Okay, I'm in for this year again. And I promise to do my best to finish more than 200 words this time.

Congratulations to everybody who got farther than me (112 words). Although I obviously punked out pretty early (roughly 2:03am, November 1), I enjoyed everybody else keeping us up to date on their efforts.

Here's my question, now that the forced period of writing is over. I still plan to be published, and am looking for an agent right now since I have no connections in publishing. I would certainly like to be part of a support group for anyone else. Would anyone else like to keep this blog, or possibly create a new one, where we could keep each other up-to-date on our efforts, what we're working on, what pathways we're approaching, etc?

I'm up for it if anyone else is.

Well, I'm up to 32721 - but can't really see how I can make it with so little time left. But at least I got a bit closer. Maybe I can make 40000. A personal best is better than none, eh? ;-)

I just don't see myself finishing this year. That makes me a little bit sad. On the other hand, on Sunday night the novel veered off in a new direction and it occurred to me that the new material might make an interesting chapter book (as a novel for elementry school kids). So I am going to keep plugging, but I don't expect to hit 50,000 by the end of the day tomorrow.
:(

Well, I'm making a little bit of progress. It might not be enough, but what the heck, I won't admit defeat until it's too late to actually finish.

Here's a quote for you from tonight's batch of words:

"She is going to rue the day that she did not put in a line item for tools to build an arsenal so she can work on taking over the world. You need to have a stockpile of ammunition and cans of chili if you are going to form an army of minions with twirly electronic eyes. They enjoy chili."

Man oh man, what a month. I am dangerously close to not trying to finish right now. I just have so much work ahead of me, like real work, and it's not like I am going to take the day off to try to catch up. I am going to start writing at 4 o'clock (which gives me 5 minutes to pee and get a bottle of bubble water) and see how many words I can do in one hour. If I can do 3000 or more, I will continue. If I do not do 3000 words in an hour, I don't see how I'm going to catch up and finish by Wednesday night.

Thanksgiving is usually when the Americans participating in Nano catch up, because they have extra days off from work. But this contracting thing puts a crimp in that, and I actually worked a little late Wednesday and put in a full day Friday. And when I got home Friday, the step-kids were up. And I caught a cold or something. So I didn't write a single word on Friday or Saturday this week. That's why I just don't see me finishing. Well, I just wasted my five minutes, so I'll be going now. Wish me luck.

5PM: Um, I didn't do 3000 words in an hour. But I guess I'll keep going for a little while longer. I just love to prolong declaring failure.

My complete and utter lack of a plot (or any desire to create one) has slowed my output to a dribble. I am getting behind-er and behind-er.

And coming up with a plot just feels too much like work. I think this is why I am not a professional novelist.

Man alive, we're in week three. Today, by the way, is the halfway point. I'm not at the halfway point yet. I'm just sayin.

We all got a rah-rah letter from Chris Baty yesterday, and it did boost my confidence. He also reminded us that we have to put a little more effort into writing craptacular sentences. I keep forgetting. He also said to not look at the word counts the way we had been, but instead to just try to do 1000 at a time...keep plugging, keep plugging.

Here's an attempt at craptacular for you:

I do not know if I have ever written anything that anyone would consider Chicken Soup for the Soul. I did do some ad copy for bread once. So maybe I could be the “bread for the soul” expert. If they needed one. I think bread for the soul would be something very much like Wonderbread, by the way. 9-Grain bread would never qualify as being bread for the soul. Neither would marble rye.

You bums, letting real life get in the way of your Nano novels! Why I outta...

I hit the 20,000 word mark at some point last night. 20,000 words, only 400 or so worth keeping. But forward, ever forward. I'm almost exactly 1 day behind in word count. As in, I hit my Saturday goal on Sunday. But for those who are still plinking away, I don't know about you, but I can do 1500 words in less than 2 hours, if I am even slightly trying. I'll bet I could do it in an hour if I was paying attention.

So anyway, at this point in the novel, I had a pointless car explosion. Well, it was just a parked car that burst into flames while my characters were sitting at a stop light. But it's a car explosion nonetheless, right? What else...um, no pirate treasure yet. I have to decide soon if she's going to find any, and if she is, where. Maybe I'll have her find a puppy in her back yard. I could get a good few thousand words out of that. I have lots to say about puppies.

You can see that if they make a movie out of this book, it will be rated G, right?

I'm out, guys. Can't do it. I've got too much going on to start from scratch and keep this up, so I'm one of the fallen ones for this year. I am taking this time to add on to an already completed novel, though, that's not quite at novel-length yet. I'm going to try and add 20-30 thousand words to it, but I know that doesn't count.

Anyway, good luck to everybody. I'm still hear to support you, but I'm out for the year. When you guys finish, I'd love some thoughts on my novel.

Reid

Getting nowhere fast? Want to see what Microsoft Word thinks of your novel?

Put your whole novel in one word file, then click Tools>Autosummarize. I like to keep my summary to less than 2% under 100 words, and have it open in a new document. Eye opening and pointless, it is! It just grabs random sentences or fragments, and builds a new document.

My summary of about the first 12700 words or so:

As if anyone would ever need a lawsuit.

If I can be honest here, I have a little crush on the Fresh Fruit Man. Becoming the Larry Flynt of the house-to-house mobile retail industry.

"Dana?"

"Right. Reading a book? Right?

Especially if I am writing in the first person. Funny stuff. Too many sick people. I mean, didn't pirates buy houses on, say, the ocean? My house, owned by a sea captain? I wonder if his ghost haunts the property? "I'm selling Girl Scout Cookies. I guess if someone tells you there might be pirate treasure buried in your backyard, or under your house. I suppose it would be a small price to pay if it helped me locate a big old pile of pirate treasure, eh? I think if I did, I would never ever wear clean clothes. I don't remember if we actually hung it or not, or if my mother was annoyed with me. I bought this house quite a few years ago. Give me a little time, though.

Last night, as I was hovering around 12600 words (short of the daily goal, but not by much) I apparently wrote the following lucid thought right before I turned off the laptop and put it on the floor (I was typing in bed):

Lucikly, since moving in four years ago, the fire engines have only had to drive by the house a couple of times. One time they were creeping by and when I noticed them going very slowely in the road, I went out and found out that they were trying to track down room usage for the Adult Member room at the library.

That is some high quality crack I must have been smoking last night. Okay, really, I am even going to resist the urge to go in and delete that last sentence, because we do not edit our work in November under penalty of death. So to challenge myself, I'm going to try to make it make sense in the context of all the other nonsense in this "novel".

Wow, I'm doing really well this year! I probably just jinxed myself, but I seem to recall not being up-to-date going into the second week any other time I've done this. Well, week two is when I usually lose steam anyway. Maybe I'll have a better time of it because I am not even bothering to try to write anything even closely resembling a novel with a plot. I am ready to share with you one of the most recent horrible paragraphs full of words intended to solely inflate my word count. I can be really wordy when I need to, but you've probably already guessed that.

Oh, and my music to write to this weekend is ELO's "Electric Light Orchestra II". Just so you know. The song "Mama" to be specific. Okay, on to the quote:

You have to love a catalog geared for people who are looking to drop a million dollars on someone for a Christmas present. I mean, it's not like Penelope was sitting around lamenting her sad lack of a hovercar. No, instead of getting her something reasonable, like a coupon to give her a backrub and make dinner some night, you have to drop a million dollars on something she's only going to use once or twice. A pet peeve of mine is people who get a personal submarine and then only take it out once or twice. If you get a personal submarine for Christmas, you should take it out a minimum of 4 times, and then you should call your cousin Al and his wife and kids and maybe even the lady who lived next door you to you when you were growing up, and you let each and every one of those people take a ride in your personal submarine. I would try to make sure that they all knew how to use a personal submarine - you know, let them read the User Guide that came in the box with it, so that they understand all the controls, and what they have to do if, like, they start losing power or something. I would feel really badly if my old neighbor accidentally died in my Christmas present, but what the hell are you going to do. She wasn't really known for being a good listener, and you clearly remember telling her to bring her reading glasses so she could go over the instruction booklet. Christ, are you responsible for remembering every little detail? She could have just said she wasn't comfortable getting into your personal submarine. So now your Christmas present is all ruined cause there is a dead person in it at the bottom of the lake. Man, that just pisses me off.

Over 2000, just. But haven't written anything today. [OK, except this, but this doesn't count. ::sob::]

But I found this 'creativity boosting' site that I'm hoping will help inspire me, and I thought I'd share it here:

http://www.languageisavirus.com/

Man, I'm already in the week 2 slump, a whole week early. I have 5000 words, but all of it (well, almost all of it) is total crap. Am I going to obtain a plot any time soon? Cause that really does help with the word count, if you know what direction to head. *sigh*

Been writing on my lunch hour. I'm a copy editor, so it's my nature to want to self-correct. But too much of that and you're cooked, man. It's basically a diary of the houses I've lived in, and I am giving myself permission to have it suck. And it does, predictably. Yet I am churning, and I'm hoping this will get my creative juices flowing enough to write something that DOESN'T suck.

Well, I'm just over 1000 and my fear is already confirmed. I have no idea how to write a novel. Tech docs? Sure! Random blogging? No problem. But this? At best it's a lame diary. Without the juicy bits. ::sigh::

Okay, new writer in the fold. Hi Andrea! Not that you guys have been very chatty...I assume you're busy churning out crap like me. I'll just keep adding friends until somebody posts something.

I have created an ultra-simple tracking spreadsheet. Just add your current wordcount to the proper box in column C (today you need to enter your total in 3C, for instance) and it will tell you how many words short you are if you are trying to do 1666 per day.

Okay, in an effort to not worry about plot and character and what kind of message I want to put forth to the world in my novel...I am 2491 words into it, and my protagonist is contemplating starting up a door-to-door pornography business. I kid you not.

Woo! I'm almost 100 words into my 50,000! That's what, one five-hundreth of my novel? The daily minimum (if you don't ever miss a day) is 1666, but I'm going to aim for 2000 a day. It's do-able.

Oh, and for those of you who don't have a text editor with a word count feature, the Nano website has opened up the validator to be used all month. You just save your file as a text file, upload it, and your word count is automatically updated. That's how I know I have 94 words so far. One thing I need to test is whether or not it counts compound words (joined with a hyphen) as one or two words. Microsoft Word counts them as one. I hate that. [Update: It does count them as one. So I guess I'll be putting a space after the hyphen for words that should really count as two.]

http://www.nanowrimo.org/modules/wordcount/index.php

Ready?



The...



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