Want to track your weekly progress with me?

[dollyt8]

About 1100 today, so that should put me at 2700.

I"m gonna question though, is it really valuable to pile out the words like we are in a sprint for the month of November. There is an aspect to Nano that feel a bit like crash dieting to me. If I want to be a writer, I do it everyday, regardless. To ramp up and cram it all in at once is kind of not the same as building a good habit. Do you not feel some aspect to it that is less than helpful?

I can't answer for everyone, but I think that really depends on what you hope to get out of it. I'm not actually trying to build up a writing habit. Writing is my day job, so I regularly churn out 2,000-3,000 words per day or more. Granted, those are mostly tech articles and blog posts. I don't have difficulties getting words on paper, but rather making those words a coherent and finished story. So my goal for NaNo was to write a complete first draft of a novel based on a predetermined outline and hopefully finish that within one month. The time crunch in this case is to make sure I don't get distracted by other stories and concepts.

The truth is, it may not work for me. I'm already feeling a lot of missed opportunities in terms of storytelling because of an inability to explore certain aspects of the world and characters as I try to keep to my outline. I can try to add to it after the first draft, but I'm not sure if that is the way I want to do it regularly. Still, I figure it can't hurt to try something new. Hope that makes sense!

 

[tenebrae]

About 1100 today, so that should put me at 2700.

I"m gonna question though, is it really valuable to pile out the words like we are in a sprint for the month of November. There is an aspect to Nano that feel a bit like crash dieting to me. If I want to be a writer, I do it everyday, regardless. To ramp up and cram it all in at once is kind of not the same as building a good habit. Do you not feel some aspect to it that is less than helpful?

Speaking for myself (but I feel it is true for many others), I write everyday regardless of the month. However, in November I always pick a project to dote on. I give it my full attention. Throughout the year, I ping pong between many different projects. I think of it more as "bulking" if we're making diet references, lol. It's the month I rev up my calories to build up muscle mass... but in a story. ;P

 

[Avery Moore]

Ran a (nearly) 3 hr session overnight and mustered up 1010 words. Up to 2310 total!

Great work!

Also, general question for the group. If I have previous writing (mostly passages concerning world lore) I'd like to 'import', but plan to revise thoroughly, would that be unfair or against the spirit of the event?

I wouldn't say so. I have a couple of songs I wrote previously that I imported into the story and I kept them as part of my word count. I mean, you still wrote them, right?

I hit a major stumbling block today... While writing a scene I found out there's a serious piece of background missing that the story needs to be build on. So I spent all the writing time I had today building pieces of character history, and still have to think where to weave it in to plot & dialogue. My word count on the actual text remains zero. But there's still ~three waking hours in my day and it did bring lots of inspiration, so I'll see where I end up...

Well that's still important work that needs to be done, so I'd say you made major progress even if the word count stands still. Great job!

About 1100 today, so that should put me at 2700.

That's awesome!

I"m gonna question though, is it really valuable to pile out the words like we are in a sprint for the month of November. There is an aspect to Nano that feel a bit like crash dieting to me. If I want to be a writer, I do it everyday, regardless. To ramp up and cram it all in at once is kind of not the same as building a good habit. Do you not feel some aspect to it that is less than helpful?

Probably. I have gone through a long period of no writing. If there's one benefit to doing Nano I think it's that writing on a daily basis has made me want to keep up the habit. Don't think I can keep up with a 1667 word par on a daily basis but I think if I aim for a minimum of 500 words a day, I should be able to keep up with that.

 

[Avery Moore]

Day 4: Opening my 10K Reward

TLDW:
Daily word count: 1856 words
Total word count: 11,071 words

Beat 10K words! Go me!