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Author Topic: NaNoWriMo 2019  (Read 11924 times)

MadZealot

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #15 on: November 04, 2019, 10:26:33 pm »
Anyone else on here doing NaNoWriMo this year? If so, what's your project? What are you excited about? What are you nervous about?

If you've done NaNo before, what helps you with it? Any advice for other people?

(For those not familiar, NaNoWrimo is National Novel Writing Month in which people attempt to write 50,000 words on a project. Classic mode is 'start a novel on page 1, write 50K on the same project' but lots of people are rebels and write non-fiction, multiple projects, short stories, etc.)

Yeah, I'm doing it again, dammit. I really want to finish this Big Damn Novel by the end of the year. NaNo should help me along with that.
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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #16 on: November 05, 2019, 01:30:02 am »
I am really not liking the new site for NaNo.  I've already 'lost' my novel for this year once already (trying to update word count on day one).  I don't like the forums.  I don't like the look of the site.  I just don't like it lol

The new Nano site has 100% crushed my enthusiasm for the event. The new forums give me carpal tunnel with the infinite scroll, the word count updater is barely functional, I can't see my buddies' word counts at a glance, the stats are completely borked....

The list goes on. It's frustrating.

I'm still writing but the intensity of Nano, the magic, has kind of flown.
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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #17 on: November 05, 2019, 05:49:44 pm »
I've been getting progressively more curious about this. Is it a case of 'I know what I mean, but the readers need more descriptions'?

The first book was "You really kinda skipped a bit of necessary setup for this resolution, put in a chapter here right before the end to tie up the loose ends you kinda took as read."  Most of them have been like this.

Book 5 was:
"Hey, you can't title it with cards and have nobody play cards." "Oh hey, if I go back like six chapters from when you said that and add in a new chapter it fixes my sequencing and there's a card game!"  "I guess we always add a chapter to the manuscript, huh?"

All laugh.

Followed by two additional "this needs more chapters" and one "you can probably not write whole new chapters for these three but they need a total overhaul to bring them into consistency with the chapters I have made you add."
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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #18 on: November 05, 2019, 07:14:56 pm »
Followed by two additional "this needs more chapters" and one "you can probably not write whole new chapters for these three but they need a total overhaul to bring them into consistency with the chapters I have made you add."

Writing locked room murder mysteries with a romance is, it turns out, rather different than writing a romance with a puzzle-solving background.

Who knew? (Ok, I sort of knew, but.)

My characters in the NaNo book are currently soaking in the Roman bath, because if you were a very posh descendent of a magical family that's had a villa there since the Romans, you'd have kept the baths functional too.
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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #19 on: November 05, 2019, 07:22:04 pm »
The new Nano site has 100% crushed my enthusiasm for the event. The new forums give me carpal tunnel with the infinite scroll, the word count updater is barely functional, I can't see my buddies' word counts at a glance, the stats are completely borked....

The list goes on. It's frustrating.

I'm still writing but the intensity of Nano, the magic, has kind of flown.

I'm still enthused about the challenge, but I hate most of the website changes. It's slightly more visually appealing, but that's the nicest thing I can say about it.

"The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you." -
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TsundokuTeaTime

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #20 on: November 06, 2019, 01:47:10 am »
Anyone else on here doing NaNoWriMo this year? If so, what's your project? What are you excited about? What are you nervous about?

This is my first NaNo! I'm really getting into it despite the terrible ass design of the site. Don't get me started. I'm curious about what the previous design was like. See a lot of people with similar complaints. I feel it's pretty damn clunky, whatever the case.

I had a project ready... and then my mind gently said, "Fuck it."
It was a gaslamp fantasy involving four elemental beasts of the cardinal directions teaming up and destroying humanity. Got stuck on a fight scene and walked away from it. Tried going back, but I didn't feel motivated enough to tackle it.

My new project(decided on the day before NaNo) is about a Beautiful Apocalypse set in semi-modern times. Dystopian, surreal horror elements fuse together in a coming of age story about a desolate new world seen through the eyes of an unassuming young girl.

Despite the NaNo site weirdness and my fickle last minute changes, I feel confident that I'll win this year.

Oh! And I'm trying the DWS Writing Into The Dark and cycling methods. Been doing sprints so I have a pile of stuff to edit because I was more focused on speed rather than going back and cycling through things. Hope to make cycling my new standard.
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Darkhawk

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #21 on: November 06, 2019, 09:48:11 am »
This is my first NaNo! I'm really getting into it despite the terrible ass design of the site. Don't get me started. I'm curious about what the previous design was like.

You can see at least some of it poking at https://archive.nanowrimo.org/
as the water grinds the stone
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we shine like stars    - Covenant, "Bullet"

PerditaPickle

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #22 on: November 06, 2019, 01:48:33 pm »
I'm still writing but the intensity of Nano, the magic, has kind of flown.

That's a great shame (I can sympathise, though, because bad website design is enough to put off and frustrate me too, whatever I'm doing).  Good luck with the writing anyways.

My new project(decided on the day before NaNo) is about a Beautiful Apocalypse set in semi-modern times. Dystopian, surreal horror elements fuse together in a coming of age story about a desolate new world seen through the eyes of an unassuming young girl.

That sounds really interesting!

ETA an 'o'.
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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #23 on: November 06, 2019, 02:43:08 pm »
My novel will be the journal entries of someone who uses writing prompts they find online (like the ones you see on pinterest or floating around Facebook...anything that includes the lines "This would make a great book...") to escape their actual life.


So...yeah....day 6 and I'm pretty sure I'm going completely off the rails again.  I've been struggling, and last year I struggled as well.  I'm sort of fighting burnout, not just with writing (oh the burnout from writing is there, I think I'm on my fifth year of weekly blogging and my fourth year of monthly story writing) but also from community building stuff I do (which means two posts weekly on 'what I am doing in my life', one on some kind of spiritual prompt for my local pagan community, plus just trying to keep up with all my groups and what not and trying to be involved in conversations).

The mc of my story has absolutely turned into me talking about the frustrations in my life, and I think I'm going to use my NaNo writing time to journal out some ideas for the future of my writing and Patreon:  where I want my writing to go, what I can stop doing, what I can change, what I think people might like better.  Sometimes trying to promo writing on Patreon is just torture, it really, really infuriates me some days to see the comparative differences between art Patreons, craft patreons (even ones where they don't send you stuff, just video their crafting process)...or really anything that includes pictures/video instead of words.  But that is a rant for another day (or for my NaNo file rofl)

So yeah, I'm now a NaNo rebel, and my project may still include random story prompts that I want to play with, but will most likely just be a mush of "stuff that is in my head that I need to get out and deal with."
Check out my Patreon for more writing and other goodies!

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #24 on: November 06, 2019, 07:21:07 pm »
My characters in the NaNo book are currently soaking in the Roman bath, because if you were a very posh descendent of a magical family that's had a villa there since the Romans, you'd have kept the baths functional too.

If I ever write that first-person Robinsonade-with-magic-powers, bathhouse is one of the first things that gets built. ^^
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TsundokuTeaTime

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #25 on: November 21, 2019, 10:40:49 pm »
You can see at least some of it poking at https://archive.nanowrimo.org/

Thanks for the link, Darkhawk!

Looking at it, I have little to say about the old site design. The newer site can be a little frustrating sometimes. I feel like it's quite clunky to use and navigate. Not too hot about inputting the silly metrics either, I just wanna input my words.

That sounds really interesting!

Thanks, Perdita! I like how the MC is turning out, though she is probably coming off as a little more punk than I intended. XD
When I get it cleaned up, I'd be willing to send you a few chapters to browse. I'm about halfway done if we're going by NaNo standards. 25k. I'm probably not gonna win, but either way it's been enjoyable. To be honest, it might actually be around 75k  when everything's said and done.

This month went by so fast! Hope all of you are doing well with your writing endeavors.
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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #26 on: November 22, 2019, 01:15:39 pm »
This month went by so fast! Hope all of you are doing well with your writing endeavors.

According to the Nano site, I'm at 34,126 on In The Seed for the month (it's actually minutely more, I have had a couple of instances of going back to add a few words to previous chapters when I realized I missed something, but I didn't bother to add those to wordcount) and should've been at 35,007 yesterday.  (36,674 today, but I haven't done word production yet.)  So I'm technically slightly under par, though if I get a chapter written I'll make up some of that.  (My chapters average 1750-1850 words, so I'm aiming for roughly one a day and have failed the last several days.)

HOWEVER I am also 4145 words into a short story with a deadline for submission of 30 November, so I have more words just not words on that project.  (I have another short I'm working on but that's deadline at the end of the year so I haven't been pushing it.)  I may at some point after that one's done say 'fuckit' and put its wordcount in as words-I-did even if they're on the wrong project. ;P
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Jenett

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #27 on: November 22, 2019, 03:09:06 pm »
HOWEVER I am also 4145 words into a short story with a deadline for submission of 30 November, so I have more words just not words on that project.

And they are interesting fascinating words, and I want to read more of them!

Not that I don't also want more In The Seeds

Quote
I may at some point after that one's done say 'fuckit' and put its wordcount in as words-I-did even if they're on the wrong project. ;P

There is nothing wrong with being a rebel! (I am also aiming for winning NaNo on classic mode again this year, but I track all my words, and I'm at 40K for the month, and 37K for Nano, so. We'll see how the next days go.)

And I have also just out out the published version of last year's NaNo project, In The Cards, which has bonus Tarot geekery.

(This is the book where we hit part of the editing process, and I spent a day and a half going "I accidentally a new Tarot deck" because none of the existing ones did what I needed. On the other hand, I am still working my way through a gloriously geeky book about the Sola Busca Tarot, and got to spend a weekend mucking around with various Tarot references to figure out hte bits I needed to write those chapters, so, it's all good?)
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PerditaPickle

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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #28 on: November 22, 2019, 03:39:13 pm »
And I have also just out out the published version of last year's NaNo project, In The Cards

Oo going on my wishlist right now.
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Re: NaNoWriMo 2019
« Reply #29 on: November 22, 2019, 03:55:11 pm »
There is nothing wrong with being a rebel! (I am also aiming for winning NaNo on classic mode again this year, but I track all my words, and I'm at 40K for the month, and 37K for Nano, so. We'll see how the next days go.)

I mean I was already a rebel I went into this with a project with ~70K on it to make more words happen.

Quote
And I have also just out out the published version of last year's NaNo project, In The Cards, which has bonus Tarot geekery.

Was In the Cards really last year's nano?  Yikes, what even is time.
as the water grinds the stone
we rise and fall
as our ashes turn to dust
we shine like stars    - Covenant, "Bullet"

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