• Unwritten1971
• Cheyne
• sjsampson
• gobi13x
• annepin ???
• KayTi
• Owasm
• genevive 42
• Ben-M
• LAJD
• ScardeyDog
• CarolCPK
• shimiqua
• Rhaythe
• Sunshine
• Kitti
• SavantIdiot
• Starweaver
• Red Grant
• Joseph Forrest
• Pyre Dynasty
• Bent Tree
• ArmadonRK
  

This is a place to tell us your word count, your horror stories, your success stories, get advice, give advice...whatever you need to get you through. The only requirement I can think of is that you need to be insane enough to think you can write a book during the month of November. If you haven't done it before, it is so much fun!! Here is the link:

www.nanowrimo.org

When you are ready, let us know something about what you are going to be writing--genre, synopsis, or lack thereof...

Title: Gadzooks!

Synopsis: A small interstellar delivery company gets hired to make a far flung, handle with care delivery on the other side of the galaxy. It's a small, 'can't believe it's still flying' ship with an oddball crew. There are space pirates, space anomalies, quixotic robots, poker games, horny plant life, anti-technology rebels, etc. and the hilarity ensues.

I have the story and the characters outlined to a considerable degree. I have never outlined something this much in my life and yet I have no idea exactly what I'm going to write.

Title: Four of Clubs

Synopsis: Part two of fifty-two. Ordered against her will, Elizabeth Wilde must keep her arrangement with the CIA and travel to Mexico to attempt an assassination. The odds are stacked against her, though, as the CIA calls and warns the very criminal they sent Wilde to assassinate...

quote:

---

There are space pirates, space anomalies, quixotic robots, poker games, horny plant life, anti-technology rebels, etc. and the hilarity ensues.

---

Quite the variety!

EDIT: fixed mah po' engrish

Title: The Saber Rose

Genre: Fantasy/Steampunk

Last year I completely winged it, and I will never ever ever ever do that again. But this year my planning isn't as far along as I would have liked. Oh well. I've still got a couple days, right?!

I was detoured during last year's nano with a dying niece and other crazy events, so I'll just start the one I planned last year.

Title: Ding Dong, We're Dead
Genre: Youth - Paranormal

I have a partial outline from last year, but I will probably stray from it since I've had an entire year for the story to percolate in the back of my mind.

I've got mine outlined and the world is solidly built. My synopsis can be found on my Nano page below.

What I have to do is go through the plot and increase the stakes at the right points before Sunday, Nov. 1st.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/511822

Good luck to you all!

I know, I'm dumb to do that, but I want to force my creativity and see what happens.

If what happens is nothing, luckily I do have several novel ideas on the back burner simmering and bugging me to write them.

I'll just have to see what happens on Nov 2. I'm starting a day late, and I honestly couldn't even tell you a genre, or a single character.

Yup. Really, really dumb idea.

Why am I doing this again?

Pray for me, people. Or at least be my buddy so you can watch me squirm.

~Sheena

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/550591

Just to make life more interesting than it already is, I'm winging it.

To those who are thinking of winging it--it some ways, I think that's the best way, though maybe the hardest. I almost winged it the first year--I knew where the story was starting and where it was ending, and what the climax was going to be, but not a whole lot in between. The second year I winged it too, and finished wiht 50,000 words, but without a complete novel. Anyway, it pretty exhilirating.

I added everyone I could figure out. A few of you I couldn't find (LAJD in particular, do you have another Nano handle? I was going on the list in the first post on this thread.)

Title: Working title is Selenium, but I'm currently running a quest on my facebook status to get a better name...I'm horrible with titles. If we're FB friended, have at it. If we're not...well, what are you waiting for? I'm Karen T. Smith, er, um, well, good luck finding me? Or let me know your full name, perhaps it's best not to try to search for a smith?

Genre: mid-grade (younger than YA, about 3rd-8th grade) Science Fiction

Synopsis:
It's days before her 13th birthday, and Brynne is in a race against time. She's on the space ship Selenium, plummeting toward a distant sun. It's up to Brynne and her gamer friends to rescue their colony ship after a sleeping sickness causes everyone over the age of 12 to fall into a deep coma-like sleep. Along the way she must figure out the complexities of the space ship, and the complexities of interacting with her peers, most of whom she prefers to play with in the virtual world rather than steel and silicon. Will she be able to create a cooperative team, save the ship from certain destruction, and figure out the mystery of the sleeping sickness before time runs out?

==
I have done a lot of pre-work on this novel, as I've been running a writing workshop for middle school students at my kids' school for the last 6 weeks, and I've been using the writing exercises as my novel prep time. It's been fantastic. I still don't have a strong idea of what happens in EACH episode/scene/chapter, but I do have a lot of the main arc figured out, a set of characters begun (they need more detailing) and a lot of the backstory identified. I think I'm in pretty good shape, but I should probably put a little more time into the outlining of what happens first, then next, then next.

I have done Nano twice before. The first year I had things figured out to about this level, probably a little less in terms of details about the plot (but those details evolved as I wrote, and I'd spend a little time at the end of each writing session doing some outlining for the NEXT session so I didn't have any writer's block problems.) Last year I did not do much prep at all and I found it MUCH harder to write, though I finished both years and have 55kish novels from them.

Couldnt find a Karen T. Smith in Chicago on FB
Disregard...found someone minus the T. that looks exactly how I would have pictured you...plus your a member of the FB Hatrack Writers Group so I found you on there.

Genre: YA fantasy

Synopsis: A bit murkier. I was going to spend the last 2 weeks of November storybuilding, but the novel I was editing has taken over my life.

My idea for Nanowrimo came from the first sentence challenge here on Hatrack earlier this year. An obese girl realizes that her recently married sister is sending her letters in code. When she can't get her parents to see the danger, she journeys to find her brother who is a soldier. The story will be about her learning to push past her limits to discover her own potential. It will have my trademark romance in it--if I can figure out how to add it without sending the message that only beautiful people can be loved. I have a few ideas.

I'd love a few more Hatrack friends on facebook too. I'm Melanie Sweat Crouse.

Title: (working title) San Francisco (I know it sucks but it's a working title)

Genre: Fantasy? Time Travel? (is that a genre?)

Synopsis:
Consula Angelina Isadore "Connie" Ramirez never considered herself a hero before she crawled back into her burning house during the 1991 Oakland hills firestorm. But when she saw the figure twisting in the flames, it was the only thing she could do. Connie, born of an old but faded San Francisco family, grew up on tales of brave and noble ancestors, but that was long ago.

The rescue became a journey when the firestorm blew her across time and space. She emerged in December 1849 San Francisco. Alone, she was pulled out of the flames of the Denison’s Exchange fire to become an instant sensation. Connie has been torn away from her home and everyone she loves including her young daughter, Angela. Now she must figure out how to get home.

I started planning this novel last spring during a Liberty Hall challenge called MidSommer Madness. This was in part a response to my totally unplanned nano work last year. I did write 50K words....65K actually. But I am still terrified to even look at the file on my computer. Ewwwwww! Maybe on Halloween! It would be a fright!

Leslie

[This message has been edited by LAJD (edited October 29, 2009).]

It is a writing/project mgmt tool that I now find nearly indispensable. They are offering a Nano trial that goes through the 7th of December. So you could use Scrivener to write and organize your nano work and then export into another format if you don't want to buy Scrivener.

I liken Scrivener to the tools that software engineers use to write code. It allows you to organize smaller text files inside a framework and then compile only the parts that you want in the final output. If you want to get really fancy you can hook it up to subversion on the back end or run it very simply on your macbook, like I do.

You have all your research, notes, drafts etc at various levels of detail. I'm not doing the best job of explaining this, but think about it this way. Instead of hunting all over your filesystem for that image of the map of eastern Elbonia where the great battle happens, that map becomes part of your document-you see it right there when you write that scene-but it is not exported as your final draft.

I no longer write at all in word and only free write in a wiki. It may have helped me last year, which I why I mention it.

Leslie

I am 'ribbit' on NaNoWriMo. I am going to have to do this relatively stress free so I am not expecting much. I do love to spin it out, though.

That would get dull though, after about five pages, and a waste of space on my computer. My goal is to have something worth the space when I am finished.

I've figured out what I'm doing.

Shakespeare with Magic {Obvious working title*. Historical Fantasy

Fourteen year old Will Shakespeare finds a demon book that taints every thing he tries to do with it, and takes him on a voyage through his lost three years.

I got the whole thing plotted out. Character interviewed it to pieces, but never actually wrote the story, because I have this sinking feeling that no one really wants to read about a young Shakespeare. I'll try it though for Nano.

I'm giving myself permission to turn off the grammar police, so I might as well give myself permission to turn off the "This is going to be so dumb." police while I'm at it.

Also - Shimiqua, I've read a book by Gail Carson Levine about writing (called Writing Magic, which is a great YA/Mid-grade writing book but has TONS of relevant bits for us old fogies as well) and in it she talks about times where she sits down to write and just writes "I don't feel like writing, I am not in the mood to write" over and over, because it's writing time and she must write.

Those days happen to us sometimes and in my opinion, Nano leaves us the leeway to include them in our word count. It would be better to use the free writing time to just brainstorm the next parts of the novel, but again you should feel free to use that in your word count.

Working title: Legacy

Genre: YA Fantasy

Synopsis: A teenage girl is having trouble relating to her father in the wake of her mother's death. She finds a journal while moving and slowly gets sucked in to the magical world it describes. Soon she can't distinguish fantasy from reality, and isn't sure she wants to anyway. It's kind of Donnie Darko/Peter Pan inspired. I'm not too clear on what's going to happen... so a little bit of winging it for me.

Okay, I'm gonna give this a try even though it scares the crap out of me. I've been working on this story in my head forever so maybe it's time to put it down on paper.

Title: Artifice

Plot synopsis: Jon Smiles, a Fixer, is paid to kill Adam, the A.I. that ushered in the technological singularity that changed the world. Of course, he also ushered in the Second American Civil War, collapsed the world economy and led to the rise of the Corporation States that now run the planet. Jon's never failed to complete a job but how do you kill a target that operates in the cloud?

quote:

---

Not freaking out, exactly, but struggling mightily to keep from just starting already.... This forcing oneself NOT to write thing is very strange.

---

Quoted for Truth

I will also probably read through my outline and character notes a half a dozen times today and tomorrow too. Not to mention imagining conversations between characters that, even with outlines, I don't have a full grasp on yet. That's usually one of my strong suits so I hope it will come as I start writing. Oh, and it looks like I will be making up most of the tech as I go along.

Uh, oh. Maybe not so much Guitar Hero tonight.

It's been a long time since I had more time than words to type.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/562166/edit/writer_info

quote:

---

I'm putting my editing on the back burner starting now, and I'll use the next 2 days to get in gear for Nano. Yeah.

---

So far, my "getting in gear" has consisted of panicking that I'm so unprepared. I did name one more character, bringing the total number of characters with names up to 3. My story has quite a bit of travelling in it, so my goal for today is to make a map. I do have a ton of town names rolling around in my head, so that's a plus. I also need to flesh out (and name!) the people and places in the opening chapter so I can hit the ground running.

I'm filling out my villain's character sheet and I came up with this line:

"This schism between his desires is what feeds his madness."

And suddenly he makes sense to me and he is at once insane and sympathetic.

http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm

I'm hoping for the same but it's a slow start. 11:30 am, 600 words and I'm about to move on to introducing the second character of my ensemble cast. I'm glad it's Sunday. I just wish it weren't such a beautiful day outside.

Leslie

Got both the suitcase and 1700 words today....

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/577669

Untitled as of Now

YR SF

WHat happens when two good-hearted but troublemaking teens from two entirely different planets meet? Well lets just hope the eccentric, six-legged Agilian scientist, Professor Orphington can keep them from starting and interplanetary disturbance.

Fine. Frozen fish fillets and french fries. Now go write while it's in the oven.

Oh, and did I mention the mariachi band across the street? No, I'm not kidding. At least they're good.