Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related NaNo 08 - Let's Get This Party Started!

Wow, Carol, you go! I can't write that much in a day, period, so I have to go slow and steady. I've given myself permission not to make the 50,000 words this year, so I'm on board to get as far as I can in one month.

Last night, I finished at 1710 words, and I'm sitting at 1893 right now, with the first two scenes done. Now into the flashback to see if I can't reach maybe 3500 words before bed tonight.

BTW, am I the only one who can't log onto the NaNo site? I use the shortcut to go straight to my page, and when it loads, it's missing the links that let me edit my novel info, so I can put in my word count.

Sheila - I've had some problems with it - lots of refreshing. If you're logged in though, up at the top there's a word count box. The automatic word counter doohickey isn't up and running yet.

I've had a pretty easy weekend otherwise - and it's a universe I'm already immersed in and I've had a lot of it half-plotted in my head for a long time. To be honest 10%, maybe more, of it [though scattered throughout] is recapping OTOH since this is the sequel, so it's been pretty easy as far as trying to figure out my characters and motivations and all that kind of stuff...

And - again - I'm NOT doing the 25k words in two days [or whatever it was] like I did last year and I'm not planning on spending half the month in the hospital [which took care of Thanksgiving stuff for me last year since we were in on Thanksgiving - didn't lose the day to the holiday] or with DH's kidney stone and the rest of it worried about DS and DH .

I don't even begin to know how many of those words got deleted btw . It was the longest freaking wedding ceremony ever, I think. Every vow I could find - 4xs. Once for Perry, once for Jimmy. Once for Perry, once for Lucy. Etc.

I'm hoping to 'front load' because the end of the month is going to be crazy for me as is the end of this week...

Carol [who did more than enough last month to hit nano this month... and wishes she could do it for money...]

NaNo Name: symbolicangel
NaNo UserID # [from the end of your page in case the search function doesn't work again this year]: I'm not sure where to find this number
Years Doing NaNo: This is my first year, and it was a very last minute decision.
This Year's Genre: Romance/suspense
This Year's Idea: It's a blossoming idea...Aidan Payne was a successful journalist when his wife and baby boy were murdered. He barely made it out alive. Now he's left everything behind and is numbing the pain by developing a drinking problem. It's Halloween night--and the first birthday he's spent without his family--when a woman comes to his rescue and saves his life. That's the idea in a nutshell.
Novel Title: Not sure yet
Word Count Goal: 50,000

The first line alone is kind of lame, so how about the first paragraph? It's a work in progress...

The place was jam-packed. Halloween had brought in a record-setting amount of customers. At least that’s what it seemed to McKenzie Hill as she squeezed between two of her co-workers in the tight space behind the bar in order to serve the dark haired college-aged man wearing the Elmo costume his Coors Light.

As of right now, my word count is 4,440 according to MS word.

Happy writing everyone!

YAY! Someone else!

Symbolic - when you log into the Nano site and you're on your own page the web address will look something like this:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/200582

My Nano ID # is 200582, yours will be something else. There's supposed to be a search function where you can search by name, but it's disabled early in the month. Or if you're logged in you could go to my page [above] or someone else's and add them as a buddy [should be an icon on the left side that says add as buddy] and then whoever you did that to will be able to see you and can figure it out .

And ooo - that sounds interesting!

Carol

Yeah, Symbolicangel! Welcome to our madcapped party. Your concept sounds great.

Last year James thought that he could only write slowly, but he found that he really could write fast if he embraced the fly by night spirit of nanowrimo. He took his glasses off so he wouldn't be tempted to go back and edit, or if he couldn't help himself he would set a timer so he would type as fast as he could for fifteen minutes and then limit himself to only five minutes of fixing typos. (Note the above example of his first paragraph and you will see that decision cost himself something.) He also found that he wrote faster in spurts. I'm sure that James could give you some other ideas.

I hit 5000 words last night. I can't remember the exact number, but I did post.

I have had to hit refresh repeatedly to get logged in and again refresh repeatedly to get to my page and refresh repeatedly to get my novel updated. The handy dandy word count updater started working last night. It saved me a lot of time since I was able to skip a step or two. Those overworked servers take a beating the first few days. It might be easier to log in before 6 AM than it would be in the evening and night hours.

One more sentence to explain the coroner's car. I hope its not a disappointment to you, Carol, but the plot hasn't been fully launched yet. With the fall of Intergang catching the city--make that much of the world--flatfooted, there was a vacuum of power that everyone from petty thug to crime lieutenant wanted to fill.

There are so many good ideas for teachers and students alike that I find myself gleaning from them. Here's a good idea for those who get stuck at the beginning of a writing session. Make it a practice to leave off in the middle of a sentence. Here is the example they gave: If I end my day with “Sarah didn’t want to wake her father but she had to because …” when the next day rolls around, I’m not faced with that what-do-I-do-next dread.

Let me shout out some encouragement. Go; Jesse, Jojo, Sheila! You can do it ladies! Go, James! Go TEAM!


Elisabeth
who has found herself washing her hands more often now that I'm writing about germs. Go figure.

From Chris Baty:
We like to celebrate NABUYND at least once a week in November. To take part in the festivities, don a crazy hat, then email your novel-in-progress to your favorite webmail account, save it to a flash drive, or make someone with a photographic memory read the whole thing. Then keep them out of direct sunlight until the next back-up.

My response? Clark, will you please come over and read my novel. By all means, feel free to immerse yourself in sunlight until the next back-up.


Elisabeth

Ah - I've emailed everything but Ch. 7 to my betas so I've got them in Gmail. Ch. 7 has a little over 2000 words in it - about 500 more to go before it gets sent off too.

Today's final count before going out of town and no writing for at least 3 days:

Word count: 17066
Chapters: 6.75

And Sonia's joining us . Come on, Sonia - jump on it!
Carol

I'm finally far enough in that I can post a novel excerpt. I have three scenes in a row that do a good job of outlining where the story is going. (Unfortunately I pasted them to the part that says "synopsis" instead of "excerpt." Oh, well. I'll fix that tomorrow.

Anybody else willing to give us a look-sy?


Elisabeth
who is hoping to get into a more dark tone later, but who loves writing humor so much that she can't stop writing it

I read your excerpt, Elisabeth. It sounds interesting--and amusing. I liked the way Clark handled the bomb without being in costume. Of course he was buffaloed by Mindy's blond ditz act, but I was glad to see that Lois had some lingering suspicions.

However, you either have a typo or I keep misreading the sentence: She wasn’t convinced either. “I just think we should rule out the possibility.”

Did you mean, "I just don't think we should rule out the possibility"?

After I read your excerpt this morning, I decided to post the first two scenes from mine. I see I'm way behind everyone on word count this time, so I'd better get offline and start typing.

Thanks for the feedback, Sheila. I'll have to edit that part in December. It was my intension that Lois didn't believe it was true, but wanted to rule it out just so she could say that she had investigated everything.

I did something I promised myself I wouldn't do. I cut out a scene. (I know. I know. Word counts are important.) I combined it with a different scene and then updated the excerpt. I think it'll read better in December when I'm supposed to be editing.

By the way, I had already found your little excerpt. Intense! There's so much that isn't included there, that it's going to be awesome when questions start getting answered.


Elisabeth
9240 Words--under what Madame Calendar says I should be, but still doable with five weekends in November

I'm stuuuuuuuuck!


Elisabeth

Skip it and come back? Research is for Dec .

Er, editing is for Dec. Same thing...

Word count: 17069 [yes, three words in the last three days...]
Chapters: 6.75

I did get Learning to Love: Lucy's Story edited and sent to Labby so that's something... Hopefully tomorrow I can get some done...

Carol

Unfortunately I need to know what happens on what day so I can't skip it. But I did find enough on the CDC website to go on. I just lost one day's writing is all. I was a little slow anyway since James is sick and I feed off of his presence.


Elisabeth
who is happy with Carol for writing three words in three days--it means you didn't quit

I've not got a clue what they were. I think I added something right after I posted last time on Nano. The laptop barely got opened the whole time we were gone...

Rereading what I have of Ch. 7 now...

Am glad you found enough to work on. Hope James is feeling better.

Carol [who is still so far from the main plot of UP it's not even funny]

WOOHOO!

Word count: 17605
Chapters: 7

And the end of Ch. 7 made it to a milestone I was hoping for . That's good because I thought I'd get to it in 5 or 6 but...

Anyone else?

What's the last sentence you wrote?

Me: It was perfect.

[to go with my first line: It had been an amazing night. ]

Carol

My last line? “It sure does.”

To match up with Clark's statement:".... I think it’s all the hours. It gets to you after awhile.”

Elisabeth
who is finally back on track, having sworn to never visit the forums again--all the red lights in the windows are distracting, their siren song pulling her away from writing

Click here to find out if people die from having their throat cut

Click here to find out why it's safer for men to urinate in a seated position

Click here to find out the average high school population on New Jersey

Click here

Click here

Click here

I'm glad to see you guys slogging away. I've been caught with research, too. You can see from my excerpt that some kinds of research (for a passing statement or thought) gets shoved aside, but I've been having the kind you mentioned, Elisabeth--where you really have to know what the answer is to keep going.

I'm not getting many words written per day, but next Saturday is the last time I have to teach on Saturday this semester (which I've done the last 3 weeks) and I'll have about 9 days off for our fall/Thanksgiving break. If I can't catch up then, it's because I'm not willing to work. I want to get caught up to at least 1000 words/day rate, so I need to work harder. At least I cleared 5000 today.

Hey guys! Elizabeth was kind enough to go through the report card and fix it so that everything works now!

http://www.noated.net/~jojo/nanowrimo_report_card_2008_.xls

Changes made (I'm stealing James' description here):
She changed it so that the goal is for 50K (or whatever you pick) a month instead of 2K a day. She changed it so that people don't have to start on 11/1 or write daily to make the chart work. She made the graphs work and labeled everything. She fixed it so that the health number matches the goal for tomorrow. And she fixed the "At this rate you'll be done on" which I didn't even know was broken.

Everyone give Elizabeth a BIG thanks for her hard work.

Okay!

Auto summary time!

My fic in 10 words or less...

Clark
~~~~~

"Clark!" "Clark!"

~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~

Clark
~~~~~

Clark
~~~~~

"Clark?"

Clark
~~~~~

Clark
~~~~~

Clark
~~~~~

[btw - it doesn't count the ~~~~~ as words]

Anyone else?
Carol

ARRRGHHH!!!!!

I'm so horribly behind. I'm just shy of 10,000 words. I've had a terrible toothache since Friday morning (actually called in sick to work for the first time in a year.) I was doing okay by writing a 1000--1500 words a day, then Friday I only wrote 500, and Saturday and Sunday I didn't write at ALL! :-(

I wrote a little today before going in to work, and I got an inkling of an idea, so maybe I'll be able to get back to it now.

It's still doable, right?

I will not quit, I will not quit, I will not quit, I will not quit, I will not quit...

I wish my toothache would though!

Happy writing, all. I hope you're all doing better than me.