Anyone else struggling?

I'm kinda the opposite. The first few days I was writingwritingwriting and now I find myself so easily distracted that ooo look something shiny! Basically sums it up.

To kind of get myself back into it I created character sheets. Full names, ages, histories, personalities, appearances - it helps me kind of figure out where I'm coming from and helps me to straighten my head out a little. Other than that if I'm stuck I don't listen to music while I write - it distracts me far too easily - I find somewhere quiet to write by myself, or I talk to someone on msn or face to face and just spit ideas at them. (not literally spit, that'd be so gross. you know what I mean.)

Hopefully that helped. And hopefully I can take my own advice and actually write something tonight!! Argh.

Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.
- Philip Pullman

I get so distracted while writing, but I have some friends who are doing NaNoWriMo too. So I have races with them. We'll sit down for an hour and see who can get out the most words. I find these little races very very productive, because the winner has total bragging rights, hahaha.

I felt that I was struggling yesterday, but that seemed due to a spontaneous fit of depression, and slight fear of getting the Swine Flu since a few of my co-workers are getting sick (Not sure if they have the overblown out of proportion flu).

Today, I did much better, starting by adding in the Traveling Shovel of Death into my story and jumping around at different points, so that if someone read it now they would most certainly believe that I was schizophrenic...

As for getting distracted. If you have a laptop, change your location to someplace else. A room with not as much in it, and lock yourself in for a few hours. If that isn't an option... disconnect your computer from the internet.

I know everyone is different, I find myself struggling and putting out less words when I'm around other people and have this fear of them reading over my shoulder and commenting on my work.

Really I've heard the best cure is to just keep writing. I've also seen this: http://writeordie.drwicked.com/ tossed around and recommended a lot.

Other things I've read being done is rewarding yourself. So if you write those 1776 words you would watch TV for 30 minutes, or eat a piece of candy or something.

Meow

Yes araleith I'm struggling too.

sushi173's idea of cxharacter sketches is one of the two things I had intended to have done before November 1. I started late. Since I had been told I could have the outline done before, and planned to do that, but I had to finish a job first, and I didn't get that done until very late November 2. With a completed outline & character sketches I'd be doing OK, and probably really zipping along. But I don't so I'm not. C'est La Vie.

Outlines are my hardest thing, but I know that I will never get it done without one. And it doesn't matter that when your characters come alive they will make me rewrite the outline to their specs, but thats OK, I can always change an outline.

I'm having distraction difficulties galore but the three really biggies are things that I've been working on for months that are all inconveniently coming to a head in November. So today I was distracted checking blogs, denting, emailing and strategizing. If I keep that up its not gonna happen for me.

So my new rule is no online blogs, forums, email, dents or tweets, until I've made my daily NaNoWriMo nut, or at the end of the day when i'm so tired i can hardly see let alone spell. I can take breaks to do other things.

I still don't know about word wars. I seem to lose all ability to press the correct keys so I spent an inordinate amount of time afterward correcting. So that one probably isn't for me.

@Mr_Kitten: id the daily dose 1776 words? I thought it was 16something.

I'm a wierd person who can't talk about the content, and I cleverly bought a dirt cheap laptop dedicated to writing. It can go online but it is very slow. The real reason I bought it wasn't for nanowrimo, it can was so I can make certain no one can read my stuff til its done, because I don't want anyone to see anything unti I am ready for it to be seen.

Off to unconscioushood.

regards,

laurel l. russwurm

http://laurelrusswurm.wordpress.com/
http://stopusagebasedbilling.wordpress.com/
http://russwurm.org

Yes, it is 1667 not 1776 that I posted above, dyslexia strikes again...

Meow

Actually, I'm doing pretty well... but I got through my distraction issues last May, so maybe I have a bit of a head start that way. I need to find some more content to fill up 50k, though. I know the beginning, middle, and the end, but everything else needs to get filled in with cool adventures (:

Good luck, everyone! I find that listening to wordless music can help me get in the mood. Especially if I find a 'playlist' for the story I'm writing.

I am seriously struggling...I haven't even started yet! I have been sidelined by something at work that is just starting to clear up, and now I am facing a 7000 word deficit and feeling pretty depressed about it.

If I decide to go ahead with it, I will adopt a guerilla-writing approach. 50 words here, 100 words there, any available moment of the day that I have. Typed, long hand, short hand, left hand, right hand, whatever it takes.

I'm down, but I'm not out just yet.

Definitely too early in the game for anyone to even think about being "out" yet, Dave!

Getting my wordcount up has not been the issue for me. Having confidence in what I'm producing on the other hand... I feel like it's complete and utter crap. I'm stuck up enough to say that I think the prose is pretty... but my scenes feel weak and boring. And all concept of a plot pretty much flew out the window. My story currenly makes NO sense. :-S

EDIT: Errr, quite literally flew out the window, actually. A no-name character unexpectedly launched herself from a tower window and plummeted to her death. And she took my plot with her. It was entirely out of my control. ;-)

Your guerilla writing plan sounds like a good one! Sounds also like it's time for all of you to break out all the tried and true fast-writing incentives.

1. Write or Die (linked above).
2. Tell anyone you live with to poke you if you're lounging instead of writing.
3. Come out to write-ins, and bring headphones or earplugs in case of chatterers.
4. Participate in word wars/sprints. Set a time limit (often 10 or 15 minutes) and write as many words as you possibly can during that time. It works best if you can do it with someone else (see this forum to do a virtual word war with others on the Nano boards) but you can just challenge yourself too. Personal best!

Dave, remember that you can do 7000 words in a weekend, if you just sit down and write! And if you don't have a weekend to spare for that, I think your bits-and-pieces-here-and-there approach will work really well too. You still have almost the entire month; there's definitely no cause for despair yet.

To all in need of encouragement, I have faith in you. You can absolutely do this thing!!!!

ML for Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge
"merp! merp!" --bunnyhero

I'm surprised by how well I'm doing, personally. I've never written so much in my life!

Somthing that helps me, and might help others, is some competition. I'm really competitive, so I started "racing" some of my writing buddies. Also, I noticed that our region's collective word count is going up and we're higher than ever on the scoreboard. I'd like to see K-W-C stay high on the scoreboard, so I'm going to write as much as possible!

x Laura

I'm keeping ahead of the daily count, but not by much. I was hoping to hit 10,000 yesterday but fell asleep at 9pm instead so that didn't happen. Ah well, that's what today is for, once I finish research for the two papers I kneed to write.

.......Ps, when I get tired I type K infront of all my n words. Random.

anyway.

I'm juggling nano, six papers, two seminars, work, and lectures ahahahaha I must be crazy, but on the other hand it's REALLY helping me plan and manage my time effectively so things are going smoother than I thought they would be.

things that help me:

1) make small goals, like today I'm planning on getting my research for two papers finished, andhitting 9,000 in my word count. Make it challenging, but doable, and it'll boost your confidence.

2) writing races! like someone else mentioned. I'm racing my sister to 50,000. I'm at a bit of a disadvantage because she's in grade 10 and doesn't work, i'm in 4th year uni and have a job, so she's currently kicking my butt... she's at least 4,000 words ahead of me (she got a headstart too because I was out all night for halloween and working on nov 1). But it helps! Competetive me is like "MUST CLOSE GAP NOW!"

3) the guerella approach is the only way i'm where i'm at! a few words here and there in every spare moment i've had so far is the ONLY way I've gotten to where I am. My schedule is so jam packed as it is that I don't have large chunks of time except at night, when i'm too tired to do anything but stare at the screen.

4) i have a soundtrack for my novel made up on itunes. any time I write, the soundtrack goes on. It creates an association and helpsme get in the mood. or if i really need to get into one specific character, I go to their music. Like Morgan = 30 Seconds to Mars. Princess = Matt Nathanson/One Republic/3Oh3. Tristan = Our Lady Peace.

all in all I'm doing well, just waiting for that break where I'll have a couple hours to write and be able to hopefully at least come head to head with my sister lol.

Oh, this makes me feel so much better! Knowing I am not alone, and being armed with lots of tools to help me out makes me a very happy girl, indeed. :) Now, if you will excuse me, my main character is just about to knock on a very important door....

Oh no, other than wanting to murder a dead kitten (don't ask how that works), I feel perfectly sane...err...fine.

*twitch

I just realized how that last comment might've been unintentionally directed at you, Mr_Kitten. Totally unintentional, but all the more funny.

Hi all, I thought I'd put my 2 cents in. I didn't even write the first day Nano started. I had some personal stuff going on and I just couldn't get my head in the game. I haven't been writing regularly but when I do write I usually write for an hour or so at a time and since I type fast (super fast) I can get a large word count in (not so sure on the content of course, I just type as fast as the words spit from my brain!). I'm about a 7000 word count right now - before I wrote today I was just under 4000.

Keep writing! Like everyone on here has been saying it's too early to give up! Write when you can and hopefully it will coincide with 'inspiration' for your story and the words will just flow!

I'm doing so well this year compared to the past three years that I'm starting to wonder when it will come back to bite me. ^^;; Am steadily losing ideas at the same time, so I expect within the next three days I'll be tons behind. Yay.

Totally not helpful to this thread at all, sorry about that. I just wanted to thank for the link to writeordie. That thing is awesome and I am totally going to use it later on.

Good luck to all those who are struggling!

叶うなら誰か俺に生きる意味を教えて下さい -- 明日舞き幸福, 呼笑亡き明日
If it's possible, somebody please tell me my purpose to live. -- Asunaki Koufuku, Koenaki Asu

Nah, I probably deserve it since I brought you here after all. XD.

Actually started using write or die... and what do you know, it works!

Meow

You are absolutely right, merpy. I looked back at my old tracking spreadsheet, and I had even reached a 10,000 word deficit, but then I did a 15,000 word writing weekend and got right back on track. It was the best feeling ever.

It's so easy to let the rest of life, especially the part that pays the bills, get in the way of the things you really want to be doing. But when you get to the end of your days, which would you rather be able to say: "I made my bosses happy at work" or "I once wrote a kick-ass novel". I think we know which one we would all choose.

Thank you so much for this reality check, and I hope it helped others, too.

I struggle every time I sit down to write. I have a few tricks:

- I write something every day, even if it's just for 5 minutes. If I don't, procrastination gets the better of me
- I take it one scene at a time. This usually gives me 200 words. Then I walk away, reward myself. Then after a bit I come back and ask: Now what?
- I do the prep work in advance: my novel and characters are already mapped out so I already know who they are and what my major plot points are. Basically, I'm just filling in the blanks now.
- I use Write or Die. I'm not a morning person, so I set the timer to 100 words in the morning. After a few "wins" at 100 words, the words start coming easier so I no longer need it later in the day when I'm awake and feel like I'm on a bit of a roll.
- I avoid backstory as much as possible. Stay in the moment with your Point of View character. What is he/she doing right now? If I have to include backstory, it's no more than one short paragraph and it has to be important to the scene.
- I always have water or a caffinated beverage to drink and something to munch on. For some reason, the ideas come faster when I'm eating or drinking. If you do this, make sure you balance healthy snacks with treats or you'll quickly double your size by the end of the month.
- when I stop writing (for the session or the day) I end off mid sentence or mid scene so that when I come back to the piece the first few words are easy
- to pad your word count, write passively (I think perhaps I would have thought that...) or allow yourself some run-on sentences. These are easily corrected in the editing stage should you be serious about fixing up the work to make it submittable later.

NaNoWriMo Bonus: your final "novel" will be read by a robot. It doesn't have to be good or even make sense.

Hope these help.

Dear Dave,

Courage my friend...this is the kind of thing where you don't want to get stuck...don't be scared to devaite from the script. My original idea fell flat after 3000 words, so I,ve added characters, crime, drama...

...I understand if you don't want to just write garbage either...words for the sake of words are no fun...

good luck !

Well, I'm still struggling, and I've no word count to post today, but I was good and only used a little email at lunch and dinner break time and didn't look at my blogs even once today. (OK, I confess, I did make a comment on someone else's blog, but I'd actually written it yesterday and just held it for fact confirmation before posting it tonight.) Gahhh... i must be an addict or something. No one told me quitting smoking would lead to this!

But I'm happy because it has been a productive NaNo day... I have my characters and their inter-relationships worked out Now, this may sound really demented, but I'm a visual thinker, so part of that is finding pictures of people I think look like the characters. In the olden days I used to go through magazines and pick out pictures, now there's google image search. It's funny but its easy "casting" the nice characters, but I had a really hard time casting the bad guys because most of the photos I've found are real people not actors and models. It seems kind of mean to pick on some poor stranger and decide his photo is what my depraved villain will look like.

Getting this done is a biggie, because it is a large interconnected cast of characters and I have all the relationships sorted out. Now I can get the outline solidified, hopefully even finished tomorrow. After that things should go better.

@skalds93 I will give you the advice I wish someone had given me when I tried to write my first novel: Do not look back. Do not re-write. Do not judge or second guess until AFTER it is all written down. As long as you have an outline, you will have a story. It may not be really flashily written, it may not be deathless prose, it may be even hack writing, but that doesn't matter. Once it's all the way down on paper, THEN you can fix it. The important thing now is to get it down first. Whole thing, beginning to end.

What's that you said?

"A no-name character unexpectedly launched herself from a tower window and plummeted to her death. And she took my plot with her. It was entirely out of my control. ;-)"

Do not be sad skalds93, that is a very good sign. No, I'm not delusional-- its a sign that your characters are coming to life.

Of course it means you have to write a new outline (from here, do NOT go back) And I realize that most writers would rather spend an hour suspended by our toes off the CN tower in a hailstorm rather than outlining, but it's gotta be done.

I tried to write my first novel in 1972. Then I started rewiting, and rewriting and rewriting. It got to be awfully good, clean beautiful prose, for the first hundred or so pages,. Sadly, every page after was pale and malformed by comparison. (Of course I had no outline either) That's when I convinced myself that writing wasn't for me, and decided to pursue alternate career paths. That was a mistake. I've missed a lot of years. What I'm working on here is only my second novel.

So my advice is write first, edit later. Also listen to all advice. Some of it will make sense to you, so feel free to try it, but if it doesn't feel right you don't have to do it. The nice thing about advice is that you get to choose if its the advice you need.

@Dave good strategies, I concur, don't give up.

@everyone - if you are here it means that you chose to be here. I suggest that you don't give up. Like everything else, writing becomes easier the more you do it. (I didn't say easy I said easier". Say you don't make the daily word counts. What's the worst that can happen?. The worst that could happen is that you don't finish.
Say you only hit 25,000 by the end. This is bad? That's a lot of writing. Why not finish the novel anyway?

I don't know about you all, but I learn better from my mistakes than from my successes. If you keep going until the end, learn from it and do better next year.

@marcie8 - I didn't know that about the robot thing. But it really doesn't matter... I figure if its worth writing a novel it's worth rewriting/editing it too.

Don't decide you're not going to finish in the first week, wait and see.

Off to sleep so I can start fresh in the morning.

regards,

laurel l. russwurm

http://laurelrusswurm.wordpress.com/
http://stopusagebasedbilling.wordpress.com/
http://russwurm.org

No matter how you did your homework in school the best way to do NaNoWriMo is with no distractions, music is good sometimes but then you can play with the sound track and look over there my kitty is playing in a sunbeam and hey my pile of 400 movies is just calling my name.

Write or die is a godsend for anyone who is really behind in word count, you may think you will just cheat at it but I assure you once it bleeps at your or whatever for the first couple times you will be seriously afraid to stop writing again.

get some place comfy and just write, distracts will happen no matter where you are, you could be in a white room with you and a pen jsut to write on the walls and something will distract you, take this distracts is stride, your mind needs to wander it's part of telling a story.

Worse comes to worse have one of your characters go on a long rant about something that you feel strongly about, the words will just flow.

Hmm, I'm not sure how well my style of writing will help others, but I'll offer it...
I realize that nothing's harder than starting up for the day. That is, sitting down and trying to pick up where you left off. I HATE this part, because it necessarily forces me to read back a bit, see where I left off, and try to get back into the frame of mind that I was at last time. As such, I try to have as FEW of those as possible; so I'm literally trying to write my novel in about 5 or 6 sittings, which I find to be MUCH easier than to do it in 20 or 25 smaller sittings. Once you get momentum going, it's usually not too bad (i.e; when you've done 2 or 3 thousand words, they just kinda flow out of you from that point because you get immersed in your story). But if you're only doing it a thousand words at a time, at least for me, I find I can't really get into my story, and suddenly the t.v, or getting a snack, or taking a nap all sound really appealing >.>'

Looking at my wordcount you wouldn't think that I'd be struggling, but every time I sit at the keyboard I have no idea what to do next. Yeah, so I should know my aliens, but there are new situations here, and things are not what they seem. One thing I do when I find myself in a tight corner is introduce a new character, and voila, the story is good for another thousand and two thousand words.

Of course when I edit, I'll have to get rid of some of those characters, because right now a lot of them are just window dressing.

___________________
That's Tee kee' rahm

The fox-like, auburn-furred, bushy-tailed alien

This is my very 1st NaNo, and you've completed a bunch.

My word count hasn't yet cracked 10k so I'm still running low, and you're past the half way mark.

But.

Because you sound like you're where I was when trying to write my first novel, I'll offer you my one word of advice: outline.

(she says as she staggers off to la la land....)

regards,

laurel l. russwurm

http://laurelrusswurm.wordpress.com/
http://stopusagebasedbilling.wordpress.com/
http://russwurm.org

Argh, now I'm struggling in the sense that I just finished reading "A Clockwork Orange" and now all the lingo from that book is escaping into mine. Not very horrorshow at all, my brothers.

I'm stuck mid-way...not exactly sure where to go right now...

Bryce V. Giroux

-- Fate drove me here...then told me to get out of the car...

@bvgiroux: if you're spinning, there are a couple of techniques I can recommend.

1. Look at it from a different angle. Write the next scene from someone else's point of view... maybe somebody who isn't even part of the story. Like the janitor who is trying to buff the floor in the ballroom where the good guy & bad guy are having an argument.

2. juggle your scene order... maybe pull a later scene up and do that instead of the one you're not ready to write (I've found if i haven't set up a scene it won't feel ready to write... the same is true, if the scene you need to write isn't scheduled for a while do it anyway and shuffle the scene order. You can either re-outline or try to do it on the fly, both have worked for me.)

3. Listen to your characters. If you're not sure where they are or what they need to do to advance the story, stick them in a non-essential throwaway scene. (I mean it when i say it's a "throwaway", you very likely won't want to keep it when its done, although you may choose to mine it for character stuff)....

In other words give them a break, sit 'em on the beach with a pina colada, or under a tree, or belly up to the bar, whatever. Something out of step with everything else they've done in your story already. Let them just BS about their history, or what they wanna do when they get out of this, or have them pretend that everything is fine, they're here to chill, on vacation. After a bit something may be niggling at the back of your mind, and you may just stumble on what is missing or where you need to go with it. I've had the characters take this opportunity to give me a better understanding of who they are. You may end up changing your focus, or maybe its just a break you need. When finished, cut and paste the scene to a character folder, and resume your real story. (Note... this should be a small deviation, not a whole new novel).

4. Reappraise your characters. Maybe the good guy should be the bad guy, or maybe it is really the sidekick's story. Or maybe you should just be following somebody else altogether (the janitor?) .

5. Maybe what you need is a break. There is a big push in NaNo to write write write, which is really good. But if it is taking you an hour to write three words it is a sign that your brain is siezed and need a bit of oiling. Sometimes my brain goes to jello (more often than i like to admit) and i just need a break. This may mean taking a wander, maybe go window shopping. Or maybe only to close the door (so my family doesn't gripe at the volume) and crank up my current favorite song for three minutes and thirty-one seconds to blst out the cobwebs. Or maybe sitting on the porch and feeding my chipmunk friends. (They will be hibernating soon after all.) Maybe read a chaper of your favorite book, or sit down to this weeks's episode of House. Whatever it is, you need to stop thinking NaNo NaNo NaNo and thrink about something completely different for a while, Maybe a couple of hours. Or maybe its just time to call it a night and go to bed early. But if you can find a way to give your mind a break, ("a change is as good as a rest") when you come back to your novel it may take a couple of paragraphs to get back into the swing of it, but being refreshed will really help.

The only other thing i can suggest is adding or subtracting a character, although i tend to resist adding characters unless there is a compelling need. (It's easy enough to add a character which will of course pad your wordcount) but in the long run unless there is a reason for them to advance your story, you' end up with a lot of characters and no story... been there,,,done that :) This is a last resort. Far better is to remove a character. Share their load of exposition with the others. Sometimes doing this will clear up the story line. Of course you can kill them off, so it doesn't need to be a re-write.

Thats all I can suggest. Of course every one is different, every novel is different too, so I hope something among the babble helps.

regards,

laurel l. russwurm

http://laurelrusswurm.wordpress.com/
http://stopusagebasedbilling.wordpress.com/
http://russwurm.org

I am struggling a bit in a kind of weird sort of way. I'm churning out the words and the story is moving but it is still taking an awfully long time to get to the first plot point. I'm not quite sure what to make of it... maybe i'm not writing the novel i think i'm writing? Or maybe I'm going to have to write 100,000k and then cut it down big time?

And obviously i need to get back to work so I can find out. (and maybe i'm just too darned verbose)

regards,

laurel l. russwurm

http://laurelrusswurm.wordpress.com/
http://stopusagebasedbilling.wordpress.com/
http://russwurm.org