NaNoWriMo - what's it all about?

[Twine88]

I know roughly the idea behind it, but I wondered if anyone had actually taken part and had any thoughts to share?

My novel is already in excess of the 50k but, is still all over the place and needs much editing.

Any thoughts appreciated, even if you considered it and decided no.

I have been really pushing myself this week as I know I won't have as much time next week. I suspect I won't get nearly as much done over the next few days, so it feels good to have a bit of a head start.

I’m at a write-in, sort of.

My region has a standing weekly meet up, which I’ve come along to. I posted in their chat first, and only one person confirmed that they’d be here. I gave a description of my laptop bag so he’d know who I was.

Now I’ve been here half an hour, and no ones approached me. There’s a group on the other side with notebooks, but I’m too nervous to go and ask if it’s them!

Oh no! Did anyone turn up to your meet up Charming? I haven't written anything today at all! Argh!

Nope, no one turned up!

On the plus side it was at a lovely cafe I hadn’t been to before, so I spent 4 hours there drinking lattes and eating a toastie and made it to almost 13,000 words.

Once I got over the disappointment of being ‘stood up’ I actually had a really nice time!

That does actually sound like a very nice way to spend an afternoon Charming

Charming glad you ended up having a productive and nice time. My region has regular write-ins but I can't decide whether to go along or not . . .from the pics on the website, they all seem much younger. I don't think feeling like their mum would help my creativity

My brain is not working. 350 words so far today.

I’ve managed 116 today, and I’ve got Guides this evening so won’t manage much then. Very disappointed.

Yesterday was like that for me. Today has been better. I've managed 1245 or around about so far and hoping to get some more in later this evening. It is definitely getting harder though as I actually have to start thinking about the characters and what they are all doing. I've had to spend a lot of time thinking about backstory, as some of the characters have history with each other. I think I might need to do some sort of timeline as I'm not sure all my dates actually add up right.

Can I join you all? I’m attempting it while on maternity leave with a five month old. I’m just about hitting with daily target but today’s been tricky and I’ve still got 1200 to do after bedtime... Some of you have very impressive word counts!

I've written 1000 words today so I'm going to try to write some more tonight. I'm actually enjoying it so far.
Bigly I know what you mean about dates adding up. I decided on my main character's age but I keep wondering if I should make them younger. If I do then all my dates and references are out.

I’m having a similar issue but with places, I think I need to draw out a map I can refer back to so they stop moving around.

I'm on my second map already and think I might need a version 3 soon as I keep realising bits of it just don't work or are geologically impossible

What sort of novel are you writing that requires geological accuracy?

I didn’t think I’d achieve much today, but then I reached a part that I’d been looking forward to writing and sort of flew through it. Managed 1,667 which is my lowest daily word count, but 1 word over par! It takes me to 16,014 words and almost a third of the way there!

Charming well done on the word count!
I'm not having a problem with places so far because I'm in quite a tight geographic area. For each new setting, I have a file of photos so I can just look at them rather than trying to remember what I said it looked like.

It's epic fantasy charming, but I figure even fantasy world's shouldn't really have their rivers running up hills. I'm not a big fan of just explaining everything away by magic.

Had a dire few days, though I'm still just about on track. Baby is trying to escape my uterus, though I did say it wasn't convenient right now :)

Also, I came to the realisation that my protagonist is a complete self serving arse. I'm astounded that I ever thought she was a nice person.

I hit 16256 this morning, so I'm hoping I can really go for it later and hit 20k. I've given up writing in order. I'm hoping writing scenes that I'm desperate to write will help me stay in my chair for a bit longer, even though it is getting seriously uncomfortable.

How did you get on in the end orangejumper ? I can't imagine doing it with a 5 month old!

Ihate - sounds like you might be about to attempt it with a five day old!

I had a good first five days, hit 1667 a day - but I already have half a novel and I’m aiming to write the end. I hate setting and description so I made myself do almost writing exercises on character and place descriptions to slot in to my action-and-dialogue only novel! And now I’ve found I need to look at my outline (the last real work I did was five months ago, funnily enough) so word count has been dire yesterday and today. Bit disheartening

I haven't had a very good few days but I had a small plotgasm today so I expect to do much better tomorrow as I have the fun of making it happen.

My protagonist has also behaved surprisingly badly and I am delighted. Can't have moral growth if she's too nice to start with, plus it's fun to write.

Biglybadgers, I like the sound of your geological maps. As a reader I quite agree with you. In some ways, I think the more fantastical the story world, the more important it is to get details right to make your reader believe in it.

I have been working today with a map of London in 1520 spread across my desk. It's made me very happy. I am not as tolerant of vagueness in my writing as I used to be but if I keep stopping to look things up it takes forever, so it's been nice to have it there to refer to.

It sounds like other people are doing really well!

Urgh.
You're all wonderful, and I have written about 850 words in total.

I am more than tempted just to cut-n-paste the number of words I've written on MN in the same period and pop them into the text to up the word count.

I have been working today with a map of London in 1520 spread across my desk. It's made me very happy

This would make me very happy too. It's lovely!

Bigly oh ok, that makes far more sense than I was imagining (that you were possibly writing a book featuring a geologist protagonist and needed their knowledge to be accurate).

Ihate I worry about my protagonist being an arse. I love her because I've lived with her in my head for years but I'm so close to her that I can't tell how she will come across to readers.
I had a panic this morning that I didn't know how to bring my story together (even though I have plotting post-its and diagrams all over my office) but I spent some time on research, went back to an earlier section to flesh it out a bit more and ended up receiving the 10,000 words badge. I know it's a tiny word count compared to some of you but I'm very proud of myself and feel like I know where I'm going with it again

Congratulations on your word count Jos! That's awesome.

For what it's worth all my characters are absolutely awful people. My main character may or may not turn out to be on the side of good (I genuinely haven't decided yet) and the only person currently doing the right thing is probably even worse. I do have a plan to introduce a genuinely, well at least relatively, nice character in at some point and hopefully a few slightly more sympathetic ones, but the fact is baddies are so much more fun to write.

My word count is slowly creeping up, made it to 9000 words.
I had all day to write yesterday but my character didn't want to do anything, it took me several hours to get to 1000 words and then my brain warmed up at around 7pm and I did another 2000 in two hours.
Done more today but been constantly interrupted. I don't feel so far behind now though.