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.

Not long now!

Doublemint the average daily word count is 1667 to get to 50k in 30 days. I usually aim to get a couple of strong days (4-5k) at the beginning to tide me over when the adrenaline wears off.

Something I found for the first time last year (having been doing this since 2004) was the 'crawls' in the 'Word War, Prompts and Sprints' part of the forums. A crawl is a bit like a role playing game where you roll a dice (there are online apps for dice rolling)) and have to do the word count or timed challenge. There are many based around books, sci-fi series, films etc. I'm trying to decide between Disney films and Harry Potter for the first crawl. I find they push me to write more than I would otherwise and are fun to do if you are mad like me. Oh wait we're talking NaNo if that's your thing.

I was going to make a plan tonight but it never happened . Dcs destroyed me today so I just decided I'd just start tomorrow and wing it . I've an idea of where it's going but it all in my head , a very fickle place . Good luck everyone !

Think I might pop a few words down once we hit midnight, then retire for the night. Champing at the bit!

I've had what might be a genius idea! Dictation-to-text app on my phone, 'write' in the car during the child-free legs of the school run, then transfer to Scrivener later.

I'm planning today. I have three child-free hours in the afternoon, do I'm going to do 20 minutes writing, 20 minutes housework/thinking, 20 minutes writing etc. if I grab an hour in the evening, I should have a solid plan to work from.

2,000 words tomorrow, and a big push on Thursday when I have the day off.

Came to the section to see if there was a NaNoWriMo thread, and here you are!

I made a last minute decision yesterday to give it a go. I don't know if my level of commitment is exactly there, but I've bashed out a couple of thousand words today and I didn't loathe the process, so...! Will do the same again tomorrow, I'm off this week so I have the time.

Anyone else?

279 words so far today

I'll do more after the children are in bed though (possibly)

860 words yesterday, 2100 so far today. I feel so blessed to have the chance to do it, as this time last year I was having awful trouble with ds1 and was having to mostly home educate him.

How are you all getting on? It's only day 2 and I'm finding it so hard! Not really the writing, it's balancing the writing and everything else. I just want to get it down while I'm in the zone but I am a SAHM with a 2 year old. I'm thinking I will probably need to spend every evening doing it, which means no reading or TV all month. It's a bit daunting. I've got 3000 words already though, and I'm pleased I'm getting somewhere.

3000 words is great 👍

I've only got approx 850 words so far - eeeeek!

But this week was always going to be a nightmare as I'm snowed under with freelance work. Next week should be a bit easier

I did some of a plan yesterday, and enough that I eant to see if I can write the first chapter tonight, which needs to be at least 2,000 words. I have tomorrow at home with no children until 3.15, so I want to do a big push then.

I have had my best day of writing for years (4100 words) so I am very happy.
Busy tomorrow.
This isn't a typical NaNo project though, it's very heavily researched and planned, which I have never done before. I have been at it for years but have struggled with getting bogged down in the research and in not really knowing what the story was when there were so many historical events involved with it.
I have a very clear view now though so I am poised to build on my ridiculous amounts of work.
My other completed NaNos have been much more 'seat of the pants', which is more usual I think.

Glad to hear of some successful starts on here.

I started well then had a hospital appointment that turned complicated and a meeting of my local writing group committee that took a lot of organising and time. Sigh - excuses, excuses. Now trying to find my way back into it.

Really happy to have downloaded Scrivener though. If I end the month with all my WIP work to date on it, with the index cards written then I shall be happy, no matter how few fresh words I've added. I shall at least have a better sense of the structure and how the stuff I've written fits together.

Keep going everyone.

Had a crap day yesterday and did nothing, but managed to churn out 3000+ words today, so I've pulled it back a bit. I didn't hate everything I'd written either so feeling quite positive today. Phew. Should be OK to knock out some more over the weekend. Must.Resist.Temptation.To.Edit! No peeking! Forwards only!

Dunlurking, have you discovered the target feature on Scrivener yet? You can either do targets for the document, the session or the whole manuscript, and you get a lovely little progress bar that changes colour from red to green as you move towards your target.
V useful for NaNo!

Thanks Countess I'm going to suss it out now.

I decided to have a go (last-minute impulse, obvs) and am on target so far! It's progressing more slowly than I had expected, I thought it would be easy to bash out 5000 words on a Sunday with nothing else to do but I find myself stopping midsentence to ponder where the plot's going, or googling to find out what the strip of metal on the floor in a doorway is called and then getting absorbed in a glossary of door anatomy (yes really). But as long as I'm on target I don't mind plodding!

I'm so very behind for the last few days I've only managed about 700 words a day before dcs wake up . I got sidetracked by my birthday.must get back on track

I'm waaaaaaaaaaaay behind too! 😱

I'm behind too. Someone in my region is at 26000, and there's loads of people posting in the 10k checkpoint while I languish on 7100! However, that's an average of 1000 a day and I'm enjoying writing my story, so I'm taking it as a win despite not having a hope in hell of getting to 50k

I'm at 12,400 so far, which is not quite on target but not far astray either.

26000! Way to make the rest of us feel inadequate!

I'm struggling to get the plot to hang together, so I'm just targetting the scenes I want to write and bashing away at those. I expect I'll hit a wall next week sometime where I have to face up to making it all link together properly...

A measly 680 words so far today. I bet I've written more on here than I have on the blasted book

26000! Way to make the rest of us feel inadequate!

Bloody hell!!!!!

I bet I've written more on here than I have on the blasted book

Yep, I might redesign my book as a compilation of my social media ramblings ~ I'm probably way over target in that case!

I'm at 11k. I need to do another 1700 by the end of the day to stay on track.
I don't divide up all the days in November to work out my target though, I know which days I will have writing time so I count them up and share the total out between them, which means around 2300 for each day of writing.