Hello all,
Just thought I would ping everybody and see how their stories are coming along. I am suprisingly happy with how mine is developing. When I sit down at night, I always have a clear idea of where I need to get with my writing for the vening, and I am even managing to get some character development in there in the midst of all of my pulp sci-fi action!
I am excited about coming up on 25K words. I am planning a major plot point in my book where something HUGE happens, and the feces hits the proverbial rotating wind device. After that its one giant rolling battle as our heroes attempt to escape the planet! Woot! With that in mind, I really have to keep my plot build up steaming along so that things shape up how I want them to.
Anyways, how are your guys stories coming along? Heading in the direction you had in mind, or just out there ambling through the weeds (which is a fun pastime, to be sure!).
Go SC writers!
~~yarry
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50,246 / 50,000
Nov 9, 2007 - 12 57
I think mine (which just hit 18K last night) is more ambling through the weeds of character development, because let me tell you- they've been stuck wandering through these woods for several thousand words by this point.... I almost feel sorry for them.
Good luck, everybody! Keep with the writing! *cheerleads*
-teague
----------"May the fleas of 1000 camels infest the crotch of the person that screws up your day and may their arms be too short to scratch (Amen)"
50,067 / 50,000
Nov 11, 2007 - 21 46
I've realized that my first-person narratives are far more convincing than when I write in third person. Unfortunately, my story is in third person, from the point of view of several distinct characters. I'm going to try to work on making it more first-person-like. I'm somewhat frustrated with my novel, because it's not meeting my expectations, but there are redeeming aspects of it. Once I catch up on my word quota (go over it, preferably), I'm going to have to go back and weed out all the crap to make the whole thing feel more realistic. I'm doing some autobiographical writing to get in the habit of writing more convincingly.
6,828 / 50,000
Nov 12, 2007 - 10 51
I'm "progressing" slowly. I truly miss the frantic and exciting push for words during NaNoWriMo. This year I didn't intend to do it at all, as my goal is to wrap up a WIP. I did the push to "get it out there" last summer. Now I'm in a delicate stage of fleshing it out. I still get a rush and excitement when the nitpicky missing details finally fall together and I learn more of who my characters really are. I recently found the background and motivation for the one who's central to the whole piece.
----------Camarec - Fantasy is the only truth.
50,038 / 50,000
Nov 12, 2007 - 14 07
It's moving. Hooray. I fell far behind this past week, but it looks like this coming week will allow me to play catch up.
My characters are doing their thing. The villain is not as villainous as expected, but that's proving to be interesting. My heroine has more balls (not literally thank goodness, i hate when they change gender on you) than I thought she did, and her love interest is far more adorable than expected. It's all good. Soon the really, really bad stuff starts happening. Mwa ha ha ha. >:)
----------Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
--Oscar Wilde--
50,987 / 50,000
Nov 12, 2007 - 19 10
My characters keep changing the darn story on me. Stuff I wrote at hte beginning no longer really fits but I'm keeping it all until the stage where I edit. Who knows what will happen by then. I can't seem to write from the start to finish. I write a few scenes in succession and then skip around a bit. I'm just happy that it's flowing. As you can see I'm behind but working hard to catch up. Unfortunatly I've got outside stuff going on that is exahausting me a bit. LOL My boss decided we need to move our office and I start teaching a night class on December 11th for which I have to prepare and my mind isn't always on the story. I'm glad to see how well so many of you are doing though!
----------~*~Jenn~*~
7,754 / 50,000
Nov 13, 2007 - 23 35
It does not look like I'm going to finish... My sister visited over the weekend, so I had to keep her entertained, falling behind by 10000 words... and my computer is steadily breaking down. (It got the blue screen 3 times in 10 min earlier today) I'll still try.. but I won't make it.
----------If you're looking for useless advice, you've come to the right place.
57,512 / 50,000
Nov 14, 2007 - 02 03
Great to hear from all of you!
I just hit 25k words tonight, and lo and behold, my actual plot is just about half way done as well! My characters have been developed well enough that you can remember "the fiesty one" from the "big strong calm one", and the underlying thematic plot has had a chance to make itself known as well. I just got a few cut scenes with my Evil Bad Guys (tm) where we got to hear about their devious plans without actually learning any details (I love that trick) and the scene is set to pull the trigger on the major story changing event!
Once I have finished building up this house of cards, a major player gets killed, bringing about a war that will literally have the main characters running for their lives, fleeing the planet in a non-stop rollercoaster of action as they try to break out!!!! Helicopters, explosions! Exploding helicopters! Lasers, pew pew pew pew!
Err, sorry, got a little excited there.... *sheepish grin*
Keep up the good work everybody! I'm really, really happy to be a part of this community. Yeah!
~~yarry
51,129 / 50,000
Nov 14, 2007 - 20 40
thx0881, you may very well make it despite these obstacles, so be sure to keep going. I'm at around 16,000 right now, so for me it's not impossible, but I'm counting on pulling off an awful lot of writing on my 'free' days, so we'll see. But don't you love doing it anyway? Despite all the agony, sloth, procrastination, denial and all the rest of it? This year, I knew that there would be a lot going on in the non-writing life, so I haven't committed to finishing. But just starting has been so fantastic. And I have to remind myself that I have about 60 pages of a novel that I wouldn't have started otherwise, even if I don't write another word this month.
5,063 / 50,000
Nov 18, 2007 - 18 32
Mine has suffered from poor planning. I knew what I wanted to do and waited too long to search for the notes. See, I had thought of something during last year's WriMo. When I couldn't find the notes come Nov. 2, I decided to do something based on personal issues. It turned out to be too difficult and emotional, so I returned to the world in which last year's and the idea in the lost notes were set. I tried to come up with a new story and felt blocked. I went back to last year's synopsis and found my notes embedded in a brackets there. So that was about 5 days into November. Instantly I started expanding my notes and creating a general draft outline. Yikes! Before long I had 1500+ words and I hadn't even fleshed out the logistics or all characters who would be acting out the plot. I had created an epic and it was daunting. So I spent another 2 days mostly freaking out about it and continuing to develop the outline before I finally made myself plunge in. It was a slow start, but I'm finally starting to build some momentum.
I had hoped that being an ML would kick me in the butt strongly enough to get me to win, or at least double last year's output. Alas, that doesn't seem likely, but you never know. I keep forgetting to log my wordcount, too, but that's not all that important, I suppose.
As usual, I found myself completely unable to contain my imagination. My epic might easily be two or three novels, but I will try to keep it down to one fat one. And as is my way, I kill off characters with which the reader should empathize and hopefully like. I have political intrigue, a murder mystery, natural disaster, rebellion and war, scandal, social commentary, and a rich and twisted that rears its ugly head on occasion. With any modicum of success my readers will hate me for killing protagonists they like and still want to read more when the book ends.
----------You're new Municipal Liaison (ML) for Santa Cruz County
50,036 / 50,000
Nov 18, 2007 - 20 55
Well. I have as much material as I could want to write, but a lot of it I didn't want to write until about yesterday, when I introduced some pagan gods to liven things up. It worked. :)
I'm still behind (again) but I think I'll make it. I hope to catch up tonight. I don't know quite where it's going, but now my characters have a way to potentially stop the end of the world, but to do so they have to depose the president. And they're not allowed to kill him, either. And most of them don't know that. They're just out to get him because he's creepily spying on them and trying to control their movements. And they're not convinced that the ongoing series of natural disasters following on the heels of a plague is enough reason for him to do so. If this all sounds familiar, it should - I consulted Revelation.
Um, yeah. Very strange blasphemous book I gots here.
----------BFS 2008 Participant.
Learning Japanese, writing more, submitting work, editing a novel, writing a script, practicing French, getting a summer job, getting more sleep and exercise, applying for JET.
51,129 / 50,000
Nov 18, 2007 - 21 14
Revelation as your source book should give you a lot of material, bubble! and Mishedor, too many ideas are a lot better than no ideas at all! Hope you'll both just forge on ahead.
I'm not up to speed as far as word count, but at the moment I'm enjoying my story.
50,212 / 50,000
Nov 21, 2007 - 00 32
I finally crossed the 30,000 word line and am feeling so damn good about it, it's not even funny. With my daily quota of 2,000 words instead of 1667, I am now back on track for success by the 30th. I also managed to kill of a protagonist and a love interest, not to mention insert pirates, vampires, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and a video game parody into the plot and (hopefully) get away with it. I am basking in the seas that are NaNoWriMo success. I am feeling gravity pulling me down the slope to victory. I...
...probably should be going to sleep soon, before my metaphors get out of hand.
------------
Denial - not just a river in Egypt.
57,512 / 50,000
Nov 21, 2007 - 01 07
Go Charlie go !
I am definitely on the downhill side of my NaNo, words flowing pretty easily onto the paper for me. I have been surprised to discover that I am doing pretty well on the whole "character interaction and development build up" side of my novel. I'm going to actually feel bad when I blow away half of these guys in the epic, all-guns-blazing conclusion that's coming up! (now lets just hope that my potential readers will care as well, lol)
I have the fun, easy stuff for me to write coming up - the non-stop action and combat. I have been role-playing as the Game Master for so long in my storytelling groups that I can whip out some fun, descriptive combat scenes without even breaking a sweat these days. Odd talent to have acquired, huh? Anyways, I am really looking forward to it. Tomorrow night I kill off one of the main good guys, precipitating the war that will cause the whole world to BURN IN FLAMES!
Keep up the good work guys! We're rocking this thing!
~~yarry