NaNoWriMo* 2014
Anyone WriMo’ing this year?
*National Novel Writing Month
Date: November 1, 2014
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction, Things We like
Tuesday, 23 April 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Anyone WriMo’ing this year?
*National Novel Writing Month
Date: November 1, 2014
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction, Things We like
I stayed up till midnight and got to within about a hundred of my goal. It’s kind of weird so far but I’m trying not to worry too much about the writing quality.
About three minutes before midnight, I totally discarded the idea I’d been settled on for the last three months. I didn’t have a backup plan.
Now I have a thousand words, including a sentient city, an irresponsible criminal sort, and an arrogant jewelry maker with some sort of dark past.
We’ll see!
I wrote about 500 words at midnight last night, and brought it up to about 2k just now. I’m just breezing through the part where I know what happens – we’ll see how that goes once I run out of planned plot (maybe another thousand words?) I’m hoping to do about 2k a day, because I know that I can’t write on the 8th. After that weekend ends I’ll reevaluate and set a new daily goal. I still don’t have a title, and I’m hoping that one will become obvious once I write a little more and introduce the second main character.
If I wrote 5k per day I could finish in ten days! If only…
Anyway, my five-year-old characters are looking at paintings in a museum. I’ve never written the kindergarten mindset before. It’s proving to be interesting.
In response to Dodecahedron on the other thread — you’re doing both NaNo and Yuletide too! I’m so glad; I thought I might be taking on too much, but at least I’m not alone.
I wrote the first scenes of three novel ideas I’d been throwing around, and then I hit on an actually workable idea. So I’ve got 2513 words of writing and 1367 words of the novel I want to try and write. I’ve decided to go from here only counting the 1367 I have so far though!
I might be taking on too much as well. But at least we’re doing it together!
HELLOOOO
So, last night for halloween, I went to a local NaNo kick off party for the first time!! It was a lot of fun. I don’t know many people super well in cambridge so it was nice to have plans to do something & then chat with fellow nerdy types for a few hours. Plus, then we all had plans to get home by midnight to start writing.
Dodec talked me into doing NaNo this year like… on wednesday, so, I have barely anything resembling an idea, but I cranked out abotu 1080 mediocre words between midnight and 1am last night. Then I cleaned my room & packed until around 2:30am, and went to bed so I could get up at 5:40 for my 7am train
I spent all day today out with Paul (will post more on this on the random thread momentarily!!), just got back an hour ago, but managed to throw out 600 words to get to today’s goal. I usually like to do a bunch extra the first couple days, but I am pretty tired, so I think I’m gonna just wait till tomorrow to try to get myself a word buffer.
We’ll see! I’m trying to write middle grade for the first time. It’s surprisingly difficult, I’m not worried about policing/leaving out big words, it’s mostly my (bad) trend of complex sentence structure I really have to moderate. But I think it’ll be fun.
I’m not doing this. Not officially.
However, I do have a short story I need to finish.
My reduced goal for November is 10,000 words. Let’s see how this goes.
3523, most of them from yesterday. This is going to be harder than I thought, but I’m not breaking my winning streak.
4184 so far, and I’m hoping to break 5k today! I won’t let this awful cold I have stop me!
I also came up with a title. It’s called Dialetheia, which is (according to Wikipedia) the word for a statement for which both it and its negation are true. Since the main character’s name is Paradox and there’s going to be time travel, I think it’s fitting.
3760.
Broke 5000. I wanted to break it yesterday but I wasn’t counting on being out on the town till 1AM. Oops.
6,153??? I could keep going but the nyquil that I took an hour and a half ago is starting to take effect, I think, and more sleep’s probably a good idea, considering.
Just under 3500. Planned on being way ahead of here, but I had less time than I planned on both yesterday and today. Fortunately, I have more time tommorow than I expected.
Also my efforts were distracted by a sudden raging desire to do art instead of writing yesterday and this morning. It was kind of a problem. I think it stemmed in not knowing where I was going and being uninterested in the current scene, though, and I finally worked out both of those problems.
I think I know where I’m going now! Sort of. Also, my antagonist may be a city. Like the buildings and stuff. Yeah. This’ll be interesting.
4000, and got a character out of mortal peril, into more mortal peril, and sort of not quite in so much peril. Then she ran out of energy and went to sleep.
I have a feeling that last plot twist was fueled by my tiredness more than anything else. Off to sleep.
…That got dark.
I was writing a scene where an upper-class charcter comes home from exploring the city in disguise, and she’s trying to avoid her father by pretending to be a servant. And then I had an idea and started following it and, well, apparently her father a) can’t recognize his own daughter when she’s wearing a cunning disguise like different clothes and b) isn’t opposed to roughing up servants for doing something slightly wrong.
Um… Yeah. Wasn’t expecting that.
5564. My characters yell at each other a lot.
Didn’t write all day yesterday as I was out Adventuring with Paul, but am now caught up to yesterday’s word goal! Now for a much needed shower & think, and then we’ll see if I can et closer to being caught up to today’s objective…
Adventuring with Paul is the best activity.
6300. My characters just graduated elementary school. I haven’t written a ton today. Oh well, I still have tonight (why did I put all my homework to the last minute? Why.)
Good luck to all writers! Unfortunately, I will be busy with GradAppWriMo this year.
Leaving tonight at four sevens.
Probably would have been more, but I spent the evening socializing and maybe making a NaNo convert.
Made it to 6087! Only about 600 words behind now. Slowly I am catching up.
711 words — behind even my drastically reduced personal goal. Still, I’m writing every day, which is a huge improvement over October.
Reached 10k today so far. Nothing much happened. Probably changing that soon though… The plot is solidifying in my mind. Still not sure where it’ll end up, but I understand better what will happen in the next few thousand words.
8000! One of my characters is being weird; the other is wondering why.
7700. Those of you who write your novels in chronological order: how?
(Those of you who outline: how? I think I need an outline.)
Leaving it at 11k for the day. Not much happened today, but a lot happened yesterday and I think a fair amount will happen tomorrow, so that’s probably okay. Wish I had a better handle on my characters, though. I think they’re sounding like slight variations on the same theme. Probably because they kind of are. Oops. Guess I’ll keep emphasizing the differences and see where I go.
I reached 11k last night. I was about 50 words shy of 1667 yesterday, which upset me a little, but I’m hoping to write a solid 3k or so today because I don’t have much going on.
My character who lives entirely in virtual reality has just been decanted into the physical world. Also, she received a confession of love from her friend that I’m not sure what I’m going to do with. I don’t want any straight people in my novel, that’s been way overdone. According to the pacing cheat sheet I found online, 11k should be “A strong, definite change of playing field. Do not ease into Act II.” I think I’m about on track for that, since she’s about to fly to another country and attempt to break and enter into a science lab/travel through time/meet the love of her life.
This pacing cheat sheet sounds intriguing. Could you share a de-linkified link, please, if the GAPAs would allow?
The general term for these types of pacing worksheets is called “beat sheets” and the one I found on the nanowrimo forums was called Save the Cat. I think I downloaded it from here: lizwritesbooks(.)com/for-writers/savethecat/. It’s not perfect and I’m not following it that closely, but if I get stuck I can check what’s supposed to have happened and where I am, and go from there.
~
13,231 words as of now! I’m on track to hit 15k tomorrow, I think. I’ve been surprised by how well the words flow for me most of the time. I’m not sure what happens next, but I am excited to find out. I haven’t felt like I’ve written anything filler-y yet, which makes me hopeful for the quality of my writing, but it’s still very early on. I’m proud of this prose, though, despite the run-on sentence:
She’d known that she would be hungry, but feeling it was still a surprise – the difference between living something and knowing it was out there lying in wait was akin to the difference between having a dream and hearing a friend describe their dream to you; the verisimilitude of the description was absent. Her hunger felt like a claw scraping out her insides, sharp and visceral.
8440
CAUGHT UP FOR THE NIGHT
NOW I COLLAPSE
GOODNIGHT
When Jadestone is very tired, she lapses into her native Squiddish.
~waves tentacles amicably~
QUESTION
NANO TOPIC IS
QUESTION WAS
a girl and a coyote try to trade places, but something goes wrong when the girl gets turned into a stag instead when some other spirit that steals people’s forms snatches her’s and tries to take her place. she and the coyote have to go on a journey to find out how to reverse the spell, and need to capture the Moon, who turns into a silver hare that races around the earth for the one day a month she’s not in the sky, to figure out how.
don’t ask me how it gets resolved yet bc I’m not that far yet x_x
(it’s not nearly late enough for squid-speach yet, sorry to dissapoint)
Leaving it at 16k for tonight, I think. Very pleased with that total, especially since 3300 of today’s words were done within a single hour. Did that once before, last year, but it came a lot more easily this time.
Broke 10,000! I’m finally having something exciting happen: one character has gone missing; the other searches for her.
Fun ways to procrastinate on the schoolwork that you need to get done if you’re going to do as much writing tomorrow as you want to: Read the records from all your previous NaNos.
It was fun to see my level of maturity growing over those five years. There were these weird moments from the early years where I actually said something really profound, but mostly I’m really glad to have left that person behind.
Now I’m trying to predict how much I’ll like this NaNo and this year’s novel in retrospect, based on results from the last few years. I guess it’s looking pretty hopeful?
In other news, I just realized that I’ve initially started out aiming for something higher than the basic 50k every single year I’ve done this. Times I’ve gone even one thousand over 50k? Zero.
(Really, I’d rather be writing than doing all this. But Wednesday through Friday are school days, unless I get enough done today I can justify staying home tomorrow. Really hope I do.)
10080! Still on track. I know i should try to get ahead or something, but since tomorrow’s friday & I’ll be able to stay up late, I think I’m gonna take this chance to read a bit of one of the books I’m still working through and relax a bit before sleep. Don’t wanna burn myself out after my first lengthy creative writing in… years really. Plus some time to plan out a bit of what should happen next x_x
Busy day today. Didn’t want to write anything, but managed 950 – just enough to break 15k. I’m hoping to write on the train tomorrow, but realistically I’m not sure I’ll have a chance to write again until Sunday. Good thing I’m three days ahead!
20k celebration! Almost halfway there!
My characters are getting less likable, though. Or at least less liked. I keep giving them all flaws and they turn annoying. Which probably means they’re successful flaws? Mmm. Not good for writing enthusiasm, though.
At least I still have one character I like. Plus 20k words, that’s quite nice.
Ugh. My dislike for the character whom the plot is revolving around right now keeps increasing. The two other characters whom I could reasonobly do something with are also annoying.
Time to explore redeeming features, I guess?
On the plus side, my characters seem to be less flat than they have been in the past. And they apparently have more distinct characters in my mind than I thought. Annoying is better than unmemorable, I guess?
Ugh. My mother somehow figured out that I was still writing my novel despite the fact that she’d rather I focus on homework. All in all, yesterday was pretty demotivating, and I only got about 600 words done. I’m not behind, but it’s frustrating.
It’s “double up day” aka write twice as many words as normal day! Anyone going for it?
I’m a loser who does nothing of merit all day (although today I did make it to a museum for a bit), so I’m at 14k now–1k more and I’ll make the double daily word count goal. So I guess I’m gonna try to make it! I have almost 3 hours to get it, so I’m pretty sure I can make it.
…as long as I can figure out what happens next. It’s nice to actually be making progress on my plot but the downside is, I have to keep figuring out what happens next x_x
aaaand made it to 15k! After dragging myself through those last 400 words x_x That’s enough for tonight I think–at around 3393 words total today.
Ugh. Somehow I wish I could take part, it sounds like a lot of fun, but I think it’s too late, right?
Oh, well, I can always write, anyway.
Yeah, definitely write! Even if you can’t reasonably make 50k in 20 days, you can always use all the writing excitement to write. Even if it’s fanfiction or an autobiography or something else that doesn’t quite fit the ‘novel’ parameters. Go for it!
I think I’m going to consider my thesis as my NaNoWriMo novel this year; perhaps that will motivate me to finish it. I miss doing NaNo, but I just don’t have the time.
(Side note pertaining to bookgirl’s brain:
“Write 50k novel in a month?” =>
“Walk a 450 lb motorcycle in a sharp u-turn in mud?” =>
“Write a 15 page thesis on a topic you really care about with a kind advisor and plenty of time (back when I started) to finish?” => )
Some kinda faulty wiring there…)
So right now I have 6 pages, I should have about 8-9 to hand in as first draft of the first part tomorrow. I already have the outline for the next few pages, but I still need to fill in the proofs… this will be a long night.
To be followed, no doubt, by an unbelievable celebration.
Seven-and-a-bit pages of thesis-y goodness, done with the formatting/planning, just need to plug in the last -gah- 5 1/2 proofs. Which, unfortunately, requires understanding them, and bookgirls have gotten slow. I’m just going to do them until I get stuck, then nap, then get up and finish them and format tomorrow evening.
I finally caught up! After two days of being behind. I can’t believe I did it. (Being sick and staying home from school probably helped.)
Instead of working on my NaNo I wrote 1700 words of Doctor Who fanfiction. That was… not a sensible decision, in hindsight.
(It’s pretty good fanfiction, though; I’m kind of proud of it.)
16838! I am writing again. It was a bit of a slog, but the interesting part is about to happen, assuming I figure out where the time machine takes them in time to write about it tomorrow.
Urgh. I went camping this weekend and and my motivation died. Probably I would have recovered faster if I’d had more time on Friday, like I was expecting, but I didn’t, and I didn’t get anything like my goal. Which was overly ambitious to begin with, but still disappointing to miss.
So now I’m at 25k and yeah, that’s still way ahead and I’d be pretty much okay if I just kept up this pace of 1k per day for the rest of the month, but that would just be last year’s NaNo all over again. I can do better.
On the plus side, I just introduced a new character who either has a ton of the virtues my other characters are lacking in or is really good at faking virtues. He’ll be fun, especially paired up with the character he’s currently hanging out with.
By ‘hanging out with’ I mean ‘imprisioned alongside’.
Yes. Off to write.
My entire Language Arts class is doing NaNoWriMo, so that’s how I ended up doing this project. My story is really bad so far, and I have a pretty low word count, but hey. It’s my first time trying this, so I don’t really care. What’s my story about? Thanks for asking. There’s this group of nice protagonist kids who decide to build a tree house during the summer because they have nothing else to do. But this is not just any tree house, this is and ULTIMATE tree house. However, once they draw up the plans for their project, another kid and his friends come along and steal the blueprints. Then both groups of kids build their tree houses and have World War Tree. Pretty bad plot, but its fun!
I’ve foregone my words for today in favor of the fact that it’s my friend’s birthday tomorrow, so I’m making a song! A purposefully bad song. Because my friend’s music tastes are much too nice to appreciate anything I would make. So it’s really bad, with low-fi sax solos and ukulele strumming and I figured out how to make EDM-ish noises in the space of about an hour.
Welp.
I finished. the song. I can’t believe it. it opens with bad ukulele strumming. then it has some EDM-ish noises that don’t sync up quite right. then there’s a clip from a marching band show and it goes into a chiptune. then it goes back to the EDM and ends with a fadeout of the ukulele strumming with a low-fi saxophone solo.
Aaaand my friend liked it!
Late-night thought: NaNoWriMo is basically a hackathon, but for novels.
What’s a hackathon? Why, it’s NaNoWriMo, but for coding and on the order of hours rather than days.
I hope nobody minds if I pretend this post was written specifically with me in mind. ♥
I think I’m just pretending that the writing class assignments and various short stories/fanfics I’ve gotta finish are my novel. I once wanted to write a story in which a girl in the present finds a graveyard with an old letter in it and ends up communicating with a guy from the past, but that idea sounded like it had been done already. Plus I lost motivation and forgot about it. Gaahhh that always happens, especially when I try to write something original.
I haven’t been writing much the last few days, not even meeting the daily quota. Partly because I haven’t had time, but mostly because I just had no motivation. Week 2 hit me extremely hard.
I think the worst part is the last few days when I’ve started writing late at night and then I’d just start wondering why I was putting so much time into this, and it just didn’t seem worth the effort of concentrating so much. I think I may have burned myself out somewhat working so hard the first week?
Anyway, today was somewhat better. I still only got like 4k, and I had a lot more time to write today, but still, that’s better then I’ve gotten in days. I hit 33,333 words today, which is close to 10k ahead, so I guess I shouldn’t be complaining too hard?
Finally back on track!
I’m now two days behind. Ugh. This year’s nanowrimo is such a drag, especially since I’m doing it in secret.
Phew. Just emailed the first chapter (10 1/2 pages out of 15) to my supervisor… I’m mildly terrified that he’s going to think it’s horrible, but I’m really glad I finally sent it. Now to work on the next chapter…
What are everyone’s stories about? I mean, those who haven’t yet told the blog.
Mine is about a time loop in which a girl dies at the age of 15 and is reborn ten years earlier as her five year old self. With all her knowledge from her previous life, she’s pegged as a prodigy, but her friend wonders why she knows more about him than he does about himself.
Does she try to change history?
Well, of course.
I’m about three days behind on NaNoWriMo. Friday I went to set up my project for the maker faire, and thought “I wrote about a thousand words before leaving, and I should get back around 8pm, so I’ll write another thousand words tonight.” Dear friends, that was not the case. My project miraculously stopped working when I went to set it up, so instead I got home at 9pm, too despondent to write, and woke up at 6am the next day to get to the faire early enough to fix my project. That was successful, but the event didn’t end until 5pm that day, and after driving home all I wanted to do was sleep. Today, I had to do a take-home exam for class, and about a million loads of laundry, and I’m feeling pretty burnt out from yesterday, so while I may have a breakthrough and begin writing again after this post, I may just eat dinner and go home and sleep again. My wordcount, last I checked, was 22887, and there it shall stay. I’ll see how I feel tomorrow, but I was having a lot more fun writing when I knew what I wanted to write, and now that I’ve run through the plot I planned out and have other commitments in my life, it’s kind of a slog.
37k. Kind of not pleased with what’s happening in my story at the moment, but it’s not horrible and I think I’ll probably hit 40k tomorrow, at least.
Reasonably concerned that one of my characters is getting too competent and cool because I think I’m growing too attatched to her. Also having difficulty keeping the charactaristics of various characters straight. ANd I keep getting into a grove of writing dialoge between two characters and ignoring all the others present.
On the plus side, all my main characters are now working together towards a common goal, which didn’t even start happening until about 48k last year. (I also have a problem with pacing)
Probably the rambliness of this post bodes pretty ill for the quality of my novel. But hey, I’m writing!
I was about three thousand words behind, and then I had to write a two thousand word essay for band, of all things, so of course my characters picked up a piece of paper they found on the ground, and read my essay in its entirety. Does this count as cheating? Either way, I’m still fairly far behind. This is proving to be a difficult year, but I’ll make it.
I figure that is a beautiful dodge, AL.
Got to 40k today.
I am still ahead and it’s 2/3 of the way through the month. I’m still making daily progress, I haven’t fallen behind once, and this is unprecedented and totally amazing.
Also I had one of those moments today where I thought I knew where everything was going and then one of my characters was resisting that direction, and I realized that yeah, he probably wouldn’t be up for following someone he barely knows into what he thinks is a deathtrap, even to avoid prision. So, he’s been thrown back in the dungeon while everyone else escaped. We’ll see how that goes in the long term.
I love it when that happens.
45k.
Today’s going well. Actually managed to get some momentum going before suppertime.
Also, I just managed to fit the title of the song I was listening in to my novel, and it totally made sense, so I’m satisfied with that for some reason.
And my characters are coming together and I have a good sense for all of them, I think. I don’t love my story very much, but I’m really happy with how it’s going anyway. Maybe I should write without planning at all more often.
I should get some schoolwork done now, though. Off to do that.
I’m still at 29k. Thi sis really a hard year. I’ve been having issues with my plot, but I’m hoping that I can write 5k tonight.
50k!
I did it! I won! Ten days early, even!
I wrote 10k today, which is definitely a personal record, and I won in under three weeks, which is definitely unprecedented, and I am so happy.
I probably couldn’t have done it, except that a few days ago I said “Hey, I’m almost on track to win on the first day of official validation. Let’s aim for that”. And then I didn’t get much written the next couple days, but today I sort of abandoned all my responsibilities and just wrote and wrote.
Now onward! Into the wild unknowns beyond 50k!
…Tomorrow. For now, my wrists hurt. Ow. Note to self: 10k is a lot in one day.
Congrats!
Congratulations!
Ugh, I’m still around 17000 words from winning… I really hope I can make it in time. I’ve been busy this whole weekend and haven’t been able to write at all.
I should mention officially that I’ve chosen to stop working on NaNoWriMo for the rest of the month. All that stuff posted on the website and in the pep talks about how “the world needs your novel” – the world doesn’t need my novel more than I need free time to restore my mental health. I might come back to it in January after classes end, but for now… I have an eight page paper due the first week in December that I need to start researching for.
I’m preferring to think this way: the world does need your novel, but for that to happen it needs you to be well.
Thank you ♥
yeeeee I didn’t write for like 5 days because of PACKING and MOVING and TRAVEL (hello again united states)
and now I’m like 8000 words behind ;_; gonna try to slowly catch up a bit more (yesterday got 1800 words, goal today at least 2000, 2500 if I can but idk) but hhhh it’s gonna be a long haul to the finish line now
and I was keeping up SO WELL for once before too
Aaaaand ending the day at 37346! that’s around 3500 words total for the day x_x maybe I’ll finish this thing yet.
Wow, that’s about where I am too! (current count is 38938). We can finish this!
I’m finally caught up! 47,000 words! Not quality words, maybe, but words all the same! I’m hoping to win tomorrow.
I finished my plot, finally, and still had about six thousand words to go, so I wrote a bunch of filler, and now I’m done. Definitely not my best rough draft, and definitely not my best year. But still, I finished, and now I’ve won four years in a row, and that’s all that matters to me.
Well done, AL! *confetti pies* Congrats!!
I haven’t caught up quite so fast as you–still plugging along at 45.5k. But yesterday I got 3264 words, so now I just need about 3000 a day to be done! Not counting what I wrote today, which has been about 1000 words. So one way or another I’m definitely finishing this–just gotta figure out if I wanna stay up late & write a load tonight (my most productive hours are typically 11pm-1am), or do more tomorrow afternoon. Don’t think I wanna risk leaving it till tomorrow night.
I’m sooorta close to being done with my plot, too. I think I stalled a bit too much in the middle & so it might go a bit over 50k, but my aim is to write the last sentence by tomorrow, if I can. if I don’t finish it in the next day or two there’s a significant chance I’ll drop it and then… never go back x_x
BUT OKAY, home stretch! Basically no way I can let myself fail now. I feel like 40k’s the mark where once I’m there, I’ll do anything to get the rest done to make it
Confetti pies=Piecarones?
Well, that didn’t work out quite as planned.
I really hoped to keep writing beyond 50k this year. Set a new record. Stretch myself. And I did, sort of, I finished way early and wrote a lot more on any given day and more consistently, and then I just stopped. I didn’t keep writing. I wanted to, sort of, but I just didn’t have the motivation any more. November ended ten days early, and now I’m looking back at what I wrote and doubting it was ever any good and I can’t get back in the swing.
I have written a bit more, especially on a totally different ongoing story, but for whatever reason, I’ve never managed to write fast when writing that one, so I haven’t made a lot of progress.
I don’t want to stop at 50k again. I’ve done it too many times. Tomorrow, I have pretty free. Tonight, I can stay up late.
55k, at least.
Aaaand 47033!! I was gonna try to write more tonight, maybe make it to 47.5 so I don’t have as much to do tomorrow, but the great wearyness has come upon me x_x and it’s not even 1! what life is this? But I think the excitement of finishing will give me enough to get motivated during the daylight hours. At least, I hope!
So that’s about 2.5k done today. 3k for tomorrow. One more day!!
Not technically NaNo, but I’m trying to finish my thesis today. I have 10 1/2 pages that I wrote, sent to my advisor and applied his corrections on, then about 1 1/2 pages of filled-in outline, about 2 1/2 pages of outline left to fill in and 2 pages I have to write pretty much from scratch. So, in all, about 5 pages to go. Of maths and proof-y math-ness, so I don’t think I’ll finish, but I know I’ll try…
Update: More than half the day over (gah), but 14 pages written. I’m still missing a proof and a subsection of Chapter 3, plus the two pages that should be Chapter 2.
AAAAAND 50,001!!! WOOOOOOOOO!!!
Still have some story to go, I think about 2-3k left… gonna keep writing tonight and try to finish it!
I finished.
It’s not a coherent storyline, it’s not all on one novel, but I wrote 50000 words and now I can go to bed.
AAAAAAND VALIDATED
final word count was 54090, and more importantly, I ACTUALLY FINISHED MY STORY WITHIN THE SPACE OF THE MONTH! First time for me. So, wooo!
2348.
I didn’t have a great month. I’m proud that it’s more than zero.
Same boat here.
Yeah, me too. I got… 17821? I probably would have finished if I had actually written more than 3000 words total over the entire break, though.
Congratulations to everyone who even attempted this heroic enterprise.
Congrats to Jadestone and ZNZ!
Wow. It feels so weird coming home and not writing! I’m… free!
*suddenly realizes that my entire class will be working on editing our stories for the rest of December*
Aww.
So I know it isn’t November anymore, and also I never got far past 22k on my story; but the deadline for Yuletide is midday on December 20. (I want to finish writing by the 19th, so that I can edit/get my story posted in time.)
For those who don’t know, Yuletide is a fanfiction gift exchange; you both give and receive a story in one of your chosen fandoms of 1000 words or more.
I had no idea what to write, but yesterday I came up with a grandiose plot (I wrote a summary, it alone is 750 words) containing several original characters (don’t worry, my recipient stated in their optional details that they were fine with original characters in the same world).
Anyway; five days remain (three of which I have finals on), I’m just starting to get into the meat of my plot, and I’m at 1900 words (though I wrote 1400 of them between midnight and 1am last night). I think I might aim for 10-15k, which would be by far the longest fanfiction I’ve ever written, but would be a pretty quick treatment of the story I’m telling, especially since I need time to introduce the original characters to the existing setting.
Wish me luck!
4387, and I’m… maybe halfway done with a first draft? If I’m being optimistic. but I can’t write any more tonight, and I am despairing about pretty much every aspect of this.
7282. First draft complete, and it feels like a weight is lifted from my shoulders. I can worry about whether I’ve done enough to place it in the canon universe tomorrow.
This is probably the best place to note that I did eventually get my Yuletide story up and I’m so relieved about it; it’s not the best thing I’ve ever written but I think it’ll make my recipient happy.
Good to hear! I have similar feelings about my story, though I am concerned that my recipient will not like it. I’m in too far at 7000+ words to write anything else, at this point. It is what it is, accept the things we cannot change, etc.
still don’t know what my recipient thought of their fic but
I got given an 83k fic for my favorite book series!! I’m so excited!! (I also got three other shorter fics — and those three are all on the same prompt, which I’m taking as affirmation of my prompting abilities. also, they’re charming.)