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NaNoWriMo Prep


cjhuitt

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Hi, I added you both as buddies.

I see that! I'm traveling this weekend, so I may not have as strong a beginning as last year. I hope to correct that soon.

Yesteray's session was a strong one : I needed to get a bit ahead because I won't have time to write today.

Still pantsy writing my way through. I really have to come up with an ending; otherwise, I'll get stuck fast.

I have an outline, but the idea doesn't feel as good as usual, though it has been helped by this thread. I'm a little wary of my ending as well. We shall see by the end of the month! If nothing else, I'll be 50K words closer to that magical million word-goal.

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I'm beginning to suspect that I might be at least partially a multi-drafter...

My development seems to be in the exact opposite direction. I outlined and prepared more for this story than any other ever, and man, it's going great! Well, I should clarify: the quantity of writing is great. I make no claims as to the quality. I'm not sticking firmly to the outline (chapter 1 is done, for example, and I skipped ember getting in trouble for passing notes), but knowing the sequence of events to aim for is really useful. My scenes and sequels are still sloppier than I'd like, but that just means I can be intentionally working on them.

The biggest problem I have here is the "time passes" part... How long can such emotion last, however?

Quite true. Though in this case, the emotions aren't supposed to be lasting that long, sorry if I implied it. The transition to review is a little delayed here because one of Ember's attributes is that she's aware that she's in the wrong, and she's fine with that. To me, at least, that seemed to indicate she'd be unlikely to start reviewing her actions until prompted. However, it's written now, so this is a question for January!

The Gayle-is-missing part, I don't know where it goes. It's information that needs to be in here, but perhaps it's just background (plot) information.

Quite likely. I'm sort of using these bullet points as more of a complete outline than they're probably really meant for.

Again, finding out what Cliff knows seems like a scene...

Actually, I hadn't considered "finding out what Cliff knows." Definitely something I should be!

I had been including notes about him because, while Ember's going through her sequel, he's going through his own (just not on screen). Perhaps in the future I should make two separate sequels, to make sure I remember that when I review later if nothing else, and just highlight the parts of the off-the-screen sequel that influence the on-screen sequel directly.

Also, for anyone curious, I have decided that the story I was working on for the Nano prep is not the story I will be writing, after all.

Well, then, good luck on the new!

Anywho, as implied, NaNoWriMo is fully underway for me, too. As the song goes, "To write! To Write! l'chaim! l'chaim, l'chaim, to write!"

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Just saw this thread again. I know it's an old post, but... Google some *real* Polish surnames, please... "Merszywyzk" makes me go facepalm. I dunno... change it to "Merszywski" or something. Because now it does not sound Polish, it sounds Shin or something. ;)

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I took that as part of the humor. Like when the coneheads said that they were from France.

Yep, this was meant to be humor. I don't explicitly state it as Polish in the book, but one of those Eastern European names Americans find impossible to pronounce. But I take your point, Eri. I might change the ending around, as "wyzk" isn't a real ending you'd find. I modeled the name after one of my wife's co-workers: Sypliwtchak. I could never get my tongue around the first half.

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Ok, after an extensive internet search, how about this name:

Misypliwjczyk

It's at the same time less pronounceable and more correct! I kept the first sound, as I wanted the short form of his last name to be "Miz."

Edited by Mandamon
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  • 3 weeks later...

Congrats Caleb!

Very nice finishing streak.

Looks like Mandamon and I aren't far behind you.

My characters still won't allow me to go to the ending. Joys of pantsying...

Thank you. You two have helped keep me pushing... I didn't feel like I could fall behind.

I still have a ways to go until the end of mine. I just validated to see how far off Scrivener was from the official count, and joyful surprise, I gained a couple hundred words.

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Congrats Caleb!

Very nice finishing streak.

Looks like Mandamon and I aren't far behind you.

My characters still won't allow me to go to the ending. Joys of pantsying...

Congrats from me as well! I kept seeing that wordcount shoot up everyday, and it helps keep me on track. I'm hoping to finish tomorrow or Thursday. I don't think that will be the end of the book, but I'm getting there. Maybe another 10K words after that. On the plus side, the ending is a lot clearer to me now that I've written so much.

Might be cool for winners to post a short outline (for those that have them) from before starting the book and what really happened as you wrote. I know mine's evolved as I wrote!

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Might be cool for winners to post a short outline (for those that have them) from before starting the book and what really happened as you wrote. I know mine's evolved as I wrote!

That might be neat. I might do that... a few weeks after I get done writing.

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And ... done.

I might post here later what happened for me during this nano : From a vague idea to something completely different.

At least today, I can see a potential ending. That's better than yesterday I guess.

Congrats to both you and Mandoman... I saw purple bars for both just now when I checked.

It took me about 1/3 of the way in before I realized what was wrong with my original ending, and fixed it. Then things got a bit easier.

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Just finished and validated. Oddly gained a little less than 2000. The story itself is almost done. I am thinking another 10-15k, which is good, because I think there is about 10k I can cut from around the middle. I'm planning on writing up a sort of "what I learned from NaNoWriMo," to help me process the experience, and might post it here, too.

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After a final sprint of writing 9,500 words today I’ve reached the finish line and I must say it feel pretty good. It also means I’ve won NaNoWriMo for the fifth year in a row now. This year was definitely the hardest, but that was my own fault.

Some lessons I’ve learned:

1. Don’t plan your vacation to Japan to coincide with the first twenty days of November. You’re not going to be able to write every day, so you’re going to get behind (a lot) and after that it’s really hard to make up the difference. Though not impossible.

2. The summary method really worked quite well this year as well. It’s something I started doing for NaNoWriMo last year. I wrote a summary of 6,000 to 7,000 words on a chapter by chapter level, which meant I knew exactly what was going to happen in the story at every point. One of the biggest stumbling blocks in writing fast, for me, is not knowing what to write. With the summary I didn’t have that problem at all.

3. Getting up an hour early to write worked very well. I’ve found out I’m far more productive at 6:00 AM than I am after a long day at work and I was able to write the required minimum of 1,667 words before I even had to leave for work. Of course I was way behind this year and had to write a minimum of 6,000 words every day, but if I keep November 2013 open and resolve myself to getting up an hour early I can most likely just coast through the whole month.

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Just finished and validated. Oddly gained a little less than 2000. The story itself is almost done. I am thinking another 10-15k, which is good, because I think there is about 10k I can cut from around the middle. I'm planning on writing up a sort of "what I learned from NaNoWriMo," to help me process the experience, and might post it here, too.

Please do. I'm curious to see what others got out of this. In a few minutes, I'm going to try and write down my day-after mess of impressions about how it went this year.

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After a final sprint of writing 9,500 words today I’ve reached the finish line and I must say it feel pretty good. It also means I’ve won NaNoWriMo for the fifth year in a row now. This year was definitely the hardest, but that was my own fault.

9.5k in a day is definitely impressive. That's almost 20% of the 50k novel right there. Looking back at my notes, the best I did was 5.5k on a Saturday.

1. Don’t plan your vacation to Japan to coincide with the first twenty days of November. You’re not going to be able to write every day, so you’re going to get behind (a lot) and after that it’s really hard to make up the difference. Though not impossible.

Hmm, I might be able to apply this to mine, but not as easily. My biggest drag was getting sick about 1 week in, during which I lost my entire lead and spent the next week or more keeping my head above water, as it were.

2. The summary method really worked quite well this year as well. It’s something I started doing for NaNoWriMo last year. I wrote a summary of 6,000 to 7,000 words on a chapter by chapter level, which meant I knew exactly what was going to happen in the story at every point. One of the biggest stumbling blocks in writing fast, for me, is not knowing what to write. With the summary I didn’t have that problem at all.

I've definitely found chapters where I had a strong summary were a lot faster to type. Even if the strong summary is all in my head, but I don't recommend that in most cases.

3. Getting up an hour early to write worked very well. I’ve found out I’m far more productive at 6:00 AM than I am after a long day at work and I was able to write the required minimum of 1,667 words before I even had to leave for work. Of course I was way behind this year and had to write a minimum of 6,000 words every day, but if I keep November 2013 open and resolve myself to getting up an hour early I can most likely just coast through the whole month.

I tried that some during the month, and I definitely liked doing it. I'm not sure I was more productive than the evening for me, though I do think I was more creative. I usually used that time to sketch out where the story was going next, or figure out plot problems, and the evenings to do the "real" writing.

I also found that, similar to what Dan had previously said in Writing Excuses, taking a break between work and writing helped (even though I'm not technically a writer at work, there is still a lot of written communication happening). Some of my best evenings writing came after a 45 minute workout and 15 minutes sitting in the sauna at my rec center, just thinking of ideas for the story.

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