National Novel Writer&#39;s Month

Daily Intro Post
Hey everyone!

Please feel free to use this post to introduce yourself to the community! Talk about yourself, what you're writing, and how excited you are!

Also, if this is your first time in the community, please take a moment to review the community rules for October here

Need some writing warm-ups? Find a link with all this year's warm-up exercises HERE!

The Regional Meetup and Friending Thread is HERE!

The Genre Friending Thread is HERE!

And remember that you can pimp your Nano LJ's and other websites in the 2009 Pimping Thread!

Chat away!

From this point on, should you want to introduce yourself, please use this post!!!

Daily Word Count

Post your Daily Word Count here!
Remember, no excerpts please. That is in a separate post!

Keep up the good work everyone! Remember, every word is a step towards your goal.

Daily Word Count

Post your Daily Word Count here!
Remember, no excerpts please. That is in a separate post!

Keep up the good work everyone! Remember, every word is a step towards your goal.

Daily Excerpt Post

Post an excerpt of your novel here!
Please try to keep it under 1500 words. Thanks!

Daily Excerpt Post

Post an excerpt of your novel here!
Please try to keep it under 1500 words. Thanks!

Day Sprints
Time?: Noon/Midday/12:00 - 8:00pm EST
Where?: nanodaysprints.
Moderator?: xNotUsingTheZWordx

NOTES: Please no talking during sprints. If you join the room, don't be the first one to talk, because you might be interrupting a sprint. Standard Format is 15 on/10 off. There will be a 30 minute break every three hours.

kisamehada.livejournal.com

For this year's NaNo, I've decided to go with something almost purely urban fiction.

I have 4 main characters, A vampire hunter, a young female vampire, a were-raven, and an older male vampire.

The plot centers around the young female vampire, but I was going to write it as four smaller "books", each one from a different mc's pov...book one is the vampire hunter, book two, the were-raven picking up just a bit before where the hunter left off, and then each of the two vampires.

It was a pretty solid idea, but now comes the difficulty.

I'm having a TON of fun writing from the hunter's pov. He's an interesting character, and has written himself much further into the plot than I had originally pictured him.

So now I almost want to write the entire book from his pov. And that's the real difficulty.

If I write it in the four parts like I had initially planned, I know for sure I can get 50k words...probably many many more than that. But if I use just the hunter, I'm not so sure. His story is an awesome one, but its not as planned out as the way I had planned to do it. I am not adverse to the original, in fact it'll be fun to write, and (in my head at least) its a great story...but then there's the hunter who has an awesome one as well...

So my question to you guys is would you go with your original idea, which you know your word count would be safe, or the new one, where word count is questionable?

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: Behind you!
Current Music: Robert Palmer--Bad Case of Lovin You

kisamehada.livejournal.com

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: Behind you!
Current Music: Robert Palmer--Bad Case of Lovin You

Make sure that everyone is backing their writing up. You can email it to yourself (which, I find, is best), email it to a friend, or save it on an extra thumb drive. Make sure you don't lose all your hard work.

Good luck!!

I had a heated discussion with my sister last night about characters and their actions. While writing, I simply thought aloud, "Don't you hate it when a character does something you didn't mean for them to do?" My sister looks at me like I'm crazy and says, "What do you mean? YOU control the characters." We then went on into a great big discussion, her saying the writer has complete control and I saying that the characters do what they feel, veering from the plans and plots we have for them.

What do you think? How do your characters behave? Do you have complete control over them?

wordsearchgal.livejournal.com

I don't even know how to Google this. OK, say you have a national disaster, where many many people were dead. You have an orphan (her parents died in this disaster) and she is adopted by a couple who have an eighteen year old son, say those parents died, would the child be allowed to stay with the eighteen year old son? What if he was known to be...disturbed? I am assuming if the system is over loaded with children, they may be a bit lax.

Personally, I want her to be taken from him so i can do this whole run away/kidnapping thing later on.

wordsearchgal.livejournal.com

So, you're blasting through your novel this November, and then it happens. You hit a snag. Something that you wanted to have happen, but you don't really know anything about. Since it's NaNo, do you just trundle along anyway, making things up, fudging others, and employing the almighty handwavery? Or do you pause and sacrifice valuable minutes to go do the research to get your facts right?

My word count isn't where I was hoping it would be, but the book I am writing is a delight to me. I am doing all sorts of little things that cause me joy as a result of this adventure.

I have been using my laptop for months, and rarely used my desktop computer at all, since it's not hooked up to the Internet. Today I saved things to a flash drive and transferred them to the desktop computer, and sat there for a time adding to my novel. I like this novel so much I have saved it to the flash drive, in email and on both computer hard drives.

My word count is behind, but not so much so that I can't catch up. I would really like to "win" nano, but if I don't, I have won already!

There are people around me now who, having seen what I have written, take me more seriously as a writer.
I have met many new younger people and enjoyed sharing energy with them.
I appreciate my time more, and see how much actually do in a day.
My emotions are freeing up as I go from one character to another.
I am putting even more order and respect into my personal life. (There was a lot there already, so this is an added bonus that I am thrilled about.)

I am wondering....are others experiencing positive things as a result of entering this shared experience?
What's it doing for you?

Current Mood: accomplished

Current Mood: accomplished

blueveinwrists.livejournal.com

Problems With My Novel:
. I change tenses and from 1st to 3rd person constantly.
. Different parts are written in completely different styles.
. There are a million plot contradictions.
. I love some bits and hate others.
. It feels like there’s too much going on.
. Yet I have a long way to go on the word count!

I should just ignore all this and KEEP WRITING til I hit 50,000 though, right? Is everybody else having similar problems?

blueveinwrists.livejournal.com

takatohedgehog.livejournal.com

So the last couple of days I've had a horrible headache, sore eyes and upper body and been overtired from thinking on my NaNo too much. I was pretty sure my muse had abandoned me to a new idea that was growing in my head about a fairytale satire based on RPGs.

Just as I was beginning to consider scrapping my story and characters and start anew, MY MUSE CAME BACK!! :DDD It came crashing into my brain hardcore like a meteor from space and I was all "OMFG! YOU'RE BACK!"

I'm back on schedule!

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: school
Current Music: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - theme

takatohedgehog.livejournal.com

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: school
Current Music: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - theme

I've been replying to people in a separate thread, but I have noticed that some of the posts indent as replies, and some don't, even though I have clicked the link for reply. Is there any way for me to know if people are actually getting their replies? I figure if nothing else, this post will let them all know to look! LOL!

There's always more than one way to do something.

Current Mood: determined

Current Mood: determined

Anyone else have a character that was just supposed to be there for a second end up working their way into the rest of the story? It's the craziest thing.

Current Mood: curious

Anyone else have a character that was just supposed to be there for a second end up working their way into the rest of the story? It's the craziest thing.

Current Mood: curious

nightunderstars.livejournal.com

Has anybody, in this, or in any previous nanos, decided to quit before finishing?
If so, why?

intothewolves.livejournal.com

Okay, a bit of a weird question here.
My second villian has just revealed himself to me as an older version of the main character who sends orders to his "crony" in the past (time the novel takes place in). But... how exactly does this work? In a fantasy novel with selective modern technology, no less...?
My first idea is to make the race that his crony is from have limited time-travelling ability. He's the only one left of this race, so it wouldn't be too cheap... except for the fact that they already have the ability to create illusions and raise the dead.
An addendum to that idea - maybe his race doesn't have it, but he specificaly was born with that ability (there's another character in the story who was born with the ability to see the future, so...). Still, is this to many powers for one being? What can I do to balance it out? He's physically frail and weak (especially in his true form), but I don't think that's enough.

Current Mood: blank
Current Music: Mew - Silas The Magic Car | Powered by Last.fm

intothewolves.livejournal.com

Current Mood: blank
Current Music: Mew - Silas The Magic Car | Powered by Last.fm

mteson.livejournal.com

My novel is a straightforward fiction piece. No vampires, dragons, fantasy, magic, sci-fi, or anything like that. It's a human drama with a lot of very difficult moments. I feel like I'm plumbing the depths of my soul every night, and it's affecting me.

Last year I could write my book anywhere - at my desk, in the living room while my wife and I watched Seinfeld on DVD, during some leftover time at work. It didn't really matter. I could drop in, write a few hundred words, and drop out like it was nothing.

I don't know if it's my different schedule that gives me fewer opportunities to write on the go or the much heavier content of this novel compared to last year, but I find that this year I'm really unable to get in and out of the headspace to write the book so easily. I tried writing some stuff during some free time at work and I couldn't put down a single word. I just didn't feel it. And the other night I finished my writing in the evening, left the sprint room (go time traveling gypsies!) and it took me an hour of watching Big Bang Theory to get somewhat back in the mood. And even then it's still tough.

I was wondering if anyone had any techniques for facilitating the transition in and out of those tough headspaces. It's getting really hard for me and I need the flexibility to churn out a few hundred words on a moment's notice. It's a very personal piece for me, very difficult to write but incredibly rewarding. I really believe in this piece and I'm excited to write it. I don't want to go crazy in the process.

Thoughts?

mteson.livejournal.com

jupitersings.livejournal.com

EVENING SPRINTS ARE OPEN!

When?: 8pm-11pm EST
Where?: nanoeveningsprints
Moderator?: jupitersings86

Sprints will be followed by NanoIntoTheNight!

I regret to inform you that nocturnalnanosprints this evening have been cancelled. However, you are more than welcome to stick around and run sprints after late night sprints if you'd like to.

Please do not speak upon entering the room! This will upset the sprint gods, as well as the other sprinters and the mods. It is a common courtesy to remain silent until someone else has spoken.

jupitersings.livejournal.com

timecanwait.livejournal.com

I don't know how to go about researching this without getting on a terrorist watch list, haha.

I'm trying to write a mass power outage into my story. But I need to know:

Would outages happen on a city by city basis, or could something happen to make an entire state lose electricity?
If said outage were to happen, what could cause it?
I'm sure this depends on the cause of the outage, but worst case scenario, how long would people be without power?
What types of buildings have backup generators to insure they will still have power in case of emergency? Hospitals and jails, I'm sure, but what else? Would a bank have a backup generator to keep the alarms going and the safe locked if the power's out?

The story is taking place in the USA. I Googled "National Grid USA" and found that there's a company by that name that manages just a few states. So am I correct in assuming there is no large-scale utility authority that manages the entire country? That's fine, it just makes my job harder, because I will have to write in several smaller outages instead of just POOFing everyone's electricity, haha.

timecanwait.livejournal.com

I don't know how to go about researching this without getting on a terrorist watch list, haha.

I'm trying to write a mass power outage into my story. But I need to know:

Would outages happen on a city by city basis, or could something happen to make an entire state lose electricity?
If said outage were to happen, what could cause it?
I'm sure this depends on the cause of the outage, but worst case scenario, how long would people be without power?
What types of buildings have backup generators to insure they will still have power in case of emergency? Hospitals and jails, I'm sure, but what else? Would a bank have a backup generator to keep the alarms going and the safe locked if the power's out?

joeytheripper1.livejournal.com

I am finally on my second chapter, it was painful and i still have a long way to go but i'm feeling mighty glad that i have something to show for all those mood swings...

cute and crazy come together in graphic... pain!!!! spent over 200 words on description alone and that's a big first for me, i usually write fanfiction for the sole market of fans... so i have to describe pretty much everything... still need the description on the main characters though... oh fiddlesmurfs, that sucks... oh well on to chapter 2!!!!!

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Location: on a high.
Current Music: nightwish - I wish i had an angel

joeytheripper1.livejournal.com

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Location: on a high.
Current Music: nightwish - I wish i had an angel

Enjoying the pun of my subject (Trekkies, anyone?)?! But I digress. How many of you are writing your novel chapter by chapter? Are any of you like me and have not written any chapters, but simply written and plan to split it all up later? Is your novel going to have no chapters at all?

Discuss!