Week 3, How you be?

I've got more than enough plot left and I'm pleased with how my characters are performing. But I've been completely unable to get going today, despite waking up this morning raring to go. I wanted to add another 10K this weekend, but at this rate I'll be lucky to get half that.

It didn't help that I walked down to the grocery store and saw smoke billowing in the distance. So of course I had to turn on the TV when I got home to see what was burning. Turned out to be the Corona/Yorba Linda/Anaheim Hills/Brea fires, a good thirty-plus miles from here (although it looked much closer than that), but very close to where I work. So there I sat pondering what would happen should my office burn down and where would we relocate and isn't it a good thing we had a data recovery disaster drill just a couple of months ago, along with other mostly useless thoughts.

Luckily I'm still a couple of thousand words ahead, so today's puny output won't put me behind. I hope this isn't a portent of how week three will go for me.

Week 3 could be difficult because I started a completely different second NaNo today.
It's more important to me than my first NaNo because I see it as my official WIP, so I can less afford to go out in strange directions, I have to stick to the original idea.

It's going fine, if a little bitty. To keep writing at the moment I've been doing paragraphs in different chapters of those remaining, as I am lacking some plot detail. Happily, when I read over a half-chapter the next day, something occurs to me. I can now see where the story can be expanded when I come to write the rest of it so I end up with around 80,000 words, but right now I'm focussing on passing that 50,000 mark. The actual murder is written now so it's the horrible middle bit I'm wavering over.

In spite of still being in the middle of moving (I've made the flight from Seattle to Japan, but haven't moved into our house yet), adjusting to a massive time change and culture shock, and running into some problems with my story...I hit 45K today. I was worried I wouldn't make it to 50K with this one -- I was basically running out of story. LOL But, I made a list of "what else could go wrong?", picked a couple, and applied liberally. LOL

So, I think I'm doing pretty good. But I sincerely hope that when I do NaNo next year, I have a LITTLE bit less on my plate.

This is my "God I hope I catch up, or week 4's gonna be a bitch" week.

scheherazade said:

How's your Week 3 going? Are you keeping up or catching up to your word count goal? Have you discovered a stream of plot to guide you to the end? Any concerns on the horizon?

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Let's see.

I should be half done.

Instead I'm a quarter.

I promised readers daily output. Instead they get thrice weekly updates.

I've just spent the last two hours reading a forum (not here) that I despise and watching ancient episodes of COPS.

But I'm getting to work real soon. REAL soon!

Rabe...
...yeah right...

Doing well and flying along, both with word count and adhering to the plot I worked out. There's been only a couple of minor transgressions when I let my characters say something uncharacteristic, or my plot muse wants to do something stupid, but I can whip them back into shape -- sometimes.

I was hoping to be done by the end of week 2. Unfortunately I ended up with so much to do that I am abut 4 days behind. Oh well, I'm still on track with finishing in 3 weeks at 16832 to go. I can't do much today because I need to clean out a garage in a town an hour's drive away.

I like my story a lot. I really honed down what it was "about" which is something that I usually find out through total immersion. I must have chosen just the right type of obstacles because it ends up a lot more sophisticated than I had planned it.

I don't think finishing it should be any problem.

I hit 25,000 so another 25 seems doable. My dilemma is that the final version should be around 75 - 80,000 and I don't see myself doing 50,000 in the next two weeks.

Last year it was about reaching 50,000. This year, I find it's more about telling the story. I've decided I'm going to spend the next two weeks working on the big events and then go back and work on the connecting bits later.

I have no idea how this will work, but I'll find out. Cracking knuckles and logging off to get to work.

Word count: I'm ahead of NaNo schedule, but behind on my own personal schedule. I expected to be at 40k by tonight, and I don't think that's going to happen.
Plot: I'm at a minor climax right now, which is nice, but scenes are becoming harder to write. I'm not sure if it's because I've been writing much later than normal or if all the excessive writing is burning me out.
Hopefully, it's the former. =)

Well, good luck to everyone on their Week 3 goals!

I'm kind of stuck right now. Wanted to be over 25K, but haven't seen that yet. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll be caught up.

This is, so far, my best NaNo ever. I've tried and failed four times already, and I'm determined to make it this year! But I'm caught right now with some technical difficulties, so today and perhaps a little of tomorrow will be spent trying to unsticky myself by researching.

In the meantime, I know how the novel's going to end, so I'll probably go ahead and write the last chapter in order to keep my word count rising.

I did that, then I wrote the penultimate chapter, now I'm walking backwards (though not to Christmas, as the Spike Milligan song goes) so I just have some missing paragraphs in the remaining three chapters then I should cross the finish line. If not tonight, then tomorrow. I have my writers' meeting Tuesday. Yay!

Word count is right on track, although I was hoping it would be higher by now.

Plot: good question. Some days I think I think I’ll run out of story before I run out of words, some days I think the story will surpass the 50K.

My characters are just about ready to take off for his planet, which I always thought was the halfway point of the book but now I’m not so sure. Scenes that I think should take pages only take paragraphs and then minor incidents seem to stretch into pages. Reality is truly getting warped here.

I also have to decide if I want my female main character to be going somewhere on her own and have her ship sabotaged or should she be attacked in the catacombs and left for dead. Maybe I could find some way to work in both of these scenarios . . .

*Lady Cat wanders off mumbling about conspiracies and obstinate heros and the effects of oxygen depravation*

Scribhneoir said:

It didn't help that I walked down to the grocery store and saw smoke billowing in the distance. So of course I had to turn on the TV when I got home to see what was burning. Turned out to be the Corona/Yorba Linda/Anaheim Hills/Brea fires, a good thirty-plus miles from here (although it looked much closer than that), but very close to where I work. So there I sat pondering what would happen should my office burn down and where would we relocate and isn't it a good thing we had a data recovery disaster drill just a couple of months ago, along with other mostly useless thoughts.

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Hope everything turns out okay for you, Scribhneoir. I'm up here in Northern California and the SoCal fires are on the news right now. These fires are really so awful. Hope everyone is safe.

I'm looking good on word count. Working on writing 2K today. Doing pretty good on plot. I am actually right in the middle of my novel.

Plot is awesome, word count...not so much. Disease hit my family four days into nano and I haven't been able to catch up since. We've moved from bronchitis to the flu (today) so I've been mopping noses on five kids and barely able to move myself. Can we extend November for a week or two?

seaaircarol said:

These fires are really so awful. Hope everyone is safe.

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I hope so, too. I've got a lot of co-workers who live in those areas, so I'm eager to go to work tomorrow and see how they're doing.

On the NaNo front, I plodded along a bit further last night and crossed the 28K line. Today I'll get to 30K no matter what and strive for 35K.

My plot, characters and word count are all on track. I have a week-long business trip starting first thing Tuesday, though. I'm taking my Neo with me but since I'll be putting in a minimum of twelve-hour work days on my feet (working a trade show booth), I'm concerned that I won't have the time and energy to keep up. I'm doing my best to get a little bit ahead this weekend, but time is running out.

I had to stop my NaNo about a week in to finish up a WIP, then got back to the NaNo and completely changed some important things in it. So, I had to go back and try to make it work with what I'd already put down. Now, I think I've finally got it to where I can just run with it to the end.

I had a great first three days of writing, then I stopped. I hit a wall on my novel, and hated it. I knew it was going along the wrong lines, and I liked the plot too much to torture it by being forced.

I've written a couple thousand words on a few more WIPs. I'm now trying a new plot I thought of last night, and have 2k done in that one.

Will I win NaNo this year? Probably not. But I'm happy, and editing last year's NaNo, which is huge for me. I might have written 50k by the end of November, but it won't necessarily be in one novel, so it doesn't "count".

Gah, week three already.

I'm well behind. I wanted to be at 30k before the end of this weekend, but i ended up getting drunk round a mates last night and haven't written anything this weekend =[

XX

Doing well, but I'm losing steam fast.

dclary said:

This is my "God I hope I catch up, or week 4's gonna be a bitch" week.

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What he said. ^^^