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[Skyrunner]

Darnit, you've spoiled it too much! Now I shall never read it without the threat of spoilers hanging over my head! D:

[Sappho]

Ugh. My drive was not lessening until I got a chest infection. Yesterday when I got home from work I was too drained and dizzy to even make myself dinner, let alone write. Today I'm not feeling any better.

Tuesday I got myself a day ahead, so yesterday I didn't make progress but was still up to par. Now I'm a day behind, and I have to write today if I want to catch up. I want to write, but I just can't make my brain focus. My whole body is screaming at me to crawl into bed and sleep for days. Last night I went to bed early and still slept through my alarm this morning and felt exhausted all day.

So I guess the question is, if I let myself just rest today and don't write, will I be able to make up the word count over the weekend? I'm sure I can, but I hate to give myself excuses, even if I am sick... : /

[Digital Hellhound]

2100 words so far. A good day. What started from necessity (didn't have the full text with me, so I had to start a new scene) led to enjoyable exploration of several characters I never thought I'd get the chance to properly examine, and dealing with a beloved topic; dreams!

This is especially good after two days of middling progress. I was losing my lead here. Excellento.

[inEQUALITY]

Darnit, you've spoiled it too much! Now I shall never read it without the threat of spoilers hanging over my head! D:

Ugh. My drive was not lessening until I got a chest infection. Yesterday when I got home from work I was too drained and dizzy to even make myself dinner, let alone write. Today I'm not feeling any better.

Get yourself some rest if you need it! Pushing yourself too much might only make yourself worse off. NaNoWriMo is great and all, but it's not worth making yourself sick over. Funny enough, despite what non-writers might think, writing does take energy. It's a mental workout, at times. If you're intent on writing without having to catch up, try not to overdo it. Just do a few short snippets, maybe something later on in your story that you would be able to write easily, and just bridge it to what you have later.

Hope you feel better soon!

As for my own progress, I got in 2103 words today, putting me up to 27171. I'm slowly inching my way towards being three days ahead. I'll get there soon enough if I can keep up my pace of at least 2k per day, without missing a day.

I'm pretty happy that things have finally started happening, action-wise. It's different from what I'd previously been writing, so it's taking a little effort to switch gears. I'll get in the groove of it soon though, I think.

[Darkmere]

+1 to finding an easy part to write ahead, if that's what it takes. I lost a very early lead by hitting several rough patches of exposition, but as I get caught up and work up a new lead, my writing is going faster. I've also started taking more regular breaks of up to half an hour between major scenes to clear my head and break up dragginess that comes from working too long on the same slog. It seems to me that most of the time lost to (this is important, very temporary) distractions is made up in not spending long stretches of time staring at a blank page and agonizing over a sentence at a time. At least for me, four 500-word chunks tend to come easier than two 1000 or (ugh) one 2000-word daily marathon.

[Doomblade187]

IRL seems to be trying to kill my efforts, but even if I don't pull off 50k this month, I'll be happy if I get good work done.

[Willfor]

Spoiler: OLD (click to show/hide)

Right now my struggle is that I can't keep my internal marketing department happy. I know that I can't sell this novel in its current state, and my internal editor is like "Alright, you've already pissed off your entire audience by comprising the first 1/10th of your novel with exposition you've tried (and failed) at disguising as dialogue. I know your writing style is 'Set up a train wreck and force people to watch,' but right now your novel is a train wreck."

And my internal writer is like, "No, no, you don't understand, I need to setup like 40 different characters and they're all important to the plot, and I need three viewpoint characters, and I'm doing so well giving them unique voices, and if I can just finish this first draft I can go back and maybe take out all that exposition maybe??? But then I can't setup 40 characters because that's a lot of things I need to setup and FUCK"

"See??? Do you SEE what I'm dealing with here??? No amount of editing is going to make your first four chapters readable without someone throwing your book across the room! Why can't you just for once give me a story with less than 20 characters? Why can't you for once, just fucking once, give me a story with something like, 10 characters? You get 10,000 words per character to explain 10 characters. Is that so fucking hard?"

"But then I can't setup a train wreck! A forty car pileup on a highway where everyone's going 200 km/h, and there's a 40-way intersection about 3/4ths through the book, and there's this massive confluence of plot that makes everyone who reads it just sort of sit there, watching as all these cars I've setup slowly plow towards the most fucking terrible event they can imagine, and I make them love all these characters, and so they're sitting there going 'no, no he wouldn't. he wouldn't actually make them all hit this intersection at the same time. no. no. no turn around. please no, turn around. TURN AROUND. TURN AROUND YOU FUCKERS CAN'T YOU SEE THE INTERSECTION? NOOOOOOOOO'."

"Okay. But they've already thrown your book away at the 1/10th point. So. They aren't actually doing that. Look at them tossing your book in the trash. no. no don't do it. no don't throw it away. nooooooooooo"

"You don't have to mock me. Remember that you're still me, right? Just the really bad part of me?"

"You mean the one that has to put up with all your shit? Yeah. Good luck making anything worthwhile without me. Just. Ugh. Finish this book, okay? Just stop fucking expositing everywhere. It's disgusting."

""

"Huh. This is actually pretty good stuff. You've actually found your legs here. I'm not sure how you're going to fit this into less than 130k words, but according to your plans you're actually getting something kind of fascinating going on."

".___."

"What?"

"I'm so tired from working ALL THE TIME, and coming home and I just don't. I just don't. Want to write. At all."

"But you love this thing. Like, I can palpably feel your love for this thing. The first six chapters are irredeemable exposition, but this is still the best fucking thing you've ever written. And I'm the one who's never on your side! Come on! I know you love it, I am you, I can literally feel the love within you for this story!"

"ugggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

And so I plow forward. 1,200 words so far today. I really need to double that tonight, and pull another 3,000 words out of my ass tomorrow. I need a buffer because my work schedule is going to pound me in the face.

[Darkmere]

25,062 words and the 15th has just begun here. I am officially past halfway done and my momentum will carry me forward to the end. I figured out the linchpin of my apocalypse yesterday, and two conflicts (one major, the other minor) surfaced today that got me back into the story I can't wait to tell. Today was a good day.

[Sappho]

Wrote nothing yesterday. Slept loads, feeling healthier. Got down 307 words this morning. Feeling a bit stuck in the story but plowing ahead anyway. I'm at a point where I know where I need to go but I'm not sure how to get there.

I've also got loads of other stuff weighing down at the back of my mind. I've neglected most of my usual life responsibilities for two weeks now for the sake of writing, but I can't put it off forever. I have to do a lot of cleaning. I desperately need to do a load of laundry. I have piles of crap that I need to sort through so I can feel like my home isn't a garbage dump. There's a rotting smell coming from my fridge and I know what it is, and I need to clean the entire refrigerator to get rid of it. I need to make a new batch of kombucha before the current one gets too old. I need to go to the supermarket and cook some actual food rather than shoveling frozen pizzas down my throat and getting myself sick. I need to do some serious organizational work for my job (last week was a mess because all I did was NaNo, no work preparation). And I really need a shower. All these things could take the whole day by themselves, but I also need to reach 25,000 words today, and I'm only at 22,486. I will NOT be behind at the halfway mark.

It's all rather overwhelming. And on top of that, I have to make plans with some friends this weekend who I haven't seen in months, and I really want to go to one of the Prague NaNo meet-ups tomorrow, since I've missed the past two Saturdays.

All that stress makes it tough to focus on writing. Especially since I'm not sure what to write next. I just keep filling in more details of what it's like to live in Prague, the vast majority of which I know will be cut eventually. I can't seem to get the plot moving. Something needs to happen, but I'm not sure what it is.

Put one word after another... Time to watch this video again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drMuQqLLEe0

[Digital Hellhound]

2400 words so far, and plan to continue when I get home. I left a section unfinished earlier, though, but I do have material for it so I can finish it whenever I want.

I've gone whooshing past my 2011 high point (23k), so my confidence levels are just rising. All is joy. I think it's reasonable to think I might actually get through this thing. Granted, test week's creeping up, but I should be fine. NaNo's more important than school anyway.

[Sappho]

25,039! I did it. I can take a break, maybe come back and write more later. I also managed to vacuum the living/bedroom, shower, do most of the dishes, and make my new batch of kombucha. It's only 3.30 in the afternoon, so I can still do laundry and maybe sort through some of the crap piled up in here.

I haven't made it out to go shopping, but maybe I'll just leave that for another day. I have enough food that I won't starve, anyway. And it's gray and cold and shitty outside.

I'm feeling pretty good now. It actually wasn't that hard to catch up, and I even finally found a way to move the plot forward. Something actually happened in the story today, and more is going to happen as I continue. I figured out how to get the characters where they need to go. I'm more convinced than ever that more than half of what I've written so far will eventually be cut, but that doesn't matter. It got me to this point, so it's fine.

[inEQUALITY]

I'm up to 29,204. I've pretty much forced myself into a daily goal of 2000+, I've realized, and not a word less. I guess that makes me a minimalist overachiever, heh?

I'm currently writing a pseudo-political scene, and have found out some interesting things about characters - both previously mentioned and newly discovered - as well as the setting and plot at large. I find it more interesting to know that my emperor isn't quite an all-powerful, untouchable despot as he could have been, being held accountable by a functioning political system alongside the feudal system of vassals and divine appointments.

I enjoy writing from perspective characters that are all manners of gray: an imperial loyalist who values honor and justice - and, in his naivete, believes the empire truly embodies these things without fail - above all else; an otherwise unremarkable woman with considerable mechanical engineering skills, who gets dragged into the civil war unwittingly, and whose brother is on the other side of the conflict; an emperor who genuinely cares for his people, but often acts in tyrannical ways, and is losing a civil war while having to deal with political fallout from the loyalists that still remain in his government.

Even some of the minor characters are somewhat enjoyable, with their nuances, goals, fears, schemes, and agendas. A young, disciplined, but spiteful Grand Marshall who has ambitions to become emperor himself, unbeknownst to the emperor; a pair of quirky rebels - one unwitting noble, the other a cynical sellsword - who perform important missions for their leader, flying a modified freighter housing a technology the likes of which the galaxy hadn't seen since the days of an era that has become little more than legends and myths; an unhoused centurion-knight who was exiled from his noble family when they sided with the rebellion, and who covers up his sense of lost dignity with cutting remarks and a poor attitude; and lastly, but not least of all, a loyalist High Lord who is willing to take the risk and responsibility of re-birthing an ancient Order that died out centuries before and fights outside the time-honored traditions and unwritten laws of galactic warfare, in a desperate effort to change the tide of the civil war.

[Darkmere]

27,200 or so words. I'm creeping up on a small lead. Somewhat. If I squint.

But that's not the best thing that happened today. I had a supporting character who only existed in a flashback to have a breakdown and wander off into the savage wasteland to die. Until yesterday, she really was dead, but at some point the character tapped me on the shoulder and demanded to be let back in the story. So in the middle of a mystery-revealing research scene she wandered in on the protagonists and completely hijacked the story for the next chapter and a half. I'm totally going to bring her back if there's a sequel.

[Sappho]

Today I was forced into a social situation with a person I don't like very much. She's a very "friendly" person in an artificial sort of way, so instead of letting us sit in an uncomfortable silence, she kept asking me questions about what's new in my life and how's my new job. I mentioned NaNoWriMo and she kept asking more small-talky questions, curious about the plot. I decided I might as well share some info, and described the general story and a few of the scenes.

To my surprise, her facial expression went from "polite small talk" to "genuinely impressed and interested." I know the difference. I have studied it extensively. She told me it sounds like a book she would very much like to read.

When a person you don't even like very much, who you're pretty sure doesn't like you very much, says that with sincerity in their voice, it's a good boost, let me tell you.

[EnigmaticHat]

I know myself and that I'm distractable and write slowly, so I'm going for a 30,000 word goal.  I'm at 11,081, aka 4 days behind if I meet my goal today.  So... yeah.

On the bright side I'm learning my way around Scrivener.  It seems very in line with the way I write and edit.  It fits the way I write because I jump around and write the parts I want to first, and its structure helps me stay organized within that.  It fits the way I edit because I like to chop up my stories and delete/move parts at will, and this makes it as easy as dragging a document to a different folder.  Well, and checking to make sure all the writing still matches up.