Second week slump.

[destiny2909.livejournal.com]

Who's hit the second week slump then?

This is my first year NaNo'ing and last week I thought "HA! I'll never hit the slump! I'm far too excited and my story is cool!"
Boy, was I wrong.
I'm struggling to get excited by my characters and my plot has slowed to a bit of a crawl.
I only managed 500 words yesterday, and that was pretty painful! How the hell did I manage 8000 in the first day?! Must have been crazy!

NaNo veterans, how did you overcome the slump?

Comments

[cscottd.livejournal.com]

What I have done in previous years is to stick in a placeholder of some kind (such as: [INSERT COURTROOM SCENE]) and then skip ahead to a more exciting/interesting scene, then once the writing was flowing again, I would go back and write the missing scene.

That may not work for everyone, but it's served me pretty well so far.

Good luck!

[divinebird.livejournal.com]

I do that, too! It works every time. I'm usually stuck because I don't want to work on the part I'm doing at that moment, but I have another part I'd rather do. SO much better to work on what you want, when you want. The rest will be filled in afterward.

[broadford.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha, my novels are filled with: [THIS IS THE SCENE WHERE SO AND SO GOES AND DOES THIS, BUT I'M NOT GONNA WRITE IT RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT HIS HALF BROTHER BEING MAULED BY HYBRID IGUANA-BADGERS].

It's the best advice for the week-two slump I've ever found.

--Mdm_Cheveley

[liz-ensley.livejournal.com]

Heh.

You want to know how I overcame the second-week slump.

Do you really want to know?

Well, okay.

I had the slump in the first week: I'm hoping that I'm over it, now, lol. Especially since a stry element showed up quite a bit sooner than I expected him to: which means that Garth lent him the Equus. ;-) Which makes two quirky characters instead of the plotted one for that section of the NaNo, for at least a short time.

[pink-spiral.livejournal.com]

I have exams this week so i've been in crazy MUST STUDY mode so I'm very behind =( more of a self inflicted slump due to school

[dixie-chicken.livejournal.com]

I have in fact hit the slump... however it's mostly for non-NaNo reasons. Changed the dosage on some medication, it's led to me sleeping 15+ hours a day and being terribly depressed during the times I wasn't.

I'm dropping back to my previous dosage and hoping to catch up over Thanksgiving break. One day that week I'm having a procedure done that will result in me being on heavy narcotics for the majority of one afternoon/evening.

I plan on convincing my parents to loan me the laptop and let me write large parts of my novel while so drugged. Mom has warned me that, based on my behavior the last couple of times I had this procedure done, I will end up writing the same sentence a few hundred times...

[mrs-picasso.livejournal.com]

Just keep writing, and no matter what, write something every day and you won't fall too far behind. Let your characters do what they want, too. If you keep this up you will get to the part where you begin to surge. Usually I slump around this time, too, but in a week or two I begin writing crazy amounts. Once I even did 10k in one day.

[a-belletrist.livejournal.com]

That's great advice -- Asking the characters what they want to do, and then letting them do it. I had a mini slump the other day, but mostly because I'm just knackered from going to a Convention for four days (and yes, I'm way behind on my word count). Last night was better, though. Managed to pound out 2k of words, and I could have gone on longer if sleep didn't beckon so enticingly.

[divinebird.livejournal.com]

Last year I had a scene where it seemed natural to include a new character, but I hadn't planned that character. After fighting with myself over it for a few days, I gave in at last and the story went beautifully from there. She became an integral part of the plot, someone who actually moved it along. Unexpected things will happen, and that's ok.

[jigglypuff.livejournal.com]

I didn't do it before, but yeah, I have hit the slump. :| Wrote about 100 words today. But... my muse came back to me from looking at the adopt-a-prop and dare threads on the NaNo forums.

[morigale.livejournal.com]

Hell if I know. I know I've gotten over it somehow, but I can't figure out how. (Yeah, I'm having the same problem.I changed my plot in mid-stream and scrapped everything I'd written, so I'm pretty much starting over.)

[busy91.livejournal.com]

I pull back from my story. Sitting with it too long causes me to lose focus and the ideas dry up. I watch TV or surf or read. Something always starts a spark. Something I've seen or heard and I incorporate it into my story. All it takes is one small idea to get my juices flowing. This year I'm off to a slow start, however it is pretty steady. Good Luck.

[telscha.livejournal.com]

i slumped again today. written prehaps 200 words if that. wish my muse - Cade - would start talking to me again. Even jumped to an intersting section - where half my carries get the door beaten down by the secret police and carted off to be interrogated and tortured and what did Cade wanna do? Watch TV instead.
So you have my sympathy. May your muse come back soon.

[jigsawjazz.livejournal.com]

Honestly I've found that sometimes the only thing to do is to walk away from it and come back with fresh eyes. I got really discouraged a couple of days ago, took a day off, and when I came back I felt better about it.

Zoe Mellon is my pen name

[urb-banal.livejournal.com]

Well, I write so slowly. I am trying not to second guess my character and just rest in the confidence that the story will unfold as it is an old one any way...

Last year I only got 20,000 words so I am only hoping to pass that. I get every one I know to pledge too, just so embarrassment keeps me coming back.

6929 is all I have so far.

does that make you feel better?

[alison-sky.livejournal.com]

A. First thing - don't let the slump depress you. It'll only keep you in the slump.

B. Look at why you don't want to write. Do you not like the scene you are in? Then put a placeholder and skip it like Scott said. Is it a character giving you issues? Make them leave the scene somehow.

C. Sometimes, pressuring yourself to write so much so early on, while it's good on getting you ahead early on, can also drain your batteries dry. Take a day or two away and just write however much you can, and go watch TV or read a book or dance around your place in your underwear to your favorite cd. Something to get your mind OFF the NaNo for a bit, so you can come back to it refreshed.

[broadford.livejournal.com]

<3 for the list-of-three advice givers!

1) Skip to the interesting scenes. (Don't really need to elaborate this, since other people did such a good job).

2) Write something awful. *Really* awful. Melodramatic, characters-falling-over-themselves awful. "John-how-could-you-leave-me-and-my-half-wombat-love-child" awful. Whenever I get stuck and skipping to an interesting part doesn't work, that's what I do. It's like taking a sledgehammer to the wall between you and your muse. Because, from my experience, muses like gutsy writers who aren't afraid to write a lot of crap to get to them.

3) If all else fails, step away from the novel for a little bit. Watch something mind-numbing, or read a favorite book, or go for a walk. I wouldn't suggest doing something too fun, because then you might not want to come back to the novel.

Good luck! And just remember--Week Two can't last for the whole month!

[beansideirae.livejournal.com]

(woot, first comment! just found yall :)

i hit the slump sunday morning. i struggled thro that day, and most of monday. monday night i ran into a friend. "please help me! i cant figure out where to go next, and i'm so frustrated!" i sobbed. my friend looked at me like i'd lost my mind. "well it might help if i knew where you were...." so i started to give him a rough outline of where i had left off, and how i needed a clue for a mystery. before the words were fully out of my mouth, he was drawing on a napkin showing me how the clue should work.

i thanked him profusely and ran back to write it up. (well i ate dinner first, but that's beside the point.) when i got to my notebook, i realized he had only given me half the clue; i still needed to work out the rest.

but i also realized something else. many of my characters are based on real people, and the character who invents that clue, is based on the friend who showed me the clue. too cool, eh? well guess what...my friend had given me exactly what his character had, no more no less.

i turned to another friend who was in the room with me; i laughed and told her what had happened, then complained that i was still stuck on the other half of the clue. being the patient person that she is, she offered to help with the rest of the clue. she asked for the storyline surrounding it; i started to tell her, and we both cracked up laughing. you guessed it: that part of the plot is decided by a character who is based on her.

we had a great evening exploring that part of the mystery (in way more detail than i will ever need), and the slump improved a lot. (the laughter probably had a lot to do with it.)

there is something to be said for letting your characters talk to you ;)

[shannon-zhang.livejournal.com]

Try writing on paper...sooner or later, you'll feel impatient and the words just flow. I wrote over 1667 words today....maybe two pages (of notebook paper, so that's one page on the computer) over. You feel really impatient.

And every one of my friends thinks I am insane. :-P For freaking out over word length. Good luck!

[chaotic-vanity.livejournal.com]

When I get slump-y, I go to the very end and starting writing my ending. Usually I get inspired to write more about how I'm going to actually get to that ending. So, I'll go back to where I'd left off going chronologically, and write for awhile. If I get bored again, I go back to the end and write some stuff that happened a little before the end. Then, I go back to where I was before, etc. It's a good cycle. Eventually you get to the middle of the story and you have the before the middle done and all the after the middle done, so it's fun to link them together! :D

If that all made sense anyway!