NaNoWriMo 2019

[Negrek]

NaNoWriMo's right around the corner! Who's planning to participate, and what are you going to work on?

This year I'm going to be working on the same thing I have for the past several years, my main chapterfic, Salvage. I had hoped to finish it for NaNo last year, but then instead of doing that what I wrote made me decide I needed to go back and redo my plans for the last third of the story entirely, so once I finally put it into practice, I probably ended up with negative words. I'm going to try to, uh, not do that this year. I don't think I'll be able to get to the end, but it'll be close!

Is anybody doing any sort of NaNo prep? I'm not really; mostly I'll be doing the same thing as usual, but faster! Mostly it's trying to get a couple of things done before NaNo starts and I focus mostly on drafting. First, I want to publish the next chapter (39) on November 1st, which is the fic's birthday. I've also been dealing with a knotty plot issue in 40 for a while now, and although I think I'm close to resolving it, I'm not quite there yet. It would be reeeally, really nice to get that cleared up so it feels like I'm working with a solid foundation as I charge on ahead with NaNo.

 

[Chibi Pika]

no. nO!! it can't be happening already!!

So... unfortunately, I'm doing NaNo this year. I need to do it to not get stuck on the second half of LC Book 2, and it does have a good track record of preventing writer's block for me. My prep has actually been re-plotting all of said second half of Book 2 (Book 2.5?) It was kind of vague and the sequence of events was confusing and I didn't have a good grasp of when to introduce certain characters. Now that I have all that sorted out, going into NaNo will be much easier.

 

[windskull]

I'm split on participating. I'd love to, but I seriously doubt I can dedicate the time to a full 50k words with the last few weeks of my semester coming up. I am at least planning to write a minimum of 20k words, but if I manage to surpass that I'll likely try for the full 50k. Either way, I plan to finish up the arc I've been working on in my ongoing Zelda fic, before hopping back to work on the next few chapters of PWCH.

The only planning I've really done was hammering out a plot point I've been a bit less certain of for one of the big arcs in PWCH. Other than that... writing sprints. Writing sprints are the one thing that gets me to focus and just write free of distractions. Even if what I wrote ends up being garbage that I have to heavily edit or even trash entirely, at least I got the idea down on paper.

 

[DeliriousAbsol]

I plan to participate, but last I checked their brand new website, it wasn't saving my new novel for this year... I'll have to have another check.

My goal is to work on the second half of The Mainframe Saga Book 2. Alongside that, I'll be doing the Phantom Thief side-story for Mainframe, while also working on some wintery, festive, fluffy one-shots for Mainframe and other fandoms (Aggretsuko being one. You can also expect a potential one for What? I'm a Pokemon?!). My goal is to do four in total, but we'll see where it takes me. I'm rather looking forward to it! =D

 

[Negrek]

Ah ha, the new web site... I'm not a huge fan, and while the old one could have used a fresh coat of paint, I think they might have gone too far the other way with the redesign. But I'm guessing the code on the old site was probably a horrifying behind-the-scenes mess, so I can understand why they might have decided to tear everything down and start over. Fun fact, the board software they switched to to host their forums (Discourse) is what I was originally planning to use for Thousand Roads, but ultimately the infinite scroll that the creators are actively hostile about giving options to turn off/not make default was too much, and the huge thread on the NaNo forums complaining about it gives me life.

But enough griping! The other day I ran into this "reverse NaNo challenge" on the forums, and I'm considering trying it for myself. (Also it's super weird that it was started by txteclipse, people you know pop up in the weirdest places.) Doing stuff consistently is my bane, so having a word count that changes daily might be nice, especially since it starts hard but gets easier as the month goes on. Although I'm amused by the prospect of having a one-word goal for the final day, I might tweak it so that's more like 100 or something and I can tweak an earlier day to make it less punishing. Definitely something I'm going to fiddle with.

 

[Phoenixsong]

NaNo! I'm still running over some last-minute decisions in my head. I don't really have any "fic" ideas I really want to work on this year, though? I wish I did, I really wish I could finally write something that I could then actually follow through and post and have something to show for it, but fanfic (or original stuff) just really hasn't been where my head's at most of this year, and forcing it won't help anything. Instead I'd probably do some more worldbuilding stuff, I think? Albeit with more of an effort to, again, write something that's actually presentable/useful. My primary area of focus would actually be my WIP D&D setting, I think, but ideally I'd also be able to get some setting work done properly for Arilterra as well.

I am going to work on trying to write a D&D adventure, though! There's a workshop that runs at more or less the same time as NaNo that I'll be participating in--it probably won't produce enough words to make up a significant chunk of 50k, but hey, why not?

And idk maybe I'll try and get back on track with my big drabble project Howevermanypokémonthereareattimeofwriting mini. Maybe do one of those a day or something, I dunno.

So yeah, if I do NaNo it'll probably be a mishmash of projects rather than a single thing.

(And hoo boy, the new site. Not that bothered by the redesign in theory, though I admit I haven't tried very hard to play with everything yet. Mostly because it doesn't seem to like to let me to stay logged in, ahaha, ha... still a lot of kinks to work out even now, I suppose. Not that the site falling apart on October 31 is anything new, I s'pose.)

(also hi yes i am here)

 

[kyeugh]

the new site sure does suck. it doesn't even look bad, it just... doesn't... work sometimes? it logs me out a lot, yeah, which is really annoying, but will also just inexplicably show the complete wrong stats on people's profile pages. just minor stuff like that that's kinda like, hello, did you test this, blease. plus my buddy list is gone!? augh.

i'm doing wandersword for nano this year, because a) i really need to write more of it, and b) if i write anything else, i will probably never touch wandersword again. so hopefully that's good news, unless it all ends up really bad because i'm writing it as fast as possible in order to meet my word quota! :'D

at any rate, i haven't started writing for the day yet (day one yeet), but i was doing some planning last night and having a pretty hard time with it. unless this gets a lot easier pretty quick i think i might get smacked this year as usual. worth a shot though! i'm also flying up to dc for a week or so this month, so we'll see how bad that messes up my groove...

 

[Phoenixsong]

Oh, right, buddies! Honestly I probably needed to clean up my list anyway since it was full of people I'd lost touch with or couldn't even remember who they were--a fresh start, at least. Assuming the site behaves itself, here's my profile! Frembs? :D

 

[Negrek]

The first post of our November word crawl is up! And now I need to finish the advertising post for it, do my actual words for today, and then wrap up Treat or Treat. The end of October/beginning of November are literally The Worst.

It's awkward because I'm going to be writing partially longhand and partially on the computer. I think what I'll do is punt the easy chapter to longhand, which is what I write during my commute, and then work on typing the Orre arc, once I actually finish the draft of the next chapter to be posted fml.

 

[Namohysip]

Just throwing this in: I'll be doing the word crawl as well, and basically doing it in conjunction with my NaNo work. I'm sure I'll be blowing that along with ease since I'm doing the full 50k...

 

[kintsugi]

Finally started on day three, sprintmarathoned to being caught up, and fully expect to fall behind again. Such is life.

On the plus side, 1.8ish chapters of handfuls of dust that didn't exist now exist, so there's that.

 

[The Walrein]

I'm hoping that if I announce this publicly, it might make me a little more likely to complete it, so here goes:

My goal is to publish one new one-shot every Sunday this month. And if I have the time, I'd also like to sneak in the two one-shots I never fulfilled from my previous attempt at doing five weekly one-shots in a row for Camp Nanowrimo.

 

[Negrek]

Hoo, well, I was doing unusually well the first week until I fell asleep while writing on Wednesday and fell behind as a result... Unfortunately not going to have any chance to catch up this weekend, and then the *next* weekend is Swoosh, so I'm pretty hosed. It's gonna be a long month.

On the plus side, going to wrap up the draft of the chapter I'd hoped to have written before NaNo even started tomorrow, so... progress.

 

[kintsugi]

Finally caught up this weekend, just in time to fall behind for the rest of the week!

4ish completed chapters is four more than I was expecting, though.

 

[Negrek]

Congrats on catching up! Four chapters already is huge, dang.

Didn't write at all this weekend, as expected. I'm several days behind at this point and going to aim for 2k words per day to slowly catch back up again. Won't have gotten back to parity by the 15th, but I'll at least be less than 5k behind by that point...

 

[Negrek]

It's OVER. Now at last I can crawl off somewhere to die.

Had to write 12,000 words today to make the goal, which is not quite a record, I think, but not... ideal. Yet again this November I managed to be wrong about when the month would end, which is something that I screw up every year, despite knowing that I screw it up every year. I've at least by this point established that there are 30, not 31 days in November, but somehow I was convinced up until, ehh, Thursday, that the month ended on Sunday and not on Saturday.

Actually wrote quite a bit this month, 50k for NaNo, an additional 20k for the word crawl, and then a couple thousand more in my notebook that I didn't bother totalling up. NEVER AGAIN. I feel like I finally have my life back, my god. Now I can get to all the things I've been putting off all November... starting with cleaning, grocery shopping, and laundry, fml.

I think this year's challenge was quite productive; I definitely filled out some important scenes. To everybody who participated, I hope you had a good time! Whether you made your goal or not, even a few words are better than no words.

 

[kintsugi]

had a reaaaalllly dull spot in the last leg of things where I managed to fly out of state for a job interview and start planning a really important move, and then got stuck over the holidays with no internet/doing some really rushed under-the-covers typing on a brick laptop and then not being able to update the word count until later, but we did it boiz!!

like Negrek, I cleverly saved all my work to the last minute and my last two days were utter hell.

Things turned out pretty well I think! Definitely a lotta stuff to scrap, but I'd say there are 8ish chapters ready for editing, a bunch of weird character musings, and a scrapped draft of the big dramatic final battle.

 

[Equitial]

(mega-post coming)

So I won NaNoWriMo – yay!!!!

However, I never planned on doing a traditional NaNo, as in writing 50,000 words for a first draft of a novel. For one thing, my main project (SoH, where kids find out they’re genetically modified and get traumatized) was two chapters away from completion, so it wouldn’t last me the month. I just decided to participate but just write 50k words worth of anything: SoH writing, editing, etc.

I accomplished my goal and am satisfied with what I got done. This post got away from me and I went into big detail about what I did this month, but if you just want a list with some names and numbers you can skip below to the wrap-up.

First off, Chapter 44 of SoH – 7977 words. SoH is my main project which I’ve been working on for six years. (Spoiler alert: I completed it!) I had finished Chapter 43 the day before so I started NaNo with a fresh chapter.

SoH writing was by far the most difficult and time-consuming to get done. Especially as I went on I found it difficult to progress 1667 words in it daily. I got stuck on an action sequence in the middle of it and had to spend 1108 words just talking myself through it.

Then, I found an old side story/AU thing and got momentarily distracted by it. I ended up rewarding for Ch 44 words by rewriting bits of it. Since I was rewriting, I calculated the total count through different methods. Some bits were basically completely rewritten so I just used their total words, but some I halved the end word count. Anyway, I ended up with 2012 words for that.

After I finished the chapter, I took a short break. Over a year ago I, um, started a very self-indulgent series of docs called “SoH History” where I compile all my writing for SoH, divide it into time periods and categories, and set on commenting on and ranting about it all. Technically not very productive but I like doing it. Anyway, I read through all the side writing (backstories, future scenes, AU scenes, etc.) of a certain period and put down my thoughts about it all. That totaled 5770 words of commentary on my own writing… I admit my self-indulgence.

Before I started the next SoH chapter, I wrote a bullet-point outline of 656 words of all the scenes I wanted to hopefully write. This include scene that made it into the next chapter and scene that would be put into the bonus conclusion.

Then I continued actual writing for SoH. I finished Chapter 45, the final chapter. This one was technically more difficult than the prior since I really wanted to get it right, but the word count came more easily because I wrote beta scenes that didn’t end up in the main chapter. The first draft of this chapter ended up at 5748 words.

The beta scenes included in my word count but not the chapter itself include a version of the first scene which is 790 words, significantly longer than the one that made it in. That, however, is because I wanted the actual scene to be minimalist, but found that difficult until I made a longer version.

Then there was a big convo between a bunch of characters which I also found difficult. I ended up making a really rough script accompanied by what’s going through all the characters’ heads and how I want them to come off. This also came out longer than the actual scene, but mostly because the original intro was unneeded so I cut it. I also don’t know the original word count, because I kept some stuff unedited and it went into the actual scene. It takes up 2279 words in the doc though.

Then I have 952 words of writing scrapped for various reasons in the writing process. In the end, I had a little over 4000 words of scrapped writing for Chapter 45.

After all that, I forget what I was doing when so these next things are all out of order until the last two.

I wrote 1444 words for a conclusion section to SoH. I don’t actually count that as part of the fic proper, though I’ll append it when I’m done. It’s stuff that would happen in this version of SoH after where I would end the first part.

I spent 1867 words fiddling with the latest version of SoH Chapter 1, though the word count is not exact since I used various methods of coming up with that number.

I spent 3108 words of not writing but digging through old files I had and looking other stuff up. This is for my SoH History series of documents mostly. Since it wasn’t writing, I had each hour I spent equal 850 words of writing.

Once I was done sorting through things, I added 2909 words to my SoH History doc mostly talking about my second recorded version of Chapter 1, along with 1709 words of in-text commentary… I got really into tearing it apart.

I also wrote a review for a fic on this forum. I counted it for 509 words.

I rewrote an older scene from SoH. That scene was one of my favorites, but unfortunately won’t be able to be salvaged because it deals with a character talking about the death of her old best friend… except I retconned said dead friend into life, so yeah. Anyway, the rewritten scene ended up being 2102 words. I originally was going to use time spent to calculate the word count, but it actually would have been about the same so I just put the rewritten scene in my NaNo doc.

Finally, toward the end of the month I started a one-shot. By the end of month I had written 3193 words for its first draft. I started it on the 28th, but realized I had a problem, namely that I was over 5000 words behind. Whoops.

To reach word count, I started an impulsive AU where I turned my SoH characters into Pokémon and dropped them in a Mystery Dungeon. I used a site that disabled my backspace button and also screamed at me if I stopped writing for more than three seconds. With those conditions, I cranked out 2500 words per hour easy. I wrote 5656 words in about a single day to get caught up and now am distracted by shiny AU, oh no.


WRAP-UP/TL:DR

Here are the totals for the month. Where I edit, rework, or otherwise not write, I either convert with one hour equaling 850 words or put in half of the new word count in the case of editing.

• SoH
  Ch 44 (fin) - 7977 words
  Ch 45 (fin) - 5748 words
  bonus conclusion (unfin) – 1444 words
  planning/scrapped Writing – 5788 words
  
• One-Shot
  Le Phantump One-Shot (beta title, unfin) - 3193 words
  
• SoH History (cataloging, analyzing, and commenting on previous writing)
  writing/note-taking - 10471 words
  organizing - 3108 words
  
• Editing/Rewriting/Reworking
  editing/rewriting SoH Ch 1 (unfin) - 1867 words
  editing/rewriting SoH Ch 20 scene (fin) – 2102 words
  
• Shiny AUs
  editing/writing old AU – 2071 words
  SoH PMD - 5656 words
  
• Other
  fic review – 509 words

Total: 50014 words – NaNo won!

 

[Chibi Pika]

Congrats to everyone who won NaNo! You guys always astound me. xD

Soooo, overall my NaNo performance wasn't great this year. I got stuck several times due to needing to re-outline the end of Book 2, and it made it really hard to sink myself into word sprints like last year. But, at the end of the day, I still made progress, and figured out a ton of things that I wouldn't have otherwise. So, I'm still glad that I did it. But man do I need to de-stress now that November's done. xD;