Confessional

My confession is.. I wrote a third-person limited omniscient novel over two NaNo years. (2009 and 2010) In that time I did not actually use "she thought/wondered/decided" or any sort of internal hook until about 100,000 words in. I accepted, then, it might be allowable to do that.

I'm not even third-person cinematic, and this is not a standard adventure/quest format novel. I was just so allergic to the MC thought blah blah blah blah that I wouldn't do it. She is the primary POV character because the other two MCs are portrayed initially as antagonists and, even on their own, they still don't allow anyone inside their heads. Maybe it's a good thing for the crazy fae...

Your word count *soared!* It isn't cheating, it's writing what you know. Go for it!

You mean, Oswego?

My confession is that the way I got to 50,000 was including a 58 page backstory that wasn't even a part of the story originally. My character decided that she wanted to go to college and wanted me to include every single detail of it. Of course I was the guilty person like always and allowed her to do it. This amounted to over 20K in words, and right now only 58 pages into this plot am I including the events that I wanted to happen. I feel so guilty but I love doing this, because it allowed me to build up my characters even more.

You crack me up. =D

Somehow I ended up with a scene of my MC reliving the nightmare that was my weekend, since I had some excellent work-related drama that I had to go back to the store and help with after I left Friday afternoon. (The article had an oops, it was 8pm, not 8am. And don't worry, we're all safe.) Except my MC has an army of stuffed animals that now want to play Plushy Vigilante and take the law into their own... paws. Is writing real life into the novel cheating? If so, I blame the DayQuil. If not... I just got almost 5,000 words from that absurdly stupid man Friday night. Thank you random felon guy.

He caught up!? AUGH!

Oh, but that's brilliant!

"I see ... hot danger approaching you! She has red hair and long fingernails... No, wait, my bad--it's just a floating piece of chile pepper."

"Ah, what a kick! Now, let's see. Where was I?"

If you're going to rewrite (and, hey, we all should be planning to do that post-NaNo), why not switch to first person now? You may get a boost of energy (that coupled with your fast fingers might boost you past Dave ;-) ).

--Tim

Don't give up yet! This is something you can do for yourself and the benefits are all yours. Sit down if you can find a little time on your lunch hour, before you go to work or maybe after in the evening. Is it possible that you can curl up in front of the fire or hit a Panera, Caribou (we have a meeting this afternoon there, or at least I'll be there writing and looking despairingly at my manuscript), the library, or somewhere else snug and bright, surrounded by people and cheer, to get some words out?

Do you need someone to challenge you to hit a certain mark -- 40,000 maybe? The jabber chat room has sprints, or use the forum here. Let us know what would enable you to move forward and if we can make it happen, you'll have lots of support.

I am in the same boat, but with the opposite situation. My MC is the POV character for third person. And truth be told? I want to be first person so badly, it's not even funny. But I'm way too late to change things around...

You *can* do it. It may be darn near a headache, but if you forgo some precious sleep and keep your foot to the pedal, it's possible.

I've a friend who slacked all month, wrote other things, did very little towards the novel despite outpacing me for the first few days. Wrimomonster had a total of 5,000 words as of November 24th. Could I let that go? No bloody way! So with a lot of encouragement and a twenty thousand word day (!), as well as another 10,000 day, and 5,000 yesterday, the Wrimomonster is going to finish. Even if I have to take dictation, I swear, it will happen! :D

Now, then, how do you get there? You hammer out your keys and bounce, and you just run with it. Try not to focus so much on story foundation if you are getting bogged down by it. Go to the action, cut through the "in late, out early" philosophy by showing things. Or maybe don't worry at all, just write what happens! Some level of outlining per chapter may help too if you name what you want to achieve in basic bulletpoints as they make great landmarks for what you need to do.

Mine is two separate manuscripts waiting to be smashed together. This year's end decided to be its own book over there somewhere without addressing much... I have the feeling that when I melt the two monsters together and pare them down, I'm going to have 3/4s of a book and the ending waiting to leap onto the fray, when I wail, "You aren't written yet!"

I would like to second the value of the sprints, whether online or against yourself or another person. I have more than once set up last year's word-war prize -- a digital timer -- and decided I was going to hit the ground running. Staggering. Okay, dragging that plot along like a giant stone used by the Greek gods to torment particularly rude and hateful members of their little society.

Do not underestimate sprints. Do four in an hour? You may have 2,400 words on your plate. Do that for a few hours... imagine your word count. I don't get to my highest word counts all in one placid go, typing out the words, thinking, drinking tea, and calmly sailing towards the horizon. I do it in bursts waiting for that "beep beep beep" or "TIME!!!" to pop up on my screen. I agonize over deleting words I shouldn't've deleted -- especially when I rewrite them in near the same order, my brain firing on the same cognizant notion -- and then pound out more to make up for it. Editing is going to be a nightmare but it moves me forward. Too much time to think and I have conversations that go no where, dialogue that falls flatter than my failed souffles, and meandering.

Imagine your writing as a river. You tilt the landscape and your words have no choice but to flow downhill towards the estuary of 50,000 islets or your terminus, whichever you are aiming for. You let things stay flat and calm, they don't get anywhere. Conflict, action: put your characters together. Throw a proverbial golden apple or hand grenade into their midst, and keep the pin in your pocket. Watch them react. Write it.

You can do it!

But you're SO CLOSE! You can do it!!

I'm about to just throw in the towel completely. I'm so sick with a horrible cold and I'm exhausted from work. :( It just hasn't been a good year.

My confession: I just started a prequel for the novel I just finished, and it's in a completely different POV. Dunno how well that's gonna work.

The part of me that I would like to believe doesn't need sleep is trying to see if I can get the dang 36+K written by midnight on Tuesday. True, I don't work but have two appts tomorrow in downtown Chicago, hours apart, so I can't hibernate the whole time. [But will bring my laptop for the hours between appointments.] Now if my November migraine would go away....Anyone else find that if they end up writing about food and drink in their story suddenly that is what they are craving? It's something I go into more detail writing when I feel like I am stuck in the bridge between story background to establish foundation and the actual "good part." Sadly, I don't seem to write the characters indulging in vegetable juice, or fresh clean plain water.

Today I wrote a scene where I had my main villain explain to my main character his evil scheme which honestly was taking over the world.

I also had a bad case of writer's block today and one of the ideas that I thought of to continue my novel's plot was to kill my main character. My novel is written in first person point of view from my MC's POV and the only reason why he's still alive is that I didn't think I could squeeze out 2k in some funky 3rd person POV epilogue.

And here I was worrying if my chronology made sense.

XD

Logic is vastly overrated.

In my usual mad dash to finish, I have abandon all hope at writing well. I started out trying to fashion sentences well, maybe with a little bit of flair and poetry, now it's just subject -verb, subject-verb.

I'm still trying to avoid the passive voice though.

Also I've given up all sense of logic and flow and have been skipping around to write the parts that I enjoy the most.

My god! What monster have I created!

Hell with it. Creating something is better than nothing even it it winds up in the freakshow tent.

One word after another baby, one word after another...

Yep. Same here. I realized that even *I* don't know what my MCs look like! (Or my setting for that matter.) That's in the "TO FIX" list for when the story is done.

mine is too now. D=

I confess that the only thing about my MC's physical appearance that anyone reading my nano can know for sure is that he has short-ish hair and two arms. Well, I think I mentioned that he had two arms, no more and no less, but I'm not sure. :P

My story is sticking to its guns, CD0189. It makes no bones about the fact that it has no intention of being finished.

MY STORY LIED TO ME!!!!!!
Now it wants to be finished.

It needs to make up its mind!

I often use LastName during the first draft after about 30K or so. To make it easier to replace later, I make it RivaLastName or ChuckLastName (since my main chars are Riva and Chuck.) I even write RivaBossName rather than going back to figure out what the heck I named this minor char five chapters earlier. It's easy to replace it later, and it saves my having two or three spellings of a last name and is quick to fix once I'm done with the first draft.

I've decided that my novel is now two--so I have a starting platform for next year. So there.
=P

Today's confession: It's been so long since I wrote the first part of this trilogy that I actually forgot my MC's last name and wrote the wrong name for pages before realizing it.

Also the Oo/Word/validator discrepency is now over 900 words. Blah.

I'm getting my tooth pulled tomorrow. Will the nitrous oxide help my novel? Stay tuned...

Maybe the brothers should wear your pajamas.

My characters decided to end the sexual tension (and all the other conflict as well) around the 25k mark, so now i've got nothing to do for Act II. Oh, and these two guys are brothers, and they didn't bother to tell me until about two days ago. Grrs.

And I've been wearing my pajamas for two days.

My confession: My socks don't match today. And also, I still don't know how my novel starts.

I needed a fortuneteller. You know, the wise old crone, who shows up to give the heroes the much needed advice for the quest.
What I just got in reply to my fortuneteller casting call was Eccentric Tamale, the Crazy Cheese Lady. I guess she gets visions in her nacho sauce.
:(
I hate my life.

Ughhh ughhhh I screwed my main character over. He's seriously injured, so now I have to wait until he's better to end the book (otherwise, he'd fail miserably at the climax).

I confess that I have a MC who was shot in the leg and using a crutch, then perfectly healthy and walking freely around all morning, then complaining about her leg wound and took the night off all within (all within about 3k words of story). I'm filing that under "Things to figure out in December."

My Confession: I gave my main character a potentially terminal illness and put her into a coma so she'd shut up and give the other characters a chance to talk for 5 chapters.

She's currently resting comfortably at home and quickly recovering from her bout with bacterial meningitis.

I just had (another) main character pop up 2/3 of the way through the book who is insisting that I weave his sub plot back through the beginning of the book. That brings my main characters up for six, since he is very close friends with the previously minor character I just killed off. Who would also become a main character due to this subplot.

I have officially lost control of my story, but I love it. My brain is working faster than I am. The end is in sight! I have 9 scenes left until the end. And then I have to go back and *gulp* write the beginning.

God, i thought i was the only one. I was scared there for a few days the first time i noticed, like i had to suddenly put periods between every other word. It was crazy.

And R_C_LandPsMommy05? I love your location. I said it loud like six times as soon as i saw it.

Have them try to break up. Numerous times. See what happens.

I confess that I'm getting discouraged at the discrepency in word count between Open Office/Word/ word count validator. It has opened up to over 700 words now. I'm just venting.

I got to the point where I needed to split my hero from his heroine and I couldn't do it. I simply couldn't write that scene (or scenes). I was feeling as if the rejection were my own and I didn't want to deal with it. I hit my 1667, but it meant skipping ahead, well ahead to do it.

Tonight it's better, but there's a hole in the middle of my story you can drive a bus through. That's okay, that's what the next 4 years of rewrites are for, right?

I'm not sure if it helps or hurts to know that I also have times when I'd rather do anything but write, but I very much want to finish my first draft before November is over because doing this while so many other people are also struggling to finish makes me feel part of a community and that's a very nice feeling. So I write when I'm tired, I write when I'm barely awake, I write when it's going well, and I write when it's not flowing.

After last year, I pledged that I'd be more 'sane' this year--with an upper limit of 5,000 a day and a goal of 3,000. But NaNoWriMo isn't about being moderate, or even slightly extreme. It's about pushing and pushing and pushing and seeing what you can accomplish.

I'm getting up at four or five in the morning and writing a thousand words before I take a bath and start my day. I'm bringing my laptop any time I'm a passenger in the car--even for a ten minute drive. I'm writing in between making dinner, and doing work. (Oh, and I'm using a lot of vacation time this month--my company changed the rules so we can't carry over vacation days. I was going to 'save' some for December, but I don't really need the time off to be able to have latkes and candles for Hannukah. That's a major factor in why 3,000 was a reasonable goal.)

My payoff? I'm going to finish this novel this month. Probably after many of you, not before despite my word count. Because I'm not near done. If I can find a way to squeeze more of my outline into the next ten chapters, maybe I'm two thirds done. If not, I'm only half done. I'm not at the finish line, not by a long shot. (And I still dream of going back and adding description throughout the book, since I fail at description and keep thinking that November is the perfect month to write long descriptions in the hope that some of it sticks, and that I'd use all my senses in description.)

So, yes, it's nice to be above 50K, but I'm still writing, because winning to me means a first draft completed during the month of November. And I like to win.

My confession: I really don't feel like writing today. At all. I don't feel well, work is looming, and I'm terribly nauseous. But I promised myself 50k by 3am tomorrow, so I feel obligated to write.

P.S. At day 16, I can heartily say that my plan to create as I go is NOT working well. I have decided that if I get stuck the entire story will be taken over by zombies.

You sound like you need Write or Die. There are some forum threads on this program--it's free online. It has been my savior this year. I did not do a lot of work prior to November, and it's showing.

Keep in mind, not one of the words I wrote using write or die is showable to any human being without extensive editing, but it's been responsible for getting me back on track (I was at about 15k on saturday, and today I'm at 23k.).

We are all amazed at what Katherine can write in a short period of time (and all those other over-achievers) and the finished looking quality of the writing but 90% of us struggle a bit more especially after the first few days of enthusiasm. And most of what I write is absolute garbage. That's totally fine.

I do exclusively word sprints to force myself until I feel like actually writing. (It's been a while.). I have a notepad on my desk and I write out the daily goal i have in 10 minute increments. Today, I have a goal of doing three 17 minute sprints and then three 10 minute sprints, so the paper looks like this:
17 /17/ 17
10
10
10
I cross them off as they get done. This is a pretty ambitious day for me--I have to get this thing done before the 24th.

It's a lot of gobbledegook, to be honest. No spelling, no tabbing over for new paragraphs, quote marks all over the place. A big mess. It's supposed to be a big mess!

You still have a lot of time. Even if you just sit and do one 17 minute sprint it will make you feel better. Even if it's total nonsense garbage you will be writing words that count to your total.

I just had a char take the Myers-Briggs test for another char
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

I'm too eager to get to the next scene, but I could easily get a lot of words out of this--and share with the reader what one POV char thinks about the other. May have to revisit this after I finish the first draft.

I'm not sure what advice I have about building a beach in 1975, except maybe drop a few buckets on sand onto something and see what happens.

Then bring another bucket of sand, from somewhere far away, that takes lots of twists and turns to get there, only to.... have something go wrong.

You're at 11,000 words. It's time to start putting the characters into a place together and just see what they have to say for themselves. It's clear from your postings that you can visualize images--you're giving them away in your forum postings, so take your internal editor, bribe him to go away, or tie him to the train tracks, or give him something he always wanted that is very shiny and distracting and quick, sit down and write! (Hey, you're building a beach, I think your internal editor is one of those guys who like to be buried in the sand until they can't move. You could keep him there until December sometime.)

Sometimes it helps to write before you have a cup of coffee or are fully awake in the morning. Sometimes it helps to get out of your normal environment. One November we replaced the stove, my daughter wrote 1,000 words in the place the stove normally is.

But, what they heck, you're only pretending to listen to me. I think I may have put your internal editor to sleep, shh, maybe you can write a bit while he's sleeping on the beach.

If none of that works, I have one more idea to try-- write 50 really, really bad words--stuff like, 'meanwhile back at the beach' and 'she looked at him imploringly, her heart in her mouth, breathless with anticipation' then write 150 words for your story, and you can only cut 50 words from the 200 total.

It might just work.

Good luck.

If you really want to hear about it, like where I was born and all, all I can do is confess that the internal editor inside my rotting head plus my lack of any story whatsoever has made me crash out of NanoWriMo 2010 faster than I managed to get booted even from Pencey Prep. I mean, those phonies all around me who seem to be ducking into every latrine and Laundromat to write words toward a word count are just making me sick and all. I spend my time trading Nanomails with Beth and Heather and acting like I’m listening to advice from Katherine and Tim and in my head it’s just saying “Shut it down, the phonies are not really writing either,” and then I grab a beer and sit and think about my rotten life. I keep picturing all these writers in a big Nano Write-in, thousands of them, and I’m the only non-writer there, and I’m standing on the edge of some crazy coffee shop write-in and I have to catch everyone if they start to fall off their word count and all. That’s all I’d do all day, I’d just be the catcher in the write-in, and that’s the only thing I’d like to be.

--Holden Caulfield.

my confession: my side character used for comic relief started getting so much attention, and smarter lines so he didn't seem too one dimensional, that he somehow replaced the main character! I did a little tweaking and I'm back on track.

My second confession is a spent a whole designated writing shift to reading through everything and editing. It started tripping me up and I realized I just need to forge ahead and not worry about some of the details. Although to be fair, the read through did help me focus on where the story needs to go!

It's so very hard to stop editing!

After getting a bit too competitive last year I promised to get to 50k and wrap it up. My wonderful mother-in-law is my editor/proof reader though so I can't just leave story lines hanging. Now I'm slipping & looking at the word count chart thinking I can get to 60k easy. It is a disease, I tell you, a disease!

One trick I've learned is to have at least 4 sub-plots going. If I run dry on one sub-plot I play "what if" on the others and almost always find a way to get momentum back on the problem one.

An epilog is definitely required by my editor. She hates the thought of the poor characters wandering aimlessly around in eternity. If it was good enough for J.K.Rowling it is good enough for me.

Maybe I'll try a prequel next year.

My goal is to write year-round--Now that I'm in the groove, I think I can do it! I head up a "Creative Writing Club" at a local high school, which is new this school year and I was introduced to NaNoWriMo by a friend. My kids and I are all anxiously plugging away at our word count goals, and the students are anxiously awaiting April's "Script Frenzy."

It's being bit by the writing bug--everything becomes fodder for a story. Like, a friend of mine posted something on Facebook about 'what if unfriending someone meant that they no longer existed?' I wished I was writing fantasy or detective fiction since that would have been a really cool plot twist. I'm still trying to figure out how to use that in my mainstream novel...

As I may have mentioned before, I do write year around, so I have an unfair advantage, some might say.

Katherine...I'd love to take up a desk in your brain for just one day. You are so creative!

I have to wonder if I just wrote myself into a box, somehow.

My characters possess knowledge they have not decided to share with me, which produces a great big honking plothole I cannot simply leap over or explain away. You see, my main characters (an amnesiac student, a soulless mage, and a recently escaped fae hiding as a human) all need to get to Hell. They refuse to tell me how they will do this or how they will go from respectively recovering from strangulation (the student), beaten half to death in the back of a cargo van (mage) or sulking under a tree in the student's B&B (fae) to Hell.

Just ducky.

The catch is, the student has the literal keys needed to get into Hell, and she's going to need all three. The mage wants to go to Hell to get his soul back from the demon who owns it, and the fae wants to release her family who are held in captivity by the demons. Conveniently they can bargain with the same unintroduced entity, Melphas, to achieve this. Righto then. The mage is a demon-hunter, which is very convenient as far as information and dealing with demons goes. The fae knows how to get to Hell, but would rather just about anything than go there. The student has just figured out her poor professor ended up there.

So now I am stuck with the mage missing (her friends have him, beating him up under the pretense he abducted the student... oops!) in a van. The fae and the student aren't at ALL willing to trust one another, given the fae declared "I want you dead."

And instead of working this out? I'm eating peach pie and laughing at William Shatner singing karaoke, wondering if that might be the solution to my problems. No, no, no!

This is useful to know. I do use quite a bit of dialogue, so it could be the quotes that are doing me in. And just for everyone's general info, I just pasted my document into the validator and it came back with a number that is even less than Word said! This is also good to know at this point, because now I know that 1) I need to pick up the pace and 2) I can't believe either one of the apps when it comes to word count. It is, of course, better to find this out now than at 2 minutes before midnight on the 30th.

Thanks for the idea, Katherine.

It's worse the more quotes you use. I encountered this before, and so I periodically write a few rifts about my chars that aren't part of my novel that I save in a different file, these more than balance out the difference between the two versions. I was subtracting out an ever-increasing number, but that got tedious. Sometimes pieces of these rifts end up in the novel, but usually they're too meta to include even in a first draft, but they are useful to write (and they more than make up for the Open Office strange way of counting.) And now is a good time to go do one of them since one char has been wanting to be snarky all day and just got an earful from her daughter so would like to rant.

Why is it not surprising that I solve the ethical dilemma by writing more? :)

Katherine

Ah, see? This is why forums exist. The last time I tried to use the validator, it was not working and wouldn't accept my document for pasting. Therefore, I was under the impression for some reason that I couldn't use it. Now it is indeed open for business. Thank you for the heads up.

Happy Back Up Your Novel Day, everyone!

You could always copy/paste your document into the word could validator and use that number to determine which word count is correct.

So here's an ethical dilemma: I use both Word and OpenOffice because I move between computers at home and at work. Usually I have found that there is a difference of 25-40 words between the two applications, but last night to my horror, I discovered that Word says there are *400 fewer words* in my document than Open Office says I have. I had been posting my word count according to Open Office for the last week because that was all I used last week. *Now* what do I use???

Truthfully, I like this idea. you can require the answers be in the form or one or two quick sentences. The anwers your character gives can reveal how she views the world. They can give the reader a lot of "sneaky" character development and/or background and it's not padding, it's useful for the story.

No, I haven't, but I will now--that's a good idea!

Have you added a prologue yet? That's another good way to add words.

45,000 words in, my story is petering out and I find myself preparing to tack on an epilogue or lose NaNoWriMo. Epilogue it is! I had really hoped to have an engaging plot that would carry me past the 50k mark, but it looks like I will be scraping the bottom of my brain for whatever scraps I can throw out there. Hopefully something interesting will come up in these last 5000 words...

For some reason, I needed to have the teacher in my story give a pop quiz about "The Diary of Anne Frank." I had to write down each question and have my character also write the answer in italics (of course). I'm pretty sure this part will be cut because a., a lot of people know Anne's story and would know the answers anyway, and b., it's really kind of pointless as of now. But, we will see. :)

15,000 + words!!!!!! Hoping for 17,000 by the end of the day tomorrow!

It took me two walks to get my plot back into something where I wanted to keep working on it today. (I spent a lot of time working on my outline in September and October. Well, at my current rate of outline to word count, my novel is 250,000 words and most of those drivel. It's hard to write stuff when I think the odds are 60% I'll just cut it later and when I fear I won't finish my first draft by the end of the month.)

I considered everything today--having the disagreements at work be actual battles, with winners and losers and coalitions. I googled 'epic battles' and 'how to write action adventure.' I even started thinking about tossing in a few elves or faeries or dwarfs into the iterative development process they're doing in corporate America. Considering everything gave me the courage to figure out what needed to change, and how to tackle it.

The nice weather helped.

After two walks, I was able to figure out how to cut a chuck out of what I haven't written yet--and am eager to plunge ahead. (I'm still not sure if I have one or two books outlined, but at least it's not the never ending series it felt like it was going to be earlier today.) And I found a way to strengthen some of the earlier stuff so it doesn't seem like such drivel. At least not today. Good news is the weather continues to be warm enough to walk outside. I need that.

Katherine

My character needed a dog.

A stocky, slobbering little brown and white Bulldog named "Toro" to be exact.

Since I didn't particularly feel like writing the scene that came next in the bulk of my story, I decided to rewind to a scene in which my twelve year old hero is trekking to the local humane society with his friend to find and fall in love with Toro.

My high school experiences as a sixteen year old volunteer dog walker at the Naperville Humane Society just came pouring out in several hundred words of description that will likely be chopped out of any sort of final draft of this story, but my character really did need a dog.

Jen,
I think that every writer at least sometime faces a time when they feel like they can't go on, like they aren't emotionally attached to their story and characters, like they have no energy to push forward. How each writer responds depends on what is really behind that malaise--are conditions in your real life so overwhelming that it would be foolish to try NaNo'ing while those conditions persist? Or is this a transient state that just needs a day or to to clear up; if you went for a long walk outside, would your characters begin clamoring to know what happense next?

Only you know for sure. I would advise you to put down your figurative pen, go take a walk, clear your mind. Maybe even take a day off (you know you can make it up). See if you can shake this off.

If not, if you withdraw, that's ok; we of your Naperville-centric region are here to support, not to judge. You'll still be welcomed with open arms at the TGIO. There's always a next year...

As a final step before you make the final decision, after you've taken a day to reflect, pick up your story and read through it once. Even edit it a bit (yes, typically this shouldn't be done in November, but we're talking in extremis here) and see if that helps spark anything.

Just remember: NaNo is meant to be a motivational aid, not a torture. It should not supplant schoolwork, grades, job, family or health (not in that order).

My $0.02...
--Tim

IM

My chars love to use IM. I was trying to stay away from it this year, but they're at work and the bosses like IM--probably because then they think people are at their desks and if they're at their desks they must be working. Silly bosses.

I know I'm going to cut the words--just, still, now, but (and a bunch of others) out later, but I'm still writing them now, just in case they prove useful.

Actually, it's part of my inner editor enjoying her spa vacation and giving her a chance to ease back into her normal role. Like someone coming back to work and starting by reading emails instead of going to a four hour meeting, she doesn't want to tackle the plot holes when she first gets back, so the fact that there will be things like 'the fact that' that she can easily cut will make her job easier. So, really, I'm just being nice to my internal editor and making her realize that she is missed when she's gone.

Despite years of cutting 'just' and 'still' -- I still write them, but just in first drafts.

I definitely do the "As I was doing______, I thought of______" a lot and the "After dinner, I put ______ to bed and we read____story which reminded me of_____" (or something to that order). It always has commas--because I seem to be addicted to long sentences--and the words "and" or "like" or "as." I'm trying to get out of that habit, but to type this fast and write well is hard for me so there are going to be a lot of those phrases at this time. I think this novel could definitely go somewhere eventually. I believe in every project I do because if I don't believe it's great, who else is going to pull for it?

Shanna,

author of "Trading Baseball Cards," a novel for people ages nine through fourteen or fifteen.

I'm addicted to this phrase: all those years ago. I think I've used it at least 25 times.

I also have a historical novel with almost no history in it. Just notes in parenthesis like (insert appropriate food item here) or (find out what EL lines were working in 1896).

I am also suffering from the "all dialogue, no detail" disease and so far I have jumped from scene to scene just writing the ones I want to.

Those of you who know me know that I tend to be an overplanner, but my gut told me that not only is my novel idea the best one I've ever worked on, it's also the one I'd want to try and send out to agents down the road. So I've been trying to approach this as a "treatment" or giant outline rather than the story as a whole. I was hoping to be more creative that way. I don't know if that's working well.

Me: Forgive me, Nano, for I have sinned.
Nano: your punishment is another 5k words without the phrase "all those years ago", or your continued abuse of following dialogue with descriptive phrases about how the character moved their head or hands as they talked.

Please don't give up on your novel! I started mine going a whole different direction--with one character's mom dying and her friend getting cancer--yikes! However, I tamed it down and made it a little less depressing in the second draft. Both first and second drafts I am counting as my novel because they are indeed part of how I will come up with the final story. I'm on my fourth (I think) and it's coming along better than the others. Very big change in plans, but that's what revision is for. In my other works, I've had to change a character's name, totally eliminate people from my stories, change their roles/statuses and also change the plot. I'm constantly improving upon the plot and characters in my other novel in order to make it better. Yes, it's a tough process, but it's something that's necessary as your story grows. It's kind of like a kid--they change as they get older and they like different things and you have to adapt to what the kid likes. You have to adapt to where your story is going and ultimately decide if that's the right route. I think it's hard because it's meant to be hard and as far as work goes, I can feel your pain. I work two jobs, plus I write. Yet just finding a few minutes each day to sit down and write at the computer can do you wonders. If you have five minutes, take five minutes. If you have an hour, take the hour. Just be committed and stick to what you can do in one day. Oh, and don't give up. You might just have the seedlings to a great story in the palm of your hand. Good luck! :)

--Shanna--

P.S. I went from 8,000 something words to 10,000 something words in just four days, all of which I have worked one or both of my jobs, and all of which I have spent a little time with family. It's hard, but not impossible. I'm behind, but I believe I can catch up and I think you can too!

But how will we ever hear the great tale of how the Evil Plushies* and MechanoGodzilla* ate their Sad Burritos?!?!?!

*names only approximate :P

Almost 7,000 words into my second plot, and the conviction that no, I can't do this, is firmly entrenched in my mind. Work is absolutely eating my soul. Money trouble has me pulling my hair out. I have no time to write, except in the early morning, when I'm barely awake and can't function. I know where the story should be going but have no drive to get it there. And I feel like absolute scum for wanting to quit. NaNoWriMo is the only thing I have that gives me even an ounce of pride, and I just can't seem to get into it this year. No matter how much help I get, I find myself staring at the word processor, unable to continue.
It's a giant, extended, "I hate myself and want to die" moment.
Ugh.

I have absolutely no dialogue as of yet. Though perhaps it is dialogue if it's in first person? I don't even know! And I've had to write "IDK" for a few of my characters names because...I really don't know their names. And tenses what are those? I just added third person for 2000 words oh so randomly after being in first for the previous11,000 :/

Gah. Double post. Ignore this.

I can't focus enough to write one continuous story for 50k, so I've finished one novella and am now working on four others and a bunch of short stories. :/ I dunno if that should be considered legal, but oh well. I'm writing a lot more than I normally do.

I'm starting to use my character's full names far more often than I should, because they're five words each, and even their shortened names tend to be two words unless I just go with their really short names.

My own confessional? Well, I didn't start on time at all, losing three days of the month - not too big a deal, I've never started NaNoWriMo on time, but have managed to finish (usually in the nick of time).

The real confession? I had no idea what I was going to write. I've been working on other projects and hadn't given much thought to NaNoWriMo. I thought I might skip this year in leiu of other work, but the OCD in me could never live with an empty space between 2009 and 2011.

I confess, my first NaNo was easy. I wrote a YA novel that I had been thinking about for ten years - so it literally wrote itself. What a joy! My second was harder. I came up with a YA novel idea about a week out. I think YA is easier for me. My reader level is aimed at the 12-14 range, so for me, it is a little easier. Not so many heavy themes, sub-plots or plot threads - just a lot of simple fun and adventure. (YA writers please don't take offense, I know these novels aren't easy, but for me they lend themselves to a simpler style-that's just me. I enjoyed them both and think they're not bad, they just need some revision).

This year I was preoccupied with other work and had not thought seriously about a novel. I thought of a last minute idea that I thought would be fun- a little bit of fluff I would not have otherwise taken seriously. My fluff has gotten away from me. It has bit me back. It wants to be an adult novel with serious themes and intricate characters. I've tried to make it easier for myself, but the story won't let it happen. I have a feeling, in the end, this one will be hard. I may make 50K, but the story won't be finished. So here's what I have done...

For the purpose of NaNo I've given myself two things: First, I have given myself a license - Artistic License. I know this story is going to present problems being written quickly and at 50K, so I'm giving myself the artistic license to take a few liberties in order to get the ideas and scenarios on paper. They may be a bit disjointed and confusing, but I need to get the ideas down so that I can polish them later. Second, I am giving myself permission to fail. I know I can make 50K words, I'm just not sure if they'll be any good. So be it. The ideas are sound and can be worked with. This is a writing exercise that I hope will tell me as much about how I write as the other NaNo's.

Normally, I'm an obsessive planner with writing- this goes in the opposite direction. I don't know how I'll do but i can promise you this - i'll make an honest effort. As long as I write instead of make excuses I'm making progress, I'm learning the craft and how I deal with the task of putting one word after another, making sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into chapters.

I hope you do the same. Good luck, I'm rooting for you. One day I hope to read something wonderful you wrote.

Thus endeth the confession....

A slight endote - The idea of artistic license comes from Kate Wilhelm and her excellent, excellent book Storyteller - read it. Permission to fail - I took from Mur Lafferty - good advice from both - look them up.

I've been working on a totally different project for a year and a half or so, and I had to do the exact same thing! Unfortunately, it's how I get my thoughts down. Some detail, but mostly mumbo-jumbo and then a lot of talking about nothing. lol.

Description? What's that? Details? It is, apparently, all about the dialogue, right now. And I am not in the least bit ashamed of that fact.

How about going from first person, present tense, to past tense, to third person past tense, to changing the characters' names? I want to cry when I think about having to edit this thing, later. ;)

I confess that I kinda only said my MC's name, like, three times in the first 5k words and I somehow managed to not describe how any of the guys in my story look, while giving extra attention to the females (which I kinda blame on my worry that I didn't have enough important females in my story).

Carly, I believe you and I are in the same boat. I read my messages on here and the sentences in my manuscripts and I'm like, I really need to cut this down. But I have to save that for later. Anyway, time for bed. Almost one thirty-two am. Yikes!

Hi, my name is Carly, and I'm a run-on sentence addict, but really, they're good sentences, I promise, and I only use commas when absolutely necessary, and I try to split things up with semicolons and colons and em dashes, but it's really starting to become a problem, because I need to figure out how to say what I need to say without stuffing it all into one sentence because I get breathless writing them let alone reading them, and I don't know how to stop.

That is all.

Well, first I had some of my characters lose their mom...but now I'm thinking that's not the way I want to go and I want to have something happen with my main character's friend instead. Not a "death" thing, just something that would make the main character concerned. I still have the mom dead right now because her funeral scene was my first 1,000 or whatever words, but I think I'll be changing that in the future once I get the story nailed down a little more. It's just so tragic for a thirteen-year-old to lose her Mom and have her friend go through such a rough time within the same two weeks. I don't want to be a downer for my middle school readers. I want to be real, but not terribly sad. The balancing act is my struggle then because I'm a very dramatic person when it comes to writing and I need to work on holding back a little more.

Amazing!

I feel the same way about broccoli.

Glad to confess that, thanks.

Seriously, this month I feel more entitled than I normally do. Entitled to sit by myself and reflect and write when I should be raking leaves or brushing the dogs, or like now, working! I also feel entitled to eat what I want, when I want, whenever I want. I also feel a little superior to non-wrimos because my creative juices are spilling out onto the page the way a crushed juice box releases its contents onto the sidewalk after being jumped on by a 4 year old who is only imitating his older brother who learned the trick at recess. I also have a tendency to pad sentences.

Keep your heads above water, keep the fingers to the keys,. and write, write and more write.

No Plot, No Problem author Chris Baty has only one thing wrong: no plot *is* a problem.

Steve

Word padding.... ummm... would that be like when my characters were discussing Gilbert and Sullivan and one of them decided to sing a bit from "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General"? Only one verse, I promise... That's okay, right? :)

hmmm well one of my characters decided to have 3 names to help pad a bit. But I SWEAR that was his own idea. And I always separate compound words...And now I'm on here replying when I need to rescue my novel that decided to write itself in first person. I DIDN"T WANT IT IN FIRST PERSON gah.