The Official NaNoWriMo 2013 Thread

[Kheldarson]

I'm already behind

A cold sprung up on me badly and now my son's having issues. And we still have a ton load to do for moving.

*sigh*

[Jay 2K Winger]

Also behind. Given that Grandpa's funeral was this past weekend, I didn't have the chance to sit down and write.

[Kheldarson]

Also behind. Given that Grandpa's funeral was this past weekend, I didn't have the chance to sit down and write.

Sorry for your loss

[MoonCat]

Left off at around 7600+ last night. Doing okay so far this year.

[KatherineB]

Best Nano ever! 13k+ and counting!

[Miss Maple Leaf]

You need some of them Muse-goosers...

Now I have that song stuck in my head. I hope you're happy.

My muse seems to be behaving itself so far this year. I haven't had trouble writing like I did last year. Although, it did disagree with me about a few aspects of the story.

When I came up with the idea for a Doctor Who story I planned on writing a 10th Doctor story. When it came time for the Doctor to show up however, Eleven was the one who appeared.
Also, I had originally named the protagonist Maddie (short for Madelyne), but a few chapters in the name no longer felt right to me and I had to change it to Molly.

Is anyone else having these problems? Or am I the only one whose story has apparently taken on a mind of its own?

[Jetfire]

Nope. My stories and characters usually look at where I want to go, and go "Nah, we want to go way over here instead" forcing me to rework the outline and/or create a new set of characters to interact with.

My last story, I had intended to be more of a war story, ending with an attack on a mountain base. The attack still happened, but it was more of a character piece that went on past the attack and covered other territory I hadn't planned on touching on.

I've been doing all my writing on Google Drive for the past year or two and had no issues with it (*touch wood* ).

My current story started before November, is about 8k words now, and will probably top out at about 15k words or so, if that. But it's going pretty smoothly overall.

[Amina516]

Im so behind! I got to do nothing yesterday as I was stuck in between two 12 hour shifts and had to find time for homework and go see my mom. Im trying to catch up today.

Of course being on this website is not helping.

[Lady Legira]

7k just another 14k to go before I bet my best ever attempt at Nano

[Amina516]

I ended today at 7192 (or somewhere thereabouts) This is weird I have to say. Never thought Id be writing a "novel" though I've always wanted to try.

You guys are truly an inspiration. Never would have know about this had it not been for my years here on CS.

Thanks.

[Eisa]

Augh!

I have over 10K [mainly because I wrote 7K my first day from several writing sprints], and now I'm just...I don't even know.

It's not so much that I'm blocked, I just...I know what I want to happen, I know where I want it to go, but I can't get myself there for some reason. It's very frustrating. D:

[Cooper]

8 thousand words in. I've hit my first frustration. One of my characters was supposed to kill another. I gave her every reason, and two opportunities, and she was just like "nope."

I did make it work, but it still doesn't feel right.

[Chromatix]

Currently at 8475 words, according to Abiword (which seems to count a little low compared to the official counter). That's enough to put me on the correct trendline. Considering that I effectively started a day and a half late (due to still working on an outline), that's good progress, I think.

My characters have already diverged from the outline a bit, but it just gets the exposition dealt with a bit more quickly, so I'm not worried. I might bring in a bit of the positive action in front of the big negative event that I've got planned - this is something I can do because one of them is based on a real historical event, and the other isn't. (No guessing which is which.)

Apparently authors often talk about their characters taking on a life of their own and directing the story according to their own whims. That might even be a sign of a good character design.

Due to the quirks of my story, I have to spend at least as much time researching a variety of details as I do actually writing - everything from the layout of the Liverpool dockyard system to the technical details of the Renault FT, and the fact that railway signals used to use red/green lamps for both Home and Distant (before eventually switching to yellow/green for Distants).

On the other hand, this means I shouldn't be accused of Did Not Do The Research if this ever gets seen in public. The ties to real historical events also help to impose a coherent timeline on the story, with intervening periods long enough to warrant timeskips rather than attempting to fill the gaps with continuous action.

[bhskittykatt]

I've had characters take a life of their own before. My first NaNo, I had written a minor throw-away character who ended up being one of the main supporting cast.

I'm feeling pretty good about this year's NaNo. 9k words so far. The plot is a bit episodic. Basically, girl discovers she can see ghosts, girl meets woman who can also see ghosts, the two go on adventures together. I have a vague outline for the overall arc, but basically they'll go from ghost hunt to ghost hunt. If I get bored with one chapter, I just go write another one, and then stitch them together later. So far, the order I've written in has gone Chapter 2, Prologue (only half a page done so far), Chapter 3, Chapter 1, more Chapter 3, and I'm about to start Chapter 4. The past two NaNos I've always written linearly, so this is a new thing for me.

[Cooper]

If I get bored with one chapter, I just go write another one, and then stitch them together later.

Yup, that's what I'm doing. The idea is a group of people decide to read each-others journals after a tragedy shakes their trust in one-another. I know the order they'll be read in, but that's definitely not the order I'm writing them in. I know I'm going to have to make all the journals longer, but I just write what I feel like writing, and I'll fill in later.