NaNoWriMo [Who else will break 40k..?] page 7

Yea probably.

Ur doing quite well Deriaz :D

When we update on days beyond the first, do we paste everything we’ve written ever or just what we wrote that day?

Umm, u dont need to paste anything yet. Just type in the number of words in total in the top right hand box and press update.

I’m still only in the intro stuff. I’m worried I’m gonna run into trouble, now that I’ve actually got the “party” together and they’re getting to the “Gauntlet” (I am so clever! Title = What they’re doing! Never been done before!). I’m concerned I won’t be able to portray things as well as I should, so. . . Yeah. I can only hope, though, that I can keep it up.

Oh, and music helps so much. One song I’ve had on repeat that seems to help me a lot is “Wrong” by Depeche Mode. Music just makes things come to mind much easier for me. Heh.

For me, music simply shuts out the world so I can concentrate on what I want to concentrate on. I normally listen to instrumental music while writing though, because whenever I hear words they tend to eat into my thoughts and distract my thinking. That is annoying and offers enough distraction to make me do something else as I can’t think =/

Something I thought I would try when I have a hard time figuring out where to go next—I have read (somewhere…I think :)) that when Philip K. Dick wrote The Man in the High Castle that he used the I Ching in his writing. So I plan to throw pennies when I’m not exactly sure where I want to go next.

And I didn’t find that entering word count worked when I tried it the first day, but it did when I copy/pasted my text in. I’ll try the other way, though, but you answered my question—I want to enter total to date and not total for the day. Thanks, Lax.

And my increased illness seems clearly to have been from secondary bronchitis/exacerbated asthma—on day 2 of antibiotics and steroids I’m doing much, much better. I just have to recalculate a new daily goal based on 28 rather than 30 days, as I missed 2. I can handle that (it’s the actually writing that much that’s tough—besides the fact that I’ve always loved planning things to write, I often struggle mightily with getting down to doing it.

Anyone want to do a word war?

Originally posted by Laxaria:

Anyone want to do a word war?

Explain.

A word war is a war of words, where you write as much as possible to write more than your opponent. Not really a prize, but a very good and effective way to encourage you to write fast and write a lot.

Of course, I probably won’t participate since its a tad unfair :P

So, if you guys want to be part of one, do say so. I don’t mind judging :P

I’m still not really sure what you mean. :\

But it seems some people haven’t even started – or at least submitted their number of words. I haven’t heard from Jude for a while, and I would have thought he’d be competing to the max. Oh and is this a competition, or is NaNoWriMo just something people do to motivate them to write a story?

The prize is a 50k word manuscript. :)

I would love to do a Word War—someone was describing these in my region thread, and it’s too big a deal for me to go out when they happen. I had been wondering about suggesting we do something like this. In my region, people set a timer for 20 minutes or so and write as much as possible in that time period. Is that how you imagine it? Would we try and do it simultaneously or each have a 20 minute limit and see what we can do in that time. I see no problem with you doing it, too, since none of us are likely to be competitive about being “the winner” and if it works like the write-ins in my region, the “winner” is simply the one with the highest word count in a particular time period.

Since I missed a few days, I need some extra encouragement to get some high word count spurts in to get me back on track.

Well, I’m starting to near the 10k word mark. As usual with many of the things I’ve written, the story and plot feels a tad slow. Then again, 10k words isn’t exactly very significant in many novels that we find all over the place. Look at Eragon, Eldest, OoTP, LoTR, SoT series, etc.

Its been an interesting week thus far, even with school and exams. Fun, mainly because I’m enjoying it.

Some of my pointers include:

- Just enjoy yourself. If you’re out of ideas, think about what you have done today or the previous day and incorporate that into your writing. If you’re writing about a modern-day contemporary fiction, that works very well. If you’re writing in fantasy, then that can work too, with a bit of manipulating.

- Try to expand and elaborate on things like description. Don’t splurge unnecessarily, but it is useful to describe important scenes or scenery. It helps flesh out your word count, and also adds an interesting touch to your work.

- Don’t use the backspace button too much. If you don’t like what you just typed, either try to make it likeable, or turn the font colour of that section white and continue.

- Don’t edit as you type. Screw any punctuation, grammar or spelling errors that are left behind. Just keep going. The goal is 50k words, not a perfect novel.

For the word wars, I was thinking of maybe seeing how much every individual can cover across the span of a week. That would be fun, really, but I will probably see myself falling behind soon. Once school kicks back into full gear. =/

I wouldn’t mind doing a word war—I’m at about 8k words right now, so I’m just a little behind Lax. And my story is just starting! :D

I’d be willing to enter the 1 week word war, although I also like the idea of a timed one—would anyone be interested in posting 20 minute word counts as well? The people who posted about it on my local group had varied experiences in the quality of writing from short bursts—one said it was useful for upping word count but rarely resulted in some of the better passages, another said she ended up discovering plot twists or things about characters that she might never thought of without the pressure of writing fast.

Eh. . . I don’t know that I’d enjoy a “word war”. I guess I just don’t like the pressure. I’m moving pretty decently at the pace I am now. . . I don’t want to worry about being timed even more or anything. Plus, I know the quality of what I’m doing can only plummet if I did something like 20 minutes or a week; there’s no benefit, at least for me, for rushing.

You guys have fun with it. But I’ll pass.

Understandable.

Fallen behind on my word schedule, mainly due to procrastination and the end of exams requiring me to relax a little. :D

Edit: Word widgets are up. Front page shows everyone’s active status. I only placed those who are so far quite active with NaNo.

Now that I’ve found Write or Die, I’m no longer as into doing Word Wars. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do this weekend, but at least I’ve restarted.

Bleh…I got swine flu, and I’m quite behind right now. :(

I better catch up! (I want to do at least 7k words today.)

I’ve found out a great way to keep up, as silly as it is. It works for me, though. Involves the magic of “Writing Buddies”.

Every day when I wake up, I write some more. But I check my Writing Buddies to see how everyone’s doing. I find it gives me more motivation to write, not checking NaNo Stats for the day for what I should aim for, but instead looking at Laxaria’s word count and just deciding, “Okay. So, that’s where I stop today.”

Seems to make me write much easier since I’m no longer fighting a number, but just wanting to keep up with someone. Yay motivation. ;D

Originally posted by Deriaz:

I’ve found out a great way to keep up, as silly as it is. It works for me, though. Involves the magic of “Writing Buddies”.

Every day when I wake up, I write some more. But I check my Writing Buddies to see how everyone’s doing. I find it gives me more motivation to write, not checking NaNo Stats for the day for what I should aim for, but instead looking at Laxaria’s word count and just deciding, “Okay. So, that’s where I stop today.”

Seems to make me write much easier since I’m no longer fighting a number, but just wanting to keep up with someone. Yay motivation. ;D

and Deriaz is my motivation to keep writing since my ego won’t let me be beaten :D

I won’t finish in time. But I will finish, and aim to get 50,000 words. I might be able to finish at the end of December, but definitely not by the end of November.

Good luck to all participants. This is too hard for me.

I’ll be lucky to get any writing done today. Planning a midnight stint later to see if I can cover today’s lack of words and tomorrow’s required words. I blame school work.

Fire. It was all around. The arid smell of smoke and choking gases. Against the snowing night drop and the freezing snow, the fire was cold.

He could see it happening in front of him. Two tall people, in black robes, one of which holding a dripping wet blade. In the roaring bonfire it dripped red, almost glistening with joy as the dark red droplets stained the pure white snow. The blood was still fresh.

Racing over to the limp corpse as it fell, Aveal cried out loud. He could not hear himself shout at all, but he knew deep down that it was hopeless. Corpses do not come back to live, but yet he so desperately wished they did. Tears streaming down his cheeks, he turned around and faced the two laughing men.

In a pure fit of agony, Aveal charged towards them, throwing his anger out at them. They still laughed as his small hands failed to faze them. In fact, it made them more amused.

“I hate you! I hate you!”

“Oh look, a small boy trying to kill us. I’m so afraid!” Laughing heartily, one of them pushed Aveal to the ground.

He walked over to the shadows and grabbed over another hostage of his. Aveal’s eyes glared with shock. He wanted to close his eyes, but it was too late, as a blood curdling scream pierced the cold winter air…

I don’t know how far I’ll get, but I’m trying to keep writing and learning a lot about what I need to keep writing. I hope this will be a good preparation for next year, at any rate, as I now have a better feel for what I should have done in October this time.