The best laid plans of NaNoWrimo writers...

Want to hear something funny? I just decided to ditch the story (and all the prep) I had planned for this year's NaNo. I realized that 2012 is a milestone anniversary for a major event in my life, and will be writing a roman ả clef based on that. Yep, I'm starting from scratch. Sort of. I mean, I have some memories and memoirs and stuff. But still, it's going to be fictionalized. Mostly.

Last year, I prepared a lovely 2,000 word outline in the two months leading up to Nano. That resulted in 15,000 words of plot. I was somewhat surprised and dismayed, to put it mildly. I took a day to think and then wrote a new outline that was two paragraphs long that turned into the other 35,000 words.

This could be a great thread to report our fails.

Good luck on the new adventure. Sometimes changing your story can be best thing you could ever do.

I also scraped a story that I did a lot of planning, mainly character wise and background information on. However, I gave it up in turn to work on another project I intially started planning but only writing segments of (2.5k maybe). Stil I have planning for this one I should be doing.

My current project for this year is something I came up with on the fly. I had a massive outline and symbolism charts for a piece I've been working on for almost a year now but it seemed stale and obsolete so I had to trash about a year of conceptualization and elbow grease. Sucked but ti was worth it.

I've got the roughest idea of this year's book. I know where I'm starting, and I kind of know where I'm ending (I don't want her to end up in prison but I think she's going to have to but merrrrrrrr maybe she'll sell out all her customers so that she and smexy detective can ride off intot he sunset), I know where I need to end. I have an idea of what needs to happen in between. I'm willing to throw in anecdotes, like the detective's case that led him to being the head hancho, to make it to 50k and I'm leaving space for myself to do so. Mainly, my book has a solid base. I know the world. I have a whiteboard that I write the questions that I need to be able to answer about the setting and why things can happen like they are and I have been hashing out answers to them for a while.

It's pretty far from my initial idea of 'So there's this criminal chick in a futuristic world that forges documents...' so I'm pleased. For now. I'll probably hate myself by mid-next week.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one!

I had to put a ton of planning on the back-burner due to an idea that jumped up and slapped me in the face a few days ago, but I think it will be worth it.

I'm not alone!
I had a plan since summer and three days ago I was like, "I should write about the French Revolution. WITH MAGIC! And not in France. And with nuclear bomb-esque magic." It's turning out much better than my detective story.

Good luck!

Haha! Y'all ROCK! This is gonna be the best NaNo ever, lol. Let's pants our pants off, lol.

I'm trying to rewrite last year's story, which absolutely failed. Last year I had a good amount of my story plotted, and abandoned it for an amazing idea I got on the way home from school. This year, I've replotted and am restarting.

I had planned on planning out and plotting my story, but it's one week to go and I haven't gotten far. And you guys have encouraged me to just stop and think about it a little bit. What could I do to make my story more complex, intriguing, less depressing? It's definitely flawed right now. I think I may just throw some ideas out the window and redo my plot a little. =)

*hasn't even thought of what to write*

You're supposed to plan...? ;-)

*hasn't thought of what to write, either.*

I wrote a 1-2 page outline last year and ended up pumping out 50k words. This year I'm going to finish that novel using the same outline I made a year ago =P

I think I just changed my story idea again! I am super excited. I think or I hope at least. Maybe perhaps I just might do two if I can do it. Then again when Nov. 1st comes around I might just be back with my original idea. Of a ghost story.

Woohoo! Happy Writing!

So yeah, once again I changed my story last second. This should be fun...

This year, I managed to start and finish a war in less than 21,000 words. So I started another war.