One of my LJ buddies who also does NaNo recently pointed out this very nifty online tool, Write Or Die, to help NaNo participants (or even just writers in general). Basically, you tell it how many words you want to write in what time frame, and how it should prod you along, then it gives you a screen to write in and keeps track of the time and words. If you stop writing, it gives you color queues (and I believe sound queues - my laptop has no sound capabilities right now to know for sure). You can pause only once during that time :-) Once you're done, you can copy/paste your work elsewhere.
This year he also apparently released a desktop version available for a $10 donation that can even take over your whole computer screen to keep you from procrastinating about your writing! The desktop one also does some statistical stuff and lets you save to file. He also has a nice looking progress bar for using on blogs and websites (free).
I gave the online one a whirl last night, as I was in serious procrastination mode, and I managed to bang out 1294 words in 67 minutes. It wasn't quite my goal of 1500, since I stopped and did research a few times, but on the whole it really helped me focus more and just write instead of flaking out. I'm debating buying the desktop one so it can also stop me from pausing and going "oh, let me look this up".
Anyway, thought I'd share about this tool with everyone and see if anyone else had any other NaNo tools/tricks they might want to share for helping beat procrastination and for staying (mostly) on target?
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2006 - The Guardian - 24805 words
2007 - The Guardian - under 10000 words (try 2)
2008 - Broken Wing - 49251 words
2009 - Aisuru, To Love - TBD
