NaNo?

[sydneyalexis]

Anyone else contemplating doing NaNoWriMo?

I'm thinking I'm going to dust off one of my long term WIPs and get at least to the 1/2 or 3/4th mark on it. Probably my HP Book 7 rewrite because OMFG I am so beyond stuck on Wild Indigo. As in tear my hair out, cussing up a blue streak, annoyed beyond measure stuck. I do, however, love the first 1/4th

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[sydneyalexis]

I use word because I type faster than I can hand write things. Word also has an instant word count which is super useful on those days where every single word is a struggle to get out.

I used to write in google docs, but I found that I was *way* too distracted with the internet.

If you're serious about giving it a go, I'd recommend doing an outline. Just a basic order of what you want things to happen in at the very least. The reason is fairly straightforward -- it's super easy to panic and end up with something wholly unusable.

I didn't have a good, strong outline for Wild Indigo so 3/4th of what I wrote during the last NaNo is unusable. Realizing that after working so diligently was the most heartbreaking thing ever. Especially since it's not really something that could transition into another story either.

I sort of panicked and just went with wherever my mind was taking me. You only have 30 days to write 50,000 which means you have to bang out a minimum of 1,667 words a day. My first day, I got to the 10,000 mark. The second I got another 5,000 words. By the end of the week though, I was struggling to get 300 let alone 1,667. And everything from that end of the week point to the finish line of 50,000 is the pretty much unusable portion of the story.

Which sucks.

A lot.

I didn't think that I needed a really strong outline for it though because my first year I did the same sort of thing and was able to reach the 50,000 words without too much trouble. I had forgotten though that the first novel was a family based genealogy/oral history book. As such, I *knew* what happened and didn't have to pause to think through plot gaps and the like.

My second year though when I did the HP story that I had outlined to the hilt, I flew through it without really struggling hard core. Yes, there were a couple of 'are we there yet?' days, but, for the most part, I did really well. In fact, I had half of my goal done within a week. Not so with Wild Indigo.

TBC in next comment...