Officially the first NaNoBlues thread...

Don't worry! There's bits of the forum that can help, try here:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/forum/158

And here:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/forum/159

Don't let it get to you. What's your novel about?

Nano 06: Scarlet 151. Bio terrorist attacks wipe out the population of my home town.

Nano 07: Breathe. A story of recovery, love, and change. Possible start of a trilogy.

Nano 08: Disconnect. (Never got off the ground due to illness)

I'm not as happy with my opening as I was last year. It has potential, but I do wish the main character would stop being so bloody introspective - she's supposed to be outgoing! I guess it's hard for an introverted person to write about an extroverted character.

I had three or four restarts, but I've finally got a story thread that seems to be working - it's suffering from a major case of clicheism, which could turn out bad, but never mind. Took two days off work to play Dragon Age, but it didn't come out so now I'm using the time more productively to push ahead with my writing. I decided batches of 2.5 hours and then a break is the best way for me to work, and I've got enough caffiene and nicotine to get me going....

4000ish words done so far and I might be able to hit nearly 10,000 before the night is out.... so long as I stop procrastinating!

The only real issue I have with my story this year is that I'm growing to dislike one of the three main characters. She's just not as interesting as the other two, but I plan to keep her in so I can up the word count and kill her off later.

Things would also be going a lot better if I hadn't procrastinated the hell out of the history essay that's due in tomorrow and barely even started.

Ugh, essays were the bain of my existence when NaNo was on... there are far more important things to write about. Mine's called Dead Letters, pretty much self-explanatory, i guess. Thought I'd have all the time in the world to write this month, but jobhunting takes a shocking amount of time, especially when you're more successful than initially expected. Stupid employment getting in the way of writing trashy flash-in-the-pan fiction.

2008 - Running On Faith - 62k
2009 - Dead Letters - ??

I literally don't have any time to write! Spent about 7 hours yesterday doing lab work and it looks like today's going to be the same... when I DO have a minute I'm so tired I can't churn anything sensible out. :( Ironically enough I've done most of my writing in lectures. Hopefully things will ease up by the end of this week!

Dammit that reminds me a friend of mine commissioned me to write a song about real issues real people face. Like when your Landlord won't give your deposit back. Ahh I think I will procrastinate doing that for a while longer.

I've given up already. I hated everything I'd written and it was making me sad, so... I deleted it all. :-/

Today has not gone too well, not really made it past the 16,000 word mark and I can't figure out where I am going next unfortunately.

Not gonna give in and delete it. Gonna go play with some music and see if that helps...

No! Don't give up!! You've got loads of time!

Tiylaya got quite a way in last year before she gave up and started something else - and she still got more word count than me. :p

"It's not easy having a good time. Even smiling makes my face ache."

Don't give up, I did last year (well, kinda just tapered out) and regretted it, because its a whole YEAR before you get to try again.

The key is to write, don't edit anything, just keep writing, even if its utter garbage, until you hit 50,000 words.

When that happens, you'll be a novelist, you'll be proud of yourself for accomplishing such an awesome feat, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll think about the good times, you'll be one of the elite, and you'll have learned a hell of a lot about novel writing so your next attempt will be far better!

Plus once it's done you can edit it to hell anyway and change the whole thing, just get those 50,000 words done!

I think my novel last year imploded on day six and I started on a completely different plot. Not recommended, but believe me it's still possible to get to 50K and beyond when you find the right story.

Would I be too much of a geek if I quote 'Galaxy Quest' at this point: Never Give Up! Never Surrender

Well I'm not coming out to play tonight either - I thought about it, but right now people are the last thing I want to be around. Just had a (an?) horrific day at work, and I managed to grab enough time to write a whole sentence! yay! 8 more words to my total. And then I come home to find we've had a powercut and my PC rebooted. I've got no idea whether I lost any work or not, and right now I really don't want to open Word and find out. Completely disenchanted with everything today, so I'm just going to grab my fake plastic guitar and play some evil songs and forget everything that ever happened. I'll play catchup on saturday, and come out and play on sunday instead....

Are you going to play Fake Plastic Trees on your fake plastic guitar? ;-)

ML - Bristol & Bath Region, UK.

Procrastinating madly since 2004

Radiohead?!?!?!? God no :p

(Thankfully, they're not in the game, but I could play either Feed The Tree by Belly or The Trees by Rush - however, since the aim is to play the most complex, fast, painful music I can to forget about everything, tonight I'm playing things like Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth and the like - of course, since this thread is about Blues, I should really play the closest I've got to blues, so I'll have a crack at some Stevie Ray Vaughn...)

My word count right now is a little deceptive because I have about a page written up in my writing notebook that I haven't typed in yet, but not by much. 8( I WILL CATCH UP THIS WEEKEND.

This might answer a question I was going to post. I got to 3,700 typing directly into the laptop but I'm more of a 'sitting in cafes writing in a notebook kind of person' so I've probably got another couple of thousand words in long hand (old fashioned I know!!).
I'm assuming we can't count this until the words enter into cyber space. Or can we (for self motivational purposes) count the words in the notebook.
I appreciate that the words will still need to be typed in sometime before Nov 30th to get the official stats.
I've just bought a new notebook especially for this and I really like it. Took me ages walking around the stationary shops of Bath!!

The rules only exist because some people find it hard to function without them, according to our glorious leader 8-)
Words count the moment you write them!

In fact, you don't even have to type them up to get an official word count. If you keep count manually there are sites that will generate random text of that length, which you can submit for your official count when you finish. I'll rummage in the FAQs and find the link for you.

Shaun.

"Don't get it right - get it written" - Mrs Mills

Here we are:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3002156 - validating a handwritten manuscript

"Don't get it right - get it written" - Mrs Mills

Enough of the "glorious" already! ;-)

But yes, Shaun's right - the words count as soon as you write them down, regardless of how you do it. Obviously, you'll want to have them typed up by the end of the month, so that your final word count will be accurate, but until then, the ongoing word count is on the tried-and-tested trust system. If you've written them, include them in your word count. Self-motivation is, after all, what Nanowrimo is all about. :-)

For those who don't have access to a computer (and thus are unlikely to be reading this post), it is entirely possible to submit a word-count based on hand-written work, by generating a random text file containing the number of words you've written in that lovely old-fashioned (and no less relevant) way, and submitting that to the official Nanowrimo word-counting robot.

Russ.

ML - Bristol & Bath Region, UK.

Procrastinating madly since 2004

Don't go giving yourself airs, mate. Whilst I appreciate your work, I was actually referring to Chris Baty 8-)

Shaun

PS Link to Lorem ipsum word generator in my reply below.

"Don't get it right - get it written" - Mrs Mills

That's great. I've just done a count of 4 pages and it comes to 110 average per page so I'm going to go for 100 as an estimate and be pleasantly surprised when I type them up (as long as I can resist the temptation to edit and cut!).
Now I just need to get some more of those flexigrip pens!

"NanoWriMo - Build wrist strength the better way on those cold rainy evenings"

No way I could write even 1000 words on paper before my hand fell off ;D

I just wish my characters would stop fighting. It's making for rather boring prose. To bastardise another saying, more talking, less doing!

NaNoWriMo virgin, but written *some* things before:

2001 Panto script for Sleeping Beauty
2006 Panto script for Aladdin II
2009 Thesis: Predicting and Learning the Behaviour of Intelligent Agents

Finally managed to shake off my own black cloud caused by ReallyBadWriting and I'm back in the swing of things. Ok, It's only been another 90 words so far today, but that's more than I've managed in the last three days!

Still, no plans for the rest of the day, so hopefully I'll be able to get much more done today!

fact number 1- felt really crappy yesterday, fact number 2- shockingly low wordcount
coincidence? I THINK NOT
and i choose to believe that number 2 caused number 1, so hopefully a day of nothingness will improve both the mood and the quality of writing. Productivity went from 5k words to just over 1.7k right the way down to 800 words yesterday! aah!

2008 - Running On Faith - 62k
2009 - Dead Letters - ??

I'm feeling more alive for writing today, so about to crack on - I want to try and hit 20k today, and maybe even make it as far as the write-in. I'm being bullied into going by a couple of people (who aren't even in the UK, let alone Bristol!), so at the moment I'm not sure....

Meeting people scares me!

I'm just not getting on with this novel. I've finally introduced my second main character but he doesn't seem to be any more interesting than my first. I'll keep writing, but I'm doing it as a chore rather than because I particularly want to get writing done.

Still, I'll be at the Write-In today and see how it goes. Hoping to get my word count back on target today at the Watershed.

See you all later,

Elizabeth

I had an evening of feeling really crappy in my first year of NaNo and wrote 1000 words of doom and despair into my novel and made my MC really miserable. It helped. :)

"It's not easy having a good time. Even smiling makes my face ache."

Argh argh argh argh, I haven't written more than a thousand words since Saturday, and I was behind even then thanks to school work! I also had to take a nap yesterday to continue functionind adequately, which basically ate up any writing time last night, and I'm busy for the next week :(