I'm -darklight- over there, if anyone wants to add me as a buddy. I'm going to try to find some time to look some of you up.

As far as the story, well, I can definitely tell it'll need some work after I'm done. It's really sloppy but this is the first time I've ever tried writing anything this long. So, I'm not too bothered by that. I think it has good potential at being a really good story with some spit and polish after NaNo is done.

"And please remember: If you write a paragraph or chapter you don't like, just put it in italics (or change the font color to white). Do not delete! After you write your way across the 50,000-word finish line, you can double back and clip out all the parts of your book that make you cringe (I think you'll surprise yourself with what you decide to keep). For now, just keep moving forward! There's an old folk saying that goes: Whenever you delete a sentence in your NaNoWriMo novel, a NaNoWriMo angel loses its wings and plummets, screaming, to the ground.

Where it will likely require medical attention.

These are words to live by. Resist the tyranny of the delete key!"

Just kidding. I reworked the little bit I needed to (switched the dialogue tags, etc.) and made it so it wouldn't drive me crazy the whole month, and by doing so added 100 words to that day's count (for simplicity, I have a separate page in Scrivener for each day's writing, so when I realized i had to go back to fix something, I had to go back to the previous day's page.)

I then went on to add 1815 new words yesterday, so I'm still pleased! Not much of a cushion but enough. I don't really expect this story to be much more than 50-60k (Mid-grade/YA) so I am happy with my progress.

Also, those little counters on the NaNo site are messing with my head. ("You're a fourth of the way there... a third now... look at how much less you got done today than yesterday...") I think this shall be my new motto: The counters made me do it.

I just broke 25K.

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I just broke 25K.

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I'm still pretty happy with how my planning has worked out for me. I think Nano is like a crucible for how each of us like to write best. If you are a planner/plotter then Nano lets that really shine if you are a wingit-er then nano lets that come through.

I am really happy about how well Scrivener is helping me stay organized! Wow is that a great tool.

My nominal goal is 5,000 words a day and I don't know how long the plot will hold out. I'm about 20% through my scripted scenes. That will get me to 110,000 words.

I don't know how I'll do it visiting grandkids for a week during Thanksgiving 2,000 miles away, but I live to try.

Great work, Kitti! The words are piling up.

We should count up all the words we Hatrackers write. There are 23 of us signed up. We should get between 750,000 and a million word written. That's a lot of content.

My ensemble cast is really starting to come together. Some things are happening more quickly than I expected and one relationship revealed itself to the reader in a way that I didn't know was going to happen.

I just finished the crew's first adventure. Next, I introduce the villain. He's a little nuts, and very egocentric. I don't really know a lot about him beyond that but I will be finding out when I pick this up tomorrow.

This is starting to get really fun.

Written on day 4: 3889 words
Total so far: 11,083 words

Keep on truckin'!

Make a section at the end of your manuscript for deleted scenes, then just cut and paste. You get the word count and they're still left on the cutting room floor where you want them.

I'm learning a lot though. This is the first time I've ever not gone back and edited what I've just written. I really like it.

I agree we need to keep a count of our total Hatrack wordcount. I'lll bet we also beat the Random Musings thread for most pages in a post thread, too. LOL. We're already up to page 3!

I got up to 15952 just now. I had to stop and do a little research. Did you know moths are supposed to taste something like almonds/popcorn/hazlenut? You hold them by the wings and eat the body. Some people cook them but not my MC!

I just spent way more time than I should have trying to add you all as my buddies finally. If I missed you, let me know. I like to see everyone's stats, although the site runs so slow on my computer I don't spend much time there.

It probably says something about my psyche when I tell you that one of my favorite parts of Nanowrimo is the Travelling Shovel of Death. It made an appearance in my novel last year. I just think it's fun. You can read about it here: here

My biggest surprise this year has been the 3-4k word days. I expected to be struggling to get the 1667 I needed. I remember last year (my first year), I was practically beating my head against the wall trying to get the words to come out.

This was an interesting session. My MC meets a wizard he can talk to, like a therapist. I've also dropped a few hints (I hesitate to call it foreshadowing at this point) for things to come and as I did, one of the turning points in the novel resolved in my mind. It's coming up tomorrow night or Saturday.

I made the mistake of reading some of my work thus far. Ouch! I can see why they don't recommend editing as you go. I've got typos and other issues galore.

Look Forward, Not Back!

Still, almost ready to break 15k words, so I'm ahead of the game.

Really, though, the slowdown is because I'm in-between critical story components. I have X-events ready for the MC and SC, but they have to get to point Y before that happens.

This has been a fun exercise, however. Glad I tried it out this year.

Not gonna happen, Microsoft.

My sweet handsome husband was able to recover all of my documents, including Nano, but this computer issue has eaten three and a half days of writing. I am still at less than four thousand words! I am in trouble. Luckily I can still use open office, and also luckily I saved Nano as a .doc file.

We'll see what happens, but that finish line is looking awful far away right now.

La sigh.

I'll keep you posted.

I was thinking about the itchy mouse and wondered if you tried changing the bedding? If it isn't the feed, it has to be environmental. The thing may have an allergy to some of the feed, too/instead of, though, of course.

I have a dog right now with chronic earaches and it pretty much has to be his food so I am getting militant about what he eats.

I think my story works but when you aren't editing you don't really know, do you? Plus I have noticed that I need to put my stuff down for awhile and go back to it in order to look at it with fresher eyes. This isn't going to possible for this work, of course.

Someone offered to swap chapters and I am thinking of letting them look at some of this, but I am afraid it may derail me to have someone else edit what I am not editing.

I have been through this before with her but usually a good cleaning or a change of activity and environment has solved it. Maybe she's allergic to something that blooms this time of year and we just have to wait it out. I'll keep you posted.

On a good note, I just got up and cranked out a few hundred words. But now I know where the scene needs to start and I think it will flow much more smoothly today.

Well, off to make breakfast and get ready for work. I'd much rather stay home and write right now.

Then my wireless internet router decided to have a sickie and I had to turn off the computer and the router to allow it to cool down, so went and did the weekly shop. When I got home, the router was working again and decided to have some lunch and then maybe write a little. Wrong. I got one of my wonderful migraines, which I have now had for seven and a half hours. Hence, I've spent around three and half of those hours asleep, trying to get rid of the darned thing, and somewhere in the middle, had to make a 60 mile round trip to pick up my daughter and her boyfriend.

I have managed to add another 600 or so words to my total, somehow, but very soon, have repeat said 60 mile round trip to take daughter's boyfriend home. When I get home, sometime around eleven tonight, I'm going to try to push my daily word count up to 1000 words. Have to go to work tomorrow and sunday, so not expecting to get much done this weekend either.

Shouldn't complain too much, I'm just a bit over 15,000 so still have my buffer. Was hoping not to have too much left for the last week of the month, so when I'm off work monday to friday, I could actually rest!

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For those of you that don't regularly read PVP, the artist has a storyline going on about Nano this year:

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5,000 a night, that's all I ask.

I'm such a competitive tool, that I just have to go for it. There is mind over matter, I think in a sense, NaNo can be muck over mind.

Every time I go back and insert a clue about what happens (such as a mysterious tattoo), I am appalled at the simple errors abundant throughout.

Time to end error-making tonight and buckle down for another day tomorrow.

This has never happened to me before. Does anyone know why Word is doing this to me?

MS Word sometimes corrupts files, no apparent reason other than it embeds a bunch of junk in them.

Saving as doesn't necessarily save you from the problem, because once the file has the corrupt information stored in it, it seems to carry it with through future versions.

You can/should also PRINT your story from time to time. Worst case scenario, you have to type it back in, but at least you know what it is you wrote. (there are some scanners/scanning programs out there that can convert scanned images of printed words into text.)

Darklight, everyone, have you tried www.box.net? It is free up to maybe 5Gigs of memory. It is secure and a good place to keep documents.

You may want to download Word again which may be the first step in recovering your work environment but until then I would register at box.net (free up to I think 5 gig) and be sure to save what you have. Emailing is a good idea, but do copy it from your document and then paste it into an email. I think this way you won't carry the problem with the verbiage.

Now, google mail aka gmail has a free word processor program sort of similar to word if you want to set up a gmail account you can work online and save it online, too.

Anyway, good luck with that. Owasm, do you sleep at all? You're amazing.