Share something about your novel and add yourself to the region's word count graph!

1. Gillian takes a new job in a new city. She is desperately trying to keep her life organized but as she learns the stories of the people around her, she realizes it is her own story that she is trying to avoid. Attempting to make new friends through a creative writing class at a local college, she is finally forced to face the real story she has to tell: her own.

2. Gillian has been running from the truth that her fiance is dead but will manage to find that love is still open to her.

3. Best advice: Don't stop writing when you have run out of a train of thought. Rather stop when you are in the middle of something. That way, when you come back to it, you are excited to jump back in and get going. I found that advice from Roald Dahl.

The Evolution of Caroline Byrd

1. Human beings only use about 10% of their brain. What if by unlocking the potential of the other 90% they were able to use incredible psychic powers like telekinesis. How would the government try to use these peoples, and how would the people react? Caroline and a small resistance work to protect those who are in danger of becoming weapons used by their government and private corporations.

2. Sort of know where it's heading, but I'm also winging it! We'll see if my story even resembles anything I have planned by the time I reach 50,000 words.

3. Write everyday. Even if it's just a little.

1. The former protagonist of a post-apocalyptic young adult novel is forced to reconcile the two halves of her life when a particularly bad winter (punctuated by zombie werewolf attacks) puts her old family and her new one in uncomfortably close quarters.

2. Amber makes peace with her past and the choices she didn't make; probably more than one person is eaten by zombie werewolves.

3. @nanowordsprints and leftover Halloween candy. Word sprint, piece of candy. Repeat until 50,000 words and diet completely ruined. (Don't worry, it's the holiday season anyway.)

Okayyyy.....
1.) A young Star princess goes on an adventure the day before her apprenticeship begins, only to discover her true heritage is not all the honor and glory she expected. She desperately fights this belief until she meets her father. Her mother's people have told her one version of her history, and her father tells her another. Which is real?
2.) I kinda have a series planned out for this.......but this one ends with her leading a rebellion against her mother's people and being exiled to our earth-for the next book.
3.) I tend to find inspiration in the oddest of places.......which means it pops up everywhere. Take into account your own life. Look at the things you do every day and wonder 'what would this character do? How can I relate the every day to the overall scheme of my story?' Because I know many writers who only look at the big picture. I'm one of those readers that wants to know the character as a person, not as an unreachable hero. Include the little details. It's worth it. My other favorite muse is music in all forms.
-Jessi-

Getting a late start this year, but hope the write-ins will help me catch up! This year's novel has a temporary title of "Clark and Addison."

Clark's twin sister Addison, wakes up one day to find Clark's ghost in her Kitchen. He enlists her aid in solving his murder.

Eyes Like October
1. A young boy who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome is attempting to get through his life with little to no stress. He struggles through his illness to live his life and make friends, and find just the right shade of blue.
2. I really don't want to give anything away :) sorry
3. My best bit of advice? Write for yourself. Don't write to meet a certain criteria. Sure writing 50 000 words is great, and brilliant ideas can be born from it, but if you don't enjoy it, or feel like you've grown from it, then there's no point. Don't write to satisfy other people, and don't write to satisfy that little number on the top corner of your screen.

I have totally been using your method. A nice pile of candy wrappers after 2000 words. I have 4 kids and have been trying to filch candy evenly and so far no one has noticed. I wonder how long I can keep this up.

1. A lesbian couple in a small town have a definitive, coming-of-age journey throughout their senior year of high school. May include many similar elements to the synopsis I currently have on my novel page, but my plot still isn't very clear yet. >.<
2. My main character will be enlightened in some fashion, and I'm very sure there's going to be some character death. (So vague hahaha...)
3. I've never won a NaNo, so I'm not quite sure what works yet! But I'm very much looking forward to taking part in the write-ins.

This year's novel is about a 30-ish widow who inherits a closed-down, dusty old chocolate shop from her great grandmother in Chicago. Stella, the main character, decides to make a go of the business. But once she opens up, weird things start happening...

The novel will have an uplifting ending. The one I wrote last year was kind of dark, so this will be something different.

This is my 4th time participating in NNWM. I attempted in 2009, then completed in 2010 and 2011. So hopefully this will be my third novel. :) Looking good so far after a productive first weekend.

I like stories with strong central female characters who overcome obstacles and 'find themselves' in mid-life. My novels usually have a whisper of the paranormal - or the suggestion of something unreal. It's fun to push reality just a bit.

Advice to new novelists: Use an outline. Try 15-20 bullet points that describe the story. Then write to the outline, but allow yourself freedom to roam during the process. As for discipline/scheduling, carve out 2-3 hours per day for writing. Get up early or stay up late if you have to. Do not burn any time editing. If you need to, make parenthetical notes to yourself in the manuscript like "(need to rework this paragraph later)" or "(check chronology)" if things aren't in order.
The best part: it will feel AMAZING when you reach your goal!

So I sat down and started Nano officially today and already caught up; that's apparently at least how much I already had just swimming around my head of thoughts on game development and downloadable media, just itching to come out. Didn't even require much structure, just had to open the floodgate. By the way, for the first time in six years I'm not technically doing a novel; still a book, but not a novel.

I'm still not sure there's enough thoughts on these topics in me to reach 50k easily, but I can think of enough subjects already to get me to 30k at least pretty easily.

A lot of what I covered today was a rough overview of the process of creating the game from start to finish on the publisher's side. There's some information on this out on the internet or in books, but there's several things I've picked up that I doubt those other book covers, because the ones I've skimmed have been mostly clinical, trying to be a 'one size fits all', and I'm speaking from my personal experiences, over several companies and numerous projects, where many different approaches have been tried, but no 'formula for success' has emerged; just a bunch of things to look out or consider when deciding what to do with a given decision on your project.

And I haven't even gotten into the "So you want to get into the game industry and/or make a game? Here's some advice" part yet.

How will it end? There's a book on game design by Chris Crawford where in the second half he goes through his projects one by one and reflects on some of the decisions he made when making those games. I thought it was very valuable and interesting to read and will try doing the same to see what useful ideas might be generated by that reflection.

Advice to others: If there's something you've done a lot in your life, maybe try incorporating that into your novel. It might be a lot easier for you to write, and you probably have some insights that other people either don't know or haven't shared with the public.

Brian, this sounds like an interesting book! I hope you put some of your quirky humor into it--technical books with humor are always much more fun to read (e.g., Why's Poignant Guide To Ruby, which I recommend everyone read).

And maybe you can put in a chase scene or two... :-)

... Started over with a new novel YAY!.
Hopefully this does't like, mess up graphy stuff because I'm posting again.

1. A young girl has spent the last twenty years of her life essentially 'coasting'. Why challenge herself when she has everything she really needs? But when her grandma passes away she begins to realize that her life's not as perfect as she thought. Her relationship with her grandma was really nonexistent and it's not until after her death that she starts to discover just how much she had in common with the woman... and just how amazing her grandma really was.

2. Over the course of the novel she's going to undergo quiet a change in character. Mostly through reading an old journal of her grandma and seeing some old photos, but also by being challenged by those around her. It will have a lot of religious tones to it, as Christianity is a main theme, and in the end she's going to end up going into the mission field. (Something she finds out her grandma did in her twenties.)

Whoooo.

I'm making up the rest of the stuff as I go.

My advice is still to go to write ins. That, and find a writing buddy that will really challenge you. Last year, I wouldn't have won if not for my competition with Brian.

... This year, Jade over there is providing quite the run for my money.

^^^ This! What Squid just said! I was terrified when I got back into NaNoWriMo this year because it was so hard for me the first year to eke out the required daily word count. But being around other people pushes you to do better, and Squishish (XD) has done exactly that. She opened my eyes. Her goal was not 50k but double that. I would not have thought to write well past 50k before she mentioned it.

Also, Squid, I forgot to mention this to you yesterday, but I am jealous of your cowboy boots!

cableshaft wrote:
And I haven't even gotten into the "So you want to get into the game industry and/or make a game? Here's some advice" part yet.

I bet you can put quite a humorous spin on that advice. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. There's a lot that you can do with a book like this.

Good luck.

Squishish approves!

Haha, that is one of many pairs! Cowboy boys are my shoes of choice... ;) I think I have six pairs now.

Squiddish wrote:
Cowboy boys are my shoes of choice... ;)

ORLYNAO? Those are some cute boys you've got there. "Save a horse, ride a..." lol

Great Scotts, Katherine! Can I take lessons from you? *stares at wordcount*


1. Kyla is a retired military fighter pilot in Year 3059 and thinks everything is going just hunky dory. Until the guy she left for dead, comes back and haunts her night and day.


2. Maybe Earth will explode for the second time!


3. Just write. Don't worry about whether anything makes any sense. You can spend the rest of the year wondering how the story's going to work. Just WRITE.

Katherine and Sarah (writing student) are ridiculous. Ridiculous.

Synopsis: It's about a girl who is going through some hard stuff and needs to lean on her friends in order to perservere
I have no idea how it's going to end
I've never done NaNo before so...

I know! It was the same last year, too >.> If I didn't know any better, I would say *cough*DRUGS*cough*