GUYS, LET'S DO NANOWRIMO 2019 Options

[Rhiannon]

LET'S DO NANOWRIMO TOGETHER THIS YEAR WHO IS WITH ME

[Frisk]

I'm not doing NaNoWriMo because I'm neck deep in my own book at the moment, but I'll talk about my progress and writing method and stuff in the thread through the month.

I started November at about 40k words. As of right now I'm at 42,520, so I've done about 2500 today. I try to write at least three times a week, more depending on cleaning and grocery and laundry obligations for my apartment.

I use to really like writing by hand, then copying it over to computer later. It helped me pick out awkward sentences and served as a first run through of editing, but I've foregone that for the most part now. Partly because before starting the book I'm working on now, all of my writing was fragmented; I'd think of scenes I'd like in the story I was trying to tell, and write them almost like their own little vignette. I've posted a few here on LCN over the years (I have a thread for it; I might update it with a small excerpt from what I'm writing now).

Anyway, now I have everything set down as a single, continuous story. The story itself is non-linear, but it follows a thread, so I like having all of it before me to look back on, and trying to do that in a notebook is just unfeasible to me. God bless writers before word documents and computers.

I try to do about 1k a day at minimum. I know that it would probably help my writing if I was less focused on word count, but having it as a goal post helps keep me on track for writing (it also isn't really a whole lot, so I can knock it out even on days I'm not sure what I want to put down).

For mood/atmosphere, I like to set down with a nice loop of rain and a crackling fire and play some visual novel bgms to help draw me in.

[Frisk]

This post is only here because somehow silly Frisk double posted the same post twice. Disregard it, or use this time to reflect on what YOU want to post in this thread.

[EmptyWizard]

What's nanowrimo?

[Frisk]

https://www.nanowrimo.org/

A yearly event where aspiring authors try to write a book over the course of November

I ended up with 3000 words yesterday, and wrote another 2000 today. I made it to 45k :D
Before this, 36k was the longest single piece of writing I had ever done, so 40k was a pretty significant milestone for me.

I'm also exhausted/tired/frustrated because I'm at a point in my story where I'm having plot holes and thematic problems from drawing blanks on whether I've introduced a character already or having references to scenes I forgot to write and have to add later. I still have a third or so of the story to write out and I really want to get to the editing/revision part of writing.

[EmptyWizard]

Oh, I see. Very interesting, I might give it a shot, I've had some ideas floating around for a while now that I just haven't been able to get down. I definitely couldn't write that much though. Good luck!

[Frisk]

I wasn't able to write either yesterday or the day before; my whole shift is working two hours overtime every day this week and I have a Dungeons & Dragons session I have to prep to DM for. I did get 1,200 words put down today, though, and the extra I wrote Saturday and Sunday still puts me about 3,000 words ahead of schedule.

In positive news, I hit one of the three most important scenes in my book today. I'm about halfway through writing it, and it's all rising action til the climax from this point on pretty much (at least that's the plan). In negative news, the more I write the more plot holes I have as characters mention scenes from earlier in the book I never wrote and have to go back and add later :D

[Frisk]

Having work stay two hours over every day this week and once again, planning a D&D session pretty much killed my productivity for the week. I did get to write today (2500 words), and it's still pretty early so I'm hoping for 3 or 4k by the end of the night.

A weakness I have as a writer, I think, at least in this book, is that characters are changing rather than developing. I'll have to go and look at it as a whole once I finish, but I feel like rather than tangible things happening and the characters responding to them and it influencing them (ie development), they're more just acting out of character. How they are acting makes sense to ME, but their changed outlook needs more focus, I think. I'm going to get a few people to beta read when I finish my first draft, so maybe I'll have some input there.

EDIT: I upped the word count by another 2500. Part of it came from a section I had written in a separate document coming into play, and the rest was additional writing.

[EmptyWizard]

Well, I decided I'd give it a shot. I know I won't make it to 50k or anything, expecially because I'm in the middle of exam season, but it's more of a motivator for me to have this concrete goal.
Anyway I started on an idea for a story inspired by Metroid about a space pirate. Got like 650 words of an introduction down and did some planning.

characters are changing rather than developing

I have this thing I do when I feel like I'm losing my grip on some characters where I add in a little quirk about them that I go back and dot throughout the book, if that makes sense. It doesn't have to stay in, it's just a way for me to keep track of the way they change as a character. Idk if that makes much sense but yeah character change can be hard to manage. Part of the reason I write stories about lone wolves almost all the time.