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NaNoWriMo 2016

Sandstone-Shadow

Sandstone-Shadow

A chickadee in love with the sky
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she/her
It's almost November and that means it's time for NaNoWriMo!

link for new people

Will you be participating this year? What will you be writing?

I'm going to be adding on to my long-term writing project, Revanna. I'm super stoked because I met my goal for Camp NaNo in July so I feel like I can do this! I'm determined and I've learned a lot about time management. Also, NaNo has acknowledged "rebels" like me who aren't starting a new piece of work, which I think is great and I'm totally showing off that badge on my profile. (add me if you want, my username is qyuarkrien!)

Tell us your stories!
 
Oh god it's so close.

I'm not sure i'll be joining this year, i'm super on the fence about it. On the one hand it's tradition and i haven't been writing nearly as much as i really ought to be; also, i've got a couple things in mind that need a-writing and it would probably pretty easy to get going if i wasn't overloaded with school! I'm not confident i'll have enough time to do this, though, and i'd hate to see another project go down the drain because of a botched NaNo commitment so i guess we'll see.

My local library actually has NaNo workshops! So maybe that'll help.
 
i'm still debating whether or not I wanna try for NaNo this year! I tried Camp NaNoWriMo in July but it wound up not really happening because vacation and mental breakdowns, and while November has nothing substantial planned aside from Thanksgiving and work, and while I currently have Fridays off, I also work till 5:30 four nights a week and might not be in the best writing mindset.

Plus I have to decide what project I'd want to work on; I've got four or five i'm considering, each with their own set of pros/cons, and good god is that gonna be a process
 
I am woefully behind on my preparations, so I may end up doing a partial "planning NaNo" as I've done in previous years: just force myself to get my notes in some semblance of order and usability, heh. I would like to actually write, yanno, prose, though, so hopefully I'll be able to take care of all the other stuff I wanted done by the end of October (oh god) and then maybe fast-track the planning (oh god oh god)? At the very least I could get some writing done shortly after the planning, like go halfsies or something.

oh god!
 
qyuarkrien.png


It's NaNoWriMo Eve! (also Halloween woo)
 
Oh, hell, it's not like anybody could ever accuse me of having common sense anyway. Let's do this!
 
Excellent choice!

I'm at 1261 words, after a brief bit of writing in the morning before work and 30 minutes or so at home so far. I'm pretty excited by this, because maybe I really can do this :O I really would just need another 30 minutes or so to get another good chunk of words in!

My one day of writing so far is leading me to believe that if I want to do this, I need to just sit down and do it right away. The later it gets into the night, the harder time I think I'll have to sit down and start.

Here, have an excerpt?!

Kamrin traced the edges of the pink flower in the sky and listened to the whispers lofting over and over through his ears. He hadn’t heard these words before and could not identify them.

The night was cold around him, but he didn’t feel. He drew up a mental image in his mind, one he had seen in the sky before. He imagined the brightest colors he had seen the stars produce, blazing reds and oranges and violets. This image he held and he stared. Stared. Hear me, he thought wildly, and whispered, “Fire.”
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Edit: Also, Negrek, I spy these on the NaNo forums! :O



Edit again: !!! and I didn't realize the "nickname" could be for my Pokemon and I've just named them all boringly after me :O This lil' Horsea will be Pertina and my Larvitar from last year will be Draka!
 
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I'm still kind of waffling on NaNo this year, which doesn't really bode well for my chances. I'm definitely going for an odds-and-ends sort of thing insofar as I'm doing anything, though... my focus this month really has to be on finishing up a (scientific) paper that needs to get submitted before I graduate, and that's where all my words so far come from. I'm thinking I'll count figures at 500 words each, too. Other than that I always have fanfiction I can work on, and I got a brainwave for a very nice origfic idea I'll probably do at least a bit of, too. But a lot of my time is going to be spent doing analyses rather than writing stuff, and it'll be a pretty panicked month, so I doubt I'll actually make it to 50,000.

Edit again: !!! and I didn't realize the "nickname" could be for my Pokemon and I've just named them all boringly after me :O This lil' Horsea will be Pertina and my Larvitar from last year will be Draka!
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lol, yup, you can name them whatever you like. I can change that one's name if you want.

Looking good with that word count so far! Interesting excerpt you have, there; if I had to guess I'd have to say you're working on something, hmm, fantasy? XD
 
A paper sounds like good NaNo motivation too! Even if it's not directly required to have a certain wordcount, NaNo would gamify writing it a bit, I'd think.

And urghhh. I did have a good start, and then i pretty much broke down after the election. I'm ready to pick myself back up today, though. I'm glad I had all that buffer from before - I'll have to try and make it up if I want to have a buffer for Thanksgiving. And yeah! My story is fantasy - it's about all animal characters and their quest to have magic in a world where magic is hated and feared.

I'm slowing down also because I think I'm almost done with the story. I summarized all the way to the end and still have some good chunks to fill in with actual story, but the end is in sight. Given how long it took me to write this first book, I really feel like I should get a start on writing the sequel, but maybe one book at a time.

How is everyone else doing?

And ah! If you are bored, Negrek, I am not opposed to that one getting its name changed! Thanks! (But only if you're not busy, it's not super important!)
 
In the end I never really committed to doing NaNo this year, so as a result I... didn't really do it. I did end up with around 15-20k words in various projects, which for the most part I didn't bother typing up/actually putting into the word count validator. It's okay for a kind of crappy writing month, but certainly not a real NaNo victory! Another symptom of the suckage of 2016, I suppose. I look forward to being able to take a real stab at NaNo again next year.

And congrats on getting to 40k! That's pretty great, especially as a personal best. I hope you had a good time and made some real progress on your story.
 
Good job on the personal best, especially since it's 40k! It sounds like your NaNo was very productive, and I hope you got a lot of good material out of it. Out of curiosity, how far along would you say you are with this revision? Close enough to finish if you push beyond NaNo, maybe? :D

In fact, you were probably more productive than I was, heh. I did hit 50k, but rather than actually working on the project I'd intended it ended up devolving into a hodgepodge of other things. Stuff still did get done, and there's nothing wrong with working on multiple things, but it wasn't really what I'd wanted to do and I'm more than a little disappointed in myself for being unable to focus. Ah, well. Like I said, stuff did get done, so what's important is that some kind of results came out of it, eh? Hopefully I'll be more properly prepared for satisfying work on my project(s) next year.

(Although I am sad that I never got my lucario to mega evolve... I did get a really big wordcount on the last day, because it was so close to midnight by the time I updated my final wordcount, I think the day rolled over and "reset" the mega rather than change the sprite. Oh, well.)
 
Kratos Aurion said:
Good job on the personal best, especially since it's 40k! It sounds like your NaNo was very productive, and I hope you got a lot of good material out of it. Out of curiosity, how far along would you say you are with this revision? Close enough to finish if you push beyond NaNo, maybe? :D
Click to expand...

It's hard to say how far along it is. Even though it's a rewritten draft, it still feels really messy. My plan was to make it a three or four book series or something and I have this compulsion to finish writing the entire series before I can consider it done, even though I know that's not usually how people do it. If I'm looking at it in terms of the whole series, I'm still not very far. But if I look at it in terms of the first book, I might actually have close to a complete draft, depending on where I cut it.

Somehow over the years, I've grown attached to the idea of having a series of YA-length books for this world, but in practice it might not be so long. I shouldn't be so hung up on this idea of length though!

So, if I put on some blinders and look at a small piece of it, I could say that the first book is close to a realistic draft! (I might post something about getting people to beta read and critique it soon, hmm.)
 
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