The document where I just shove all my stray ideas: 759, 268 words
The document that actually contains the story I’m writing: 66, 792 words. And this is when I started all the way back in bleedin january.
Sigh…I need to think of a way to channel my creative energy into the document that matters.

I remember there was this one period last year august where i was determined to finish a story and did sixty thousand words in only a month (with Stephen King’s rad ’2,000 words a day’ suggestion at my back) And it was so easy because it was just this random fantasy slice of life about a simoltaneously naive and dark amnesiac evil overlord interacting with all these characters. And then I was told I needed to find a plot, and everything made me so sad…

@happycrab91

@Stellar Jetman, what did I doooooooooooo? What about TVtropes?

Eh; my problem isn’t so much with the site as it with the “tropers” who run it. Bleh.

I just started writing a story, I’m at Chapter 4. :)

Oh sorry forgot about this. Sounds good have you written the fight scene yet? I finally finished chapter TWO but it was meant to include other stuff which I have now moved to chapter 3 because I think it’ll work better and 2 was taking too long to get to the chapter’s namesake. So I won’t feel that good about finishing chapter 2 until I write what was meant to be in it.

Depends how long you’ve been doing it for. My 2 chapters are around. 12,600 together. And it’s taken way too long.

About 20,000 words. 4 chapters. That’s like a quarter of the bare minimum a novel should be. Let’s hope I stick with it…

I have five or six novels going at once, none of which has broken 10K yet. I’m doing something horribly wrong, but I don’t know what yet…

...Like that one novel I got up to sixteen thousand and then lost track of >_> It wasn’t that great, but geez. I’m so absentminded and ADD it’s pathetic.

Pshh, happycrab, don’t you know that novels aren’t about word count? It’s all about page numbers! Just up your font size to 48 or so with huge margins and strange spacing, and you’ll be novel-length in no time! For more excellent advice of this type, see my new book, Novel Writing the Maradonia Way, where you can find even more tips, such as extremely short chapters so you can pad out your book with even more useless pages!

How have I be so blind over the years?! Thanks for the advice! It was about 80 novel-sized pages in Word’s view it like a book mode with 12 Time New Roman Font (I wanna know how to change the margins in this mode. Anyone know?), but now thanks to you I have 1241 pages! I could get this thing published right now! Thank you, swenson.

Inkblot just keep trying. Maybe plan a bit more if you not knowing where the story going is a problem. That can take out the fun though. But despite me planning this fantasy thing to death I still discover new ideas and get enjoyment about discovering what my characters are like and how a scene plays out despite me already knowing the gist of things. I mostly just plan/plot six different stories at once but most of them aren’t even novels. I did write the first episode for a youtube series though.
Or did you actually lose the 16k file? Well that sucks, too… trying to remember what you wrote and replicate it sucks. Even if you completely rewrite a scene it’s good to have the old version for bits of it you liked or to remember what happened.

happycrab: Honestly, I just continually lose interest in it. It’s probably a writer’s mortal sin, that. :P Beldam’s recent article made a big change in my attitude and I’m really trying to plug away at it. I have a ton of fun when I’m writing…I’m not quite sure why I have to beat myself into getting started.

I did lose it. Like I said though – it was a fun project but wholly unpublishable. No real plot to speak of, just a rambly…thing. That was one of those file sorting things where you just know that it’s hiding somewhere, but you can’t remember where you ended up sticking it.

I lose interest in things but don’t give up on them. I still wanna write them eventually and not to sound up myself but I think they’re good if executed well. Beldam’s article was nice but I decided to write more on my own and will probably just as easily stop again soon. Well it sucks to lose stuff anyway. I’ve lost past drafts and such but I definitely know I don’t need them. They could’ve contained a few good lines here and there though.

sansafro being on a third draft is still pretty awesome…

I’m sorry, Deborah. Don’t get discouraged- it’s slow business. Why don’t you try just letting things be for a while? Maybe an idea will come naturally for you if you stop worrying about it. It may not be what you were planning to fix, but still…could give you the jumpstart that you seem to need.

I get distracted by the Internet, and I have too much schoolwork, and I keep putting things off.

Story of my life. Story of my ENTIRE LIFE.

Super. For me chars first story second is the best way to go.

AURGH STUPID BROWSER LOST MY COMMENT!

@happycrab: yes, I finished the scene. I now have a completed story with too much character development weighing down what’s supposed to be a comedic ‘bash the bad guys’ thing. Gah. I don’t like my finished product.

How’s chapter two and three coming along?

Well, the character development wasn’t so much ‘put in’ as re-ordered from what was already there in order to make more sense, and then realistically explored. And then somehow I ended up with an arc.

To be more specific about how it happened, I had bits and pieces of inner conflict here and there: she used to be a warrior for the king. Then she went on a mission to get a powerful jewel back from the evil lord who stole it, and he sliced her leg up real good. She’s since healed up a bit, but she’s nowhere near as flexible as she used to be, and her leg’s wrecked for any kind of long-term warriordom. So that’s a career path gone that she really loved and wanted to be good at. She’s got a lot of anger at this guy for killing her chances, and she’s also struggling to deal with her new life, which she likes, but it’s not the one that was first-choice.

I had bits and pieces of this anger and conflict here and there in the story, but they were sort of disjointed fragments that in terms of an arc were all higgledy-piggledy. Probably it wouldn’t have mattered to the coherence of the story but what it came down to was that from draft one there was a character moment/realisation thingy at the climax, which directly influenced her actions. So I had to re-organise her character arc so that this climax made a bit more sense, and then fill in a few of the gaps around it. Which I did. And now some of the jokes and comedic bits in there seem like wild mood swings.

Maybe it’s just me, though. I need somebody to read the first draft and the second draft and tell me.

...wait, happycrab, what’s your NaNo name? I’m pianissimotion. I’ll buddy you. I’m four days behind.

Sounds interesting. I am not officially in NaNoWriMo sorry. Just thought I’d try to write along with everyone else.

Not doing NaNo (no time and I haven’t got any novel ideas anyway), but I’m working on a short story for CW class, and I’m about halfway done. hurrah.

Clicking a link on pianissimotion’s page that says “buddy this person” or something similar.

Done.

I’m sorry but I don’t think I will!!! Aren’t there rules such as you can’t have heavily planned everything and you can’t go back and edit it has to be continuous? And being buddies just shows how many words the other person has done daily to try to get you to match their words if they’re in front?

But I’m happy you think of me as your writing buddy.

@happycrab: well, I prefer to think of it as bugging them if their wordcount’s low :)

And I think as long as you write 50 000 words, it doesn’t matter. You can always go back and edit later.

You can go back and edit if you really want to, but then the NaNo dragons will swoop down from the sky and gobble you up. Or you’ll just never, ever finish because you start wanting to rewrite everything.

CMON YOU CAN DO EEET

CMON YOU CAN DO EEET

EDIT: Steph, know that sleep schedules and NaNo are largely incompatible. I’ve been pulling 12:01 AM days for the last week now. Am slap-happy, on the verge of delirium, and chemically imbalanced, but otherwise fine.

@Ink, That should make for an interesting plot… Lol

1,556 words written and one chapter complete into a project I started today.

So, after a good bit of time working out my main character’s background and personality, I finally settled on a name. I feel so accomplished! Lol! Now if I can just get the rest of the characters put together, and finish the outline, and I can get started on my story…

Thanks for the encouragement, Steph; now I have 3,194 words.

Elwen is still stalled. But Thiswold Thyster is going well. Of course, the titular villain is acting creepy around his cousin’s daughter, and tried to persuade his cousin to go to war. But it’s going well.