NaNoWriMo 2010

[Giratina!]

I've tried it a number of times before, but this year, I think I'm just going to steer clear. All of my writing time will be dedicated to getting the fics I already run back on track. XD

 

[Araleon]

Dude, this month is the worst month for me, haha.

A million projects and lot's of tests. My school's in the final five weeks of the semester, and the teachers are piling on work.

if I can just get to Thanksgiving Break...

 

[Handy?]

With a 16k marathon (for me) today, I've finished Nanowrimo. A little later than I would've liked, but I'm pretty chuffed.

Now, finishing the book and editing, well, I think I'll leave that for a bit.

 

[elyvorg]

:3

In fact, the whole story is finished now at 71,671 words. I actually passed the 50k mark last Saturday, which was awesome, but I didn't verify and officially win until now because by the time the validator was up on the 25th, the excitement at reaching 50k had worn off and "winning" at that point wouldn't have meant much. What really felt like it would be winning was finishing the whole story. Which I've now done. Yay!

Okay, okay, so I probably sound like one of those annoyingly complacent writers who can churn out words really easily and knows it, but I swear I wasn't one at the beginning of November. I just... didn't struggle with it all that much. I don't really know why. Once I got into a scene I could generally just keep going until the scene in question was finished, which would usually be at least 1667 words. And then when I realised that although I was well on track for 50k, the actual story probably wouldn't be finished in November at this rate, I started writing one and a half or two scenes a day instead, usually with a break in between. One scene in the morning and one in the afternoon didn't feel like all that much work. It took a bit of self-poking to get me started most days, but I very rarely struggled once I got going. It was probably down to the fact that I never stopped loving the story I was writing, always knew at least roughly where I was going with something and had an ending planned that I desperately wanted to get to. I don't understand how people can decide they're doing NaNoWriMo and then come up with a story they're going to write for it. That must be so much harder than what I did.

But even though it was decently planned out beforehand, I still had some great experiences along the way, such as characters popping out of nowhere, not initially knowing where scenes are going and then having them end up somewhere unexpectedly interesting, and being so into the story that I practically feel everything the characters are feeling. That and my fingers getting into such a tangle that I make the most ridiculous typos, leaving me staring at the screen and wondering why I seem to be talking about my Flying-type character's "wongs" for about the third time. All the things I've gathered NaNo is supposed to be about. *nodnod*

Actually, the hardest part of this whole thing was probably staying focused for (nearly) a whole month. My mind likes to wander a lot, and while I dearly love this story to pieces, there's only so long I can comfortably keep thinking about one thing before my mind decides it wants to go off and fangirl over something different. So in the later weeks it began to require quite a bit of discipline to keep my mind on track when really it just wanted to spend its time thinking about something totally unrelated instead of starting on today's scene and surely the story can wait another day? But with much forcing myself to stay off the internet until I'd written something and staring at blank pages until words appeared and poking myself with my OCD about keeping every single day of that calendar widget-thingy green and not going below what I now knew I was capable of in daily wordcount, I managed it. This whole story which was demanding to be written has been got out of my system all in one go, just like I wanted. =D Now I can go on to think about something else, at last.

...Until I start editing, that is.

 

[Ysavvryl]

Hey, congrats to you both, handyman and elyvorg! And that's a very apt description of how NaNo feels up there. It's a great thing that you kept yourself on task.

I'm actually not at my personal goal yet. I have some twenty-six thousand words to go for that (I haven't updated on the NaNo site for a while, though...). That shouldn't be too much for my past pace, but I have lots of other things that need to be done in these last days too. And it doesn't help that I dislike blatant word padding like lengthy author notes and not using contractions. Anyhow, if any of the rest of you are still working for that 50K, keep at it! I hope you get there!

 

[SerenadeSP]

Well I'd just like to say I failed at around 18,000 words (I blame high school) but I really like the way my story has been turning out in the time I've been able to work on it. This really helped force me to write it out.

Expect to see a Yugioh fic sometime in the near future.

 

[Manchee]

I semi-participated in NaNo this year. I've had my idea for my book completely planned out for over a year, but didn't start writing it since I wasn't sure about a few ideas. So instead of trying to write the 50,000 words, I made my goal to at least start my book. And I did ^^ I've since changed a lot of plot things, which all sort of happened within the last week, but I can still use a lot of what I wrote, even though it's not much. But I'm really happy with my idea for this series (for once), and actually might be able to begin writing the whole thing sometime soon :3