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[Lectorog]

I guess yellow and orange are below green and above red, though I don't know in which order.

[monk12]

Every time I start chugging, I leave a quick note to myself to establish headcanon and jump ahead. It gets my wordcount up, but it leaves a draft studded with things like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

VI


   And then they went inside and did stuff. Maybe a demon guardian or something, spirit bound by Jayne Wanderlust (the dead guy)?

There's a couple places where I've realized the intervening bit is completely unnecessary to the story as the important takeaways can be established during the setup of the next scene, but there's still more plotholes than I would like. At least "the dead guy" has an honest to god name: the head of the main city's religion is currently named "High Priest Priestpants."

Spoiler: Still didn't get two green bars (click to show/hide)

[Lectorog]

Word count tip: Insert the word "fucking" into every monologue (and general thoughts) slightly more than is reasonable. Insta-words!

@monk12: You're quite close to getting that top green bar!

EDIT: Almost half a percent of all my words have "fuck" in them.

[monk12]

That might be what is most depressing; if I had another five hundred words in me, I'd be back on the happy side of par, but sadly it appears I do not. Tomorrow's another story, however!

[JanusTwoface]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Good news: It updates!

Bad news: Aw, now there's a red day.

[sjm9876]

Ouch.

[Sappho]

I finally finish my word count, get my two green bars, go to bed. Wake up in the morning, and the damn things are blue again! IT NEVER ENDS!

A new strategy for me: actually, it's better if what I write now is not very good. If I write carefully and set down stuff that I really like, then later, when I realize that half of it needs to be cut or rewritten entirely, I will be upset. Better to have it really rough now and then I won't feel bad about fixing it later.

I always put in too much detail for everything. I will definitely have to cut large portions of it later. Don't want it to be good stuff!

[Caz]

Ooo, widgets. Sweet.

[inEQUALITY]

Ouch.

I, erm, think you misquoted me (read: forgot to get rid of the quote code).

I finally finish my word count, get my two green bars, go to bed. Wake up in the morning, and the damn things are blue again! IT NEVER ENDS!

A new strategy for me: actually, it's better if what I write now is not very good. If I write carefully and set down stuff that I really like, then later, when I realize that half of it needs to be cut or rewritten entirely, I will be upset. Better to have it really rough now and then I won't feel bad about fixing it later.

I always put in too much detail for everything. I will definitely have to cut large portions of it later. Don't want it to be good stuff!

Same here. It's difficult not to get an ego and feel like Robert Heinlen - notorious for being able to publish his first drafts, and often cited as an example of how not to go about the editing process - and remember that the first draft is supposed to be rather rough. I feel like I've written a few good lines and paragraphs here and there in my 10k so far, but I just know when I come back to edit this thing early next year that I'm going to have this exact facial expression when I read:

[Digital Hellhound]

1703 words so far - I've had exciting things only to write. And once I finish this exciting section I'll have a completely different plotline, characters, etc. to open! Variety! Wonderful! Sadly, I appear to be getting sick as well. Still, NaNo, so much fun.

[WillowLuman]

Broke 1100 last night. Hope to make it to at least 3000 by today, get to 7000 tomorrow.

[inEQUALITY]

2031 words today, bringing me up to a total of 12237. I almost let myself be satisfied with just over the minimum goal, but ended up pushing myself to the 2k mark.

My plot is finally picking up steam; I think it's high time for lasers to start flying, and for things to start exploding.

[Sappho]

Fighting myself again today. The good news is I managed to write 779 words this morning before I went to work. The bad news is it's 7 pm, I'm just now making dinner, and I've been hit with a wave of crippling fatigue. I just barely managed to peel myself off the couch to type this.

Hopefully it'll pass. It usually does. I'll be so upset with myself if I crash and don't finish my word count...

[Caz]

Crushing despair is putting a damper on my writing abilities today. O_o Oh well, I'm at least a day ahead, so I can afford it I guess...

Do writing. How.

[Aqizzar]

Sitting at work on my lunch break, I put together an actual outline for the story I thought up on Sunday.  It's broken into 23 distinct parts - if each part is a "chapter", then if I aim to make each chapter at least 2200 words I'll be home free.  Both of those numbers still sound intimidating, but what I've written for just the intro chapter is already a quarter of that and nowhere near complete for an introduction.

2200 word-average per chapter isn't too bad really.  Break up the work into chapters, break up the chapter into concepts, break up the concept into supporting details, bulk out the detail with lots of flavor text, and it'll be just like bullshitting term papers in school.  I used to bullshit term papers in my sleep, I could easily break 1500-2000 words in one late night, and that was with a modicum of research.  Trade the research for more writing time and the academic language for naturalistic prose, and I know exactly what I'm doing.

I just have to write twenty two more of them by the end of the month, starting tonight...