I crossed the 50K mark just before the end of NaNo. It was definitely an experience. I had a case melt down about half way through the month and couldn’t write for about 10 days. So from Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving for all of you who are not in the US) through the 30th I had to write about 5K a day. Yipes!
Anyway, in desperation I was flipping through the NaNo hints forum for trying to get the word count up in the time I had. Many of the suggestions were along the lines of adding:
1) a detailed description of the room; 2) a gourmet feast; 3) back story 4) detailed character descriptions.
I have to say, I couldn’t add the fluff because of the year I’ve spent here. I’d start to and the internal editor I now have would go “Infodump,” or “who cares” or “plot please.” You really can’t argue with the internal editor because she doesn’t listen to pleas of word count goals.
In any event, while what I’ve learned here made hitting 50K a bit harder, it also made for a better story.
Thank you!
Posted by franc li (Member # 3850) on :
So true, and why I only made 36K. I'm just not going through my story and changing all the dates to spelled out numbers. Or get rid of all the contractions so all my characters talk like Data.
[This message has been edited by franc li (edited December 01, 2006).]
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Off the NaNo and on my own...I wrote fifty thousand words of a novel from the middle of August to the beginning of October. Since then I've only written five thousand more. I thought that breaking my stride then would cramp my style---I had to, I was away for a week and a half and had no time to write (or access to a computer, either). Since then it's been hard to get back in the groove...time constraints, a heavy cold laying me low for two weeks, and general laziness.
I'm hopeful, though. I wrote five hundred words Thursday, skipped Friday, and hope to write at least five hundred words today. (Five hundred of the novel...I must have written nearly that many 'round here.)
Posted by Leigh (Member # 2901) on :
I missed my only chance to actually "win" NaNo by not uploading my story into the word counter. I wrote, according to Word, 74,345 words. Now, if I went back and rewrote it, edited it and improved my writing I'd only end up with probably not even half of the word count. I rather don't like the story either, confuses me quite a lot, but I could always revise it and work on it until I do feel comfortable with it.
Anyways, I hope everyone just had fun with NaNo and can leave with learning something useful.
Posted by Lynda (Member # 3574) on :
I had fun with Nano and was a "winner" with 55,504 words (IIRC) by the 26th, when I had to stop writing because real life got in the way. But it's a good story and I'm happy with how it's turning out. I kept description very lean and went with dialog and plot to move it forward as fast as possible. Now I'm at 76,000+ and nearing the end of the plot. It's a fantasy and I expect it to end up around 110-115K, which is fine. I have to go back and add descriptive stuff, do a lot of polishing and so on, but I think it's a viable book! Because of Nano, I forced myself to push the plot forward every day rather than going back and polishing, polishing, polishing what's been written before (a process I actually enjoy quite a lot, strangely enough), so the experience was quite beneficial. I will try to maintain this method of writing to get my novels completed faster in the future. Polishing I can do anytime. It's getting the bones of the story on paper in the first place that slows me down.
