How We Write

Replying to myself...

The first few years, I started out just winging it, writing whatever came into my head. Lots of words came easily, but the novel meandered. The characters talked and talked but didn't really do much of anything. Gradually I started making notes at the end of a session to start off the next round of writing. Last year I wrote a two-page outline and got to write a beginning, and end, and most of the story in between. I use free "writer's word processor" software called yWriter 3 that really helps me stay organized. I try to build up a cushion of words above the daily rate to compensate for the days I don't feel like writing, but every year I still wind up doing a couple of writing marathons. Mostly I just write whatever words came to mind regardless of quality. Quality? We don't need no steenking quality!

The first year I decided on a couple of things that have helped a lot every year since.
- Don't think, just write. 1,667 words a day takes just a couple of hours when you just let the words tumble out.
- Never skip more than a couple of days. I stopped for a week one year, and never recovered.
- Wes' first rule: if it's already scrolled off the screen, fix that mistake in December.

EDIT: Chris Baty's book, No Plot, No Problem, is a good how-to for first-time WriMos.

I HAVE to have at least some kind of outline of ideas and events. Otherwise I get stuck, (Which happens anyway, but it would be a lot worse if I didn't have an outline to fall back on.) But in between those points in my outline, I usually just wing it.... it gives me at least a little bit of room for things to go the way the characters want rather than how I want.

I tend to write in spurts. I'd write like.... 3,000 words one day, peeter out at just 800 or so another day, and then match the 1,670 goal for a third day. It varies, really, depending on my mood and workload. I just can't write well when there's something else weighing heavily on my mind. ^^;

Last year I switched between my laptop and paper - at home I'd write on the computer and during my spare time at school I'd write on paper, with the last page I wrote on the computer printed out for me to start with. It worked fairly well.

The most important thing I could tell a newbie... don't take a single day off. Even if you can only manage 100 or so words in a day, 100 words is better than no words at all. Plus, taking a day off messes with your creative flow, and sometimes you can never get it back. That's part of the reason I didn't win last year.

The other reason I didn't succeed last year was because I kept letting myself get stuck and just sit there trying to figure a good way to get unstuck. Don't do that. Either skip it and work on a different scene in your novel, or just come up with something random and crappy to fill the space. You can always fix it later.

For me basically I plan some characters and a rough sketch of a plot, usually enough for the first week with some vague ideas where its going from there... as for daily plodding Lately World of Warcraft is looming behind my novel begging for my attention so If I make my word goal I can play... so often I hit my 1667 or more daily and dance off to play.

NaNoWriMo is life... the other months are just NaNo-prep

NaNoWriMo Participant 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008

Winner 2005, 2006, 2007

Script Frenzy Participant 2007, 2008

Winner 2007, 2008

I don't really have detailed plot and planning. I have a general idea, a beginning, a middle, and an end, and I just basically let the characters walk their own way on the long winded road from point A to point B. I tried forcing them into a straight path, once. Wasn't pretty.

My 'steady pace' consists of chapters. I try for a minimum of 2000 words (4 pages on Microsoft Word at a 10 point font) per chapter. And that way if I miss a day, I'm not terribly behind.

I write on a computer, usually a chapter in one go, but this year, I think I'll have to bring pen and paper to work with me, and write what I can during lunch, and type it up and finish it off when I get home. Having two jobs kills. Ugh.

And a must-have: Music. Lots and lots of music.

I have the basic story and characters in my head. No written outline.
Last year (my first) I tried to write the story in order, but when I got stuck I started writing scenes that I was most comfortabel with so while I made the word count the story needs a lot of filler sections.
I will do that again this time if I get stuck on the slow parts.
I write early in the morning, before I leave for work. I seldom get the word count for the day. Then I write like crazy on my days off and try to make up the difference. I am totally spoiled and MUST write on the computer. I can't see doing double duty to do it long hand and then copy it.

I am hoping I can hang on to the restraints for my inner editor. I can agonize over just the right word for hours if I let myself. Last year I learned it is OK to use the word river 40 times in a chapter instead of taking time coming up with alternatives like torrent, flood, raging raids ect. That is what second draft is for. Wish me luck.

I typically just wing it. I seem to think faster than I type, so usually I'm not stuck when I'm typing, unless I am having a hard time bringing a scene to life. I write in spurts as I am definitely not disciplined enough to write every day. I typically write at home on a laptop, at work when its slow on a PC, or I'll drag my laptop to a coffee shop and write there.

Most important thing to tell a NaNoWriMo (as a person who faild twice I can attest to this): Do not stop to edit your work for any real length of time. Don't read back over it to make sure everything makes sense. Save all that kind of second guessing or reworking of the plot for after November. Also, if at all possible, don't fall into the trap of going to previous chapters and fattening them up to meet the 50k mark. Keep pressing forward!

Good luck everyone.

I almost never have any firm idea of my story before I sit down to write it for naNo, just a vague idea of characters and how I want to mash them together. I'm working out an outlibne right now for this one, because while I have a vague sense of a logline, I honestly have no idea what I'm doing with it. It may en up being a complete departure from what I normally do.

Usually, I'm a Moleskine/Fountain Pen girl, especially for sitting down and just getting the idea out. I like it when the the ideas make the ink flow. My pace for NaNo will be 2000 words a day, which is actually pretty easy if you're not overly concerned with pace or errors. What I won't be doing is blogging along the way, because if I'm overly concerned with pacing it by chapter, it'll never get written. That hasn't been my downfall in the past, but it can be a contributing factor.

When I sit down to actually write, I turn the text editor on and the grammar/spell check off and just get to it. I've got a new story toy called Liquid Binder that I've been dumping my novels into, and it's been helping a lot with pace, outline, word count, etc...It's also wonderfully portable, fits nicely onto a flash drive, and I can take it to work without it actually being on the company's computers.

The most important thing I would tell a NaNo newbie is to have fun with it. No one is expcting Hemmingway, or Woolf, or hell, even Steele for that matter. This is about cranking out a novel in 30 days and completing something everyone talks about but few ever actually do - actually writing a book.

Eravamo cosa siete. Siamo quello che diventerete.

Professional Site:
www.montileestormer.com

i tend to type on my desktop once i have an idea in flow, but use a notebook and pen to brainstorm. im a bit unorganized right now, so i will need to get it together before 11/1. :-)

Well, I work in project management, so I end doing lots of planning for my novel! Usually several pages of outline (indicating each of the scenes that I intend to write), various notes about different scenes, and character information. All of this is usually written out by hand and placed into a binder for me to refer back to when I need a refresher on what is coming next, what a character's spouse's name is, what color a car is, etc..

The writing itself is usually done on either a laptop or desktop. I may make some notes to myself while at work or driving or somesuch, but that could be on anything that is handy, and will end up being fleshed out on the computer later on. I also try to keep a short daily journal of how things are going, how I'm feeling abou the writing / characters / life in general, where I'm encountering problems, etc.. I do that each night after I've finished writing for the day. It also lets my mind work on any issues while I'm sleeping (I get a lot of great ideas from dreams), and serves as an interesting view (in hindsight) of the process that I went through. I choose a new journal to use each year, at least partly based on what the story idea for the year is so that the journal is personalized to the story.

As for the pace, well, sometimes I'm good about writing each day, sometimes I'm not. Last year I got waaaaaay behind, but had a marathon weekend during which I wrote 21,000 words in 2 days and managed to get to the 50,000 by the end of the month. Same thing happened in 2006, where I wrote 16,000 words in 2 days when I got behind and again managed to reach the 50k goal (despite a major whoopsie on the last night that erased 3k of words and resulted in lots of very loud swearing). Again, going back to my day job, I created a spreadsheet in Excel that shows me my current actual word count, along with the revised daily word count that I need to reach 50k, and then plot it all on a graph to see where I am... Yep, I'm an Excel geek!

An aside to new folks: backups are your friend! As I mentioned above, I lost 3k worth of work on the last night in 2006, which I was fortunately able to re-write in time to meet the midnight deadline. My backup process now is usually to write on my laptop (where I version each copy of the file by date), then copy the file to a USB thumbdrive, and then take the thumbdrive to my desktop where I upload into the online wordcount tool. This gets me at least one backup (the thumbdrive), if not two (if I copy the file onto my desktop as well). I didn't have any problems last year, after being more careful about doing backups, but it was a hard lesson learned. I know at least one person who lost some 30,000+ last year after a glitch, so be careful!

I've always just tried winging it. But I seldom get my projects finished- so it doesn't really work for me. I'm trying to get some rough outline of my key plot points down in writing before Nov 1st.

I just wing it for the most part. I'll make a main character (usually a girl, based off of myself), a few side characters, and the beginning of a plot. Then I throw in random little adventures on the side until about halfway through, then the plot starts to emerge. Mostly quest plots. XP

This one's going to have a collecting/adventuring plot!!!~ :D

I usually go crazy with writing over the weekends, I'll probably do ~10,000 words a day every so often because I can just make stuff up as I go along!

I've got my premise all set, but what happens after the beginning looks like it'll very much be winging it. I generally always write on computers, occasionally using notebooks for very basic brainstorming. And, as this is my first year, I have absolutely no idea how steady or spurted my writing sessions are going to be.

Though, I gotta say, I love Wes's first rule.

I always write on a laptop but have tons of notebooks running around with odd notes in them.

I'll usually come up with a basic idea of what what the genre is, a few characters and a basic outline. Through out the year I collect quotes that I over hear people say. Stuff like "You can't write a torture scene to Rod Steward" or "Of course the line is fuzzy, I'm calling you from a potato" Then I organize these into chapter headings and use them to make a sort of outline. Each chapter must- at some point- reference the quote and this helps me with word count. If I'm short on words or ideas, I just have the characters discuss the quote. I once got over 2000 words out of the quote "Clowns are like fingerprints...actually they're more like snowflakes, after all, nobody dusts for clowns."

My tips:
1. word wars! When stuck on word count or especially stuck in a scene or don't know what to write, get into or start a word war. A ten minute forced writing session (even if useless in your novel) can really get the ideas flowing.

2. get to some write ins, especially if stuck. Just discussing it with the other folks there can generate tons of ideas!

ML - Detroit
Detroit v elsewhere v nashville

I wing it. Always. I NEVER plan. According to my english teachers, that's one of my only writing flaws. But I just think it stops my flow of thought and takes the fun away from the story.

This is my first year, and so I can't tell you what works best... but I can tell you what I'm doing.

I don't have a detailed plot, but I'm also not totally winging it, either. I came up with this plot idea about three weeks ago, and I've done a little bit of background writing on the characters, settings, and other information each day to keep it fresh in my mind. I have an idea of how things are going to go, but I don't have a complete outline. My characters like being fickle, so they'll take the story where they will.

With any luck, I'm going to be able to keep up with a pace of 1650-1700 words per day. When I have many ideas or I know I won't have access to my laptop, I'll try to write more.

As I just said, I'm using my old (and for computers, this thing is OLD) Sony Vaio and MS Word. I debated using WordPad (my usual word processing tool) for a little while, but it's easier to separate chapters and scenes with Word. I also have a notebook that I will use for plot flashes, though, and I'll have that with me as much as possible.

I actually AM a NaNoNewbie, so I really don't have any advice for myself! Still, though, I'm taking notes from veterans around the site and friends that have done this before. Hopefully I'll pick up enough tips to accomplish this!

"It's like, that people ... Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. Isn't that a weird thought?" - Neil Gaiman