM

I've never been one to actually read what I've written before I hit the "post" button, so here it be

Edit: warning... it may be a bit awful.

Creole Ned · 11-22-2009, 02:54 AM

With R.E.M.'s "The Flowers of Guatemala" playing in the background, I finished The Ferry tonight, coming in at 50,810 words.

And now, sleep!

Rimbo · 11-22-2009, 09:03 AM

yaaaaaay Ned!

Jeff Green · 11-22-2009, 03:28 PM

Just crossed over the 30,000 word mark.
I might still make it!

Rimbo · 11-22-2009, 05:45 PM

I think you can! The Thanksgiving holiday hopefully will give you a lot of time to catch up.

Arioch · 11-22-2009, 06:28 PM

Congrats, guys. Good to see someone reached the finish line with the same wagon I fell off of.

Creole Ned · 11-22-2009, 08:17 PM

It feels strange now to have it done. I'm forcing myself to not look at it for a week before I start reading it over in preparation for a second draft.

Good luck to those still in the running!

I'll try to organize some thoughts on the exercise as a whole soonish.

russellmz00 · 11-22-2009, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rimbo

I think you can! The Thanksgiving holiday hopefully will give you a lot of time to catch up.

that was the most ridiculous way i've seen a dragon {spoiler} ever.

i loved it! now reading chapter 2.

Rimbo · 11-22-2009, 09:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by russellmz00

that was the most ridiculous way i've seen a dragon {spoiler} ever.

i loved it! now reading chapter 2.

Well, if anyone asks, I meant to write it that way. ;) ;) ;)

Jon Rowe · 11-23-2009, 12:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rimbo

Well, all of you who are able to. Which at this point is basically Jeff Green, KidSocrates and Creole Ned. I'm cheering for all of you!

Well, maybe someone hasn't posted a word count recently....

there is still hope right?

Rimbo · 11-23-2009, 01:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon_Danger

Well, maybe someone hasn't posted a word count recently....

there is still hope right?

Welll.... post it up!

Heck, someone hit 130k long before I hit 50k, so it must be do-able!

Creole Ned · 11-24-2009, 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon_Danger

Well, maybe someone hasn't posted a word count recently....

there is still hope right?

There's still six days left after today, to be precise. :)

Good luck, mysterious non-updater of word counts!

Creole Ned · 11-25-2009, 11:29 PM

KS is past 40,000 words and Jeff is still kickin' it at 36,000. Go guys!

Today the word count verifier on the NaNoWriMo site went live, meaning if you submit your novel and it's 50,000+ words you're declared a "winner" and your progress bar changes to purple, the international color of winning! The validator also seemed to pad my novel by an extra 58 words -- handy if you come up a tiny bit short and are utterly devoid of last minute inspiration.

Calistas · 11-26-2009, 01:40 AM

Great work those going strong! I had a cool idea but in the end I couldn't play it out in a way that made a story happen. Scene after scene were there, but going nowhere. I'm kinda bummed about it. I think part of the problem is I've had a core concept in my head a while, but no story to hang it off, and for NaNoWriMo you probably should just go in pretty clean. Or I can't make stories. I dunno. If anyone gets bored I'll toss them my few thousand words for at least writing criticism! :D

Jeff Green · 11-26-2009, 09:30 AM

Gonna be totally down to the wire for me. Getting in the car now for a fuggin' 6-hour drive to LA, then fuggin' Thanksgiving dinner with the fuggin' family, which is all time I could be using to finish. DAMN RELATIVES.

Should be free and clear Fri/Sat for a couple marathon sessions though. 14,000 words--no big deal, right? :(

On the plus side, I randomly got an email to my NaNoWriMo account from some folks at an independent book publisher saying they were interested in the Xanthor novel. !?!? Who knows, they may do a 180 once they read how bad it is, but it was a nice shot-in-the-arm for my motivation!

Creole Ned · 11-26-2009, 11:01 AM

This will no doubt herald the beginning of a 12 volume Xanthor series. This is your new life! Xanthor in the morning, Xanthor in the evening, Xanthor all the time!

Seriously, getting interest in an unfinished novel is both weird and cool. Congrats. :)

Calistas, if you want feedback on what you've written, by all means link away.

P.S. The latest pep talk e-mail suggests changing your time zone on the site to buy yourself a few more hours if necessary. Every bit helps!

Jeff Green · 11-26-2009, 03:43 PM

Oh shit! I have all day Monday too, don't I??
I was thinking I only had until 11:59:59 SUNDAY night. But that's when it turns Nov 30. I just gained a whole extra day IN MY MIND! YAY!

Right? I'm not misreading this?

*delirious from nonstop writing*

11-21-2009, 01:16 AM	#222
Creole Ned Social Worker Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Vancouver Posts: 4,216	I'll finish. I am 45,000+ right now and am working on the final "big" scene, which will be followed by a smaller one to wrap it all up. I should come out to 50,000 at least and once I take care of some of the issues with consistency earlier in the story I'm sure I'll pass 50,000 easily. If it wasn't already late I'd push to finish it tonight. Congrats, Rimbo! EDIT: 45,133 before packing it in tonight. Last night I only put a 1,000 or so in as I ironed out the details (re: went back and edited yet again) for the final stretch. Last edited by Creole Ned; 11-21-2009 at 01:43 AM..

11-18-2009, 12:31 AM	#211
Creole Ned Social Worker Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Vancouver Posts: 4,216	I think the easiest way to finish is to just think in terms of quantity and ignore the quality -- you know, like well-established authors do. ;) If what you're writing now doesn't match up with what you wrote last week, don't worry about it, just keep going. For me, the impulse to go back and fix things is sometimes too strong to ignore. I can't proceed until I at least hammer out some of the problems I see. I've done this about three times in the past week and it's cost me most of the progress of each day I've done it. Today I went back and removed a major new element I'd introduced nearly 4/5ths into the story. With just a little reflection I could see it didn't fit the story at all. I could have just ignored it and changed it later but it became a big block in my mind and I had to deal with it. I still ended up ahead of where I was yesterday, though. If I put in three consecutive strong writing sessions I could be done the first draft by Friday. I will say at this point the story is not at all like the way I imagined it at the start.

11-18-2009, 06:43 AM	#212
Matt Bowyer Social Worker Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Overland Park, KS XBL & PSN: Kid Socrates Posts: 3,582	Oh, I'm going to finish. I'm going to kick this story's ass. There's really no other way I can do this -- if I'm serious about being a writer, which I am, 50K words isn't going to be too many in a month. I'm going to try and keep at this pace even after November. I've got a lot more than 50K to write. Hitting 2500 words yesterday and not feeling like I pushed myself hard at all was encouraging, and makes up for the occasional slow days I've fought through. My concern now is Thanksgiving weekend -- with two tabletop gaming sessions and one day of turkey and football planned, I'm hoping I don't get behind. Maybe I'll lock myself in the computer room Saturday and not come out until I've written 20,000 words. I have two documents I'm doing right now. The first is my Nano document, which has everything I've written. The other is the Edits document, where I jot down all the crap I know I need to fix later. This seems to satiate my inner editor. A friend of mine who's doing this emailed me today to mention that he has more writing to do after this month if he wants to finish. "I'm halfway through my word count, but not halfway through my plot." My reply: "I've written three and a half chapters of 24. I'll be doing this FOREVER." Oh, and while I don't have a demon mages living in an active volcano, I do have a church built out of a colossal harp, where instead of bells chiming the hour, beautiful music is played that reverberates throughout the city. That's not as cool, though -- I dig the volcano mages. I find that I love writing fantasy novels. It's much easier to come up with something and just work it in. I don't have to figure out the science about it. I make sure it makes sense in the fiction I've created here, and there's an internal ruleset to make sense of first, but if I really want to use something and I can't figure out how it works -- it's magic! I'll probably figure out why it works and what the magic's deal is later. I need to also keep track of random plot threads I've devised since I started.

11-18-2009, 12:02 PM	#213
Rimbo 6th Grade Spelling Bee Loser World's End Supernova Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Xbox Gamertag: Rimbosity Posts: 20,260	A church built out of a harp? That's pretty fucking awesome, actually. Yeah, I'm finding that I have a lot of trouble not thinking about how things work. I probably have more of a hard SF nature than a true fantasy nature. There's a big ol' massive "That's just not possible" element to my story, and I know it's there, and I'm not going to be able to let it rest. So the answer I come up with that is gonna be reaaaaaaaaaaaaal tricky. Although honestly, if I were to end my day job, I suspect I'd have the most success with horror.

11-18-2009, 11:16 PM	#215
Rimbo 6th Grade Spelling Bee Loser World's End Supernova Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Xbox Gamertag: Rimbosity Posts: 20,260	Odd. Went from 42,400 to 44,200. I swear, I didn't plan that or anything. Slowing down somewhat because I need to think through the next bit a little.

11-19-2009, 01:19 AM	#216
Creole Ned Social Worker Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Vancouver Posts: 4,216	42,175. A pretty good day, in all. I am very close to writing the final scene.

11-19-2009, 11:14 PM	#217
Rimbo 6th Grade Spelling Bee Loser World's End Supernova Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Xbox Gamertag: Rimbosity Posts: 20,260	sooooooo close. I'm actually worried that I might end the novel before I hit 50k. Well, I can always go back and expand on things, I guess! Probably going to need to, anyway.

11-19-2009, 11:43 PM	#218
Equis Social Worker Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Asia, with the giant robots, big eyed girls and magical swords Posts: 4,017	I'm not participating in NanoWrimo this year, but any chance you folks are going to post all your stories online to read?

11-20-2009, 12:24 AM	#219
Rimbo 6th Grade Spelling Bee Loser World's End Supernova Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Xbox Gamertag: Rimbosity Posts: 20,260	Yep! Although I already know I need to edit what I wrote tonight.

11-21-2009, 12:05 AM	#220
Rimbo 6th Grade Spelling Bee Loser World's End Supernova Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Xbox Gamertag: Rimbosity Posts: 20,260	eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! 50,670 BITCHES!!! And totally confirmed. And, even better, I got to the end of the story. Although I could probably write a bit more. In fact, I could probably write a whole book more. Whew! Wow. Good luck everyone else! I hope you all finish, too! Well, all of you who are able to. Which at this point is basically Jeff Green, KidSocrates and Creole Ned. I'm cheering for all of you!

11-21-2009, 12:22 AM	#221
Tracy Baker Social Worker Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 2,341	Grats, Rimbo!

11-21-2009, 11:15 AM	#224
Rimbo 6th Grade Spelling Bee Loser World's End Supernova Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Xbox Gamertag: Rimbosity Posts: 20,260	I've never been one to actually read what I've written before I hit the "post" button, so here it be Edit: warning... it may be a bit awful.

11-22-2009, 02:54 AM	#225
Creole Ned Social Worker Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Vancouver Posts: 4,216	With R.E.M.'s "The Flowers of Guatemala" playing in the background, I finished The Ferry tonight, coming in at 50,810 words. And now, sleep!

11-22-2009, 09:03 AM	#226
Rimbo 6th Grade Spelling Bee Loser World's End Supernova Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Xbox Gamertag: Rimbosity Posts: 20,260	yaaaaaay Ned!

11-22-2009, 03:28 PM	#227
Jeff Green Social Worker Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 2,059	Just crossed over the 30,000 word mark. I might still make it!

11-22-2009, 05:45 PM	#228
Rimbo 6th Grade Spelling Bee Loser World's End Supernova Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Xbox Gamertag: Rimbosity Posts: 20,260	I think you can! The Thanksgiving holiday hopefully will give you a lot of time to catch up.

11-22-2009, 06:28 PM	#229
Arioch Spinning Toe Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: The Slough of Despond Gamertag:SpielerDrei Posts: 542	Congrats, guys. Good to see someone reached the finish line with the same wagon I fell off of.

11-22-2009, 08:17 PM	#230
Creole Ned Social Worker Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Vancouver Posts: 4,216	It feels strange now to have it done. I'm forcing myself to not look at it for a week before I start reading it over in preparation for a second draft. Good luck to those still in the running! I'll try to organize some thoughts on the exercise as a whole soonish.

11-25-2009, 11:29 PM	#236
Creole Ned Social Worker Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Vancouver Posts: 4,216	KS is past 40,000 words and Jeff is still kickin' it at 36,000. Go guys! Today the word count verifier on the NaNoWriMo site went live, meaning if you submit your novel and it's 50,000+ words you're declared a "winner" and your progress bar changes to purple, the international color of winning! The validator also seemed to pad my novel by an extra 58 words -- handy if you come up a tiny bit short and are utterly devoid of last minute inspiration.

11-26-2009, 01:40 AM	#237
Calistas New Romantic Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Wellington Posts: 5,840	Great work those going strong! I had a cool idea but in the end I couldn't play it out in a way that made a story happen. Scene after scene were there, but going nowhere. I'm kinda bummed about it. I think part of the problem is I've had a core concept in my head a while, but no story to hang it off, and for NaNoWriMo you probably should just go in pretty clean. Or I can't make stories. I dunno. If anyone gets bored I'll toss them my few thousand words for at least writing criticism! :D

11-26-2009, 09:30 AM	#238
Jeff Green Social Worker Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 2,059	Gonna be totally down to the wire for me. Getting in the car now for a fuggin' 6-hour drive to LA, then fuggin' Thanksgiving dinner with the fuggin' family, which is all time I could be using to finish. DAMN RELATIVES. Should be free and clear Fri/Sat for a couple marathon sessions though. 14,000 words--no big deal, right? :( On the plus side, I randomly got an email to my NaNoWriMo account from some folks at an independent book publisher saying they were interested in the Xanthor novel. !?!? Who knows, they may do a 180 once they read how bad it is, but it was a nice shot-in-the-arm for my motivation!

11-26-2009, 11:01 AM	#239
Creole Ned Social Worker Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Vancouver Posts: 4,216	This will no doubt herald the beginning of a 12 volume Xanthor series. This is your new life! Xanthor in the morning, Xanthor in the evening, Xanthor all the time! Seriously, getting interest in an unfinished novel is both weird and cool. Congrats. :) Calistas, if you want feedback on what you've written, by all means link away. P.S. The latest pep talk e-mail suggests changing your time zone on the site to buy yourself a few more hours if necessary. Every bit helps!

11-26-2009, 03:43 PM	#240
Jeff Green Social Worker Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 2,059	Oh shit! I have all day Monday too, don't I?? I was thinking I only had until 11:59:59 SUNDAY night. But that's when it turns Nov 30. I just gained a whole extra day IN MY MIND! YAY! Right? I'm not misreading this? delirious from nonstop writing

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Nanowrimo 2009: or 50,000 words is more than I thought.