No plot, No problem- the NaNoWriMo thread 2012

[Illven]

Originally Posted by Mercenary Pen

Bear in mind that open office tends to give a higher word count than the validator on the NaNoWriMo website.

Does it? Do you know why exactly?

And I never actually went to the site

[Mauve Shirt]

I just got over 11500 words. I'm not going to make it. =(

[Mercenary Pen]

Originally Posted by Illven

Does it? Do you know why exactly?

And I never actually went to the site

To the best of my knowledge, the NaNo counter bases its count on the number of spaces, whereas other word counters include counting hyphenated words as more than one word.

I'm using Open Office myself, and my comparative counts are as follows:
21,465- Open Office
21,362- NaNoWriMo website.

[LeSwordfish]

Good news! I broke 17000! Bad news! I did it by copying in and barely rewriting a bunch of old stuff from the first time I tried to write this.

More bad news! I think i might hit the end of the book before i hit 50,000. I might only get to 30,000 or so. I guess that's decent. I have no ideas for expanding it (certainly none that will extend to 20,000 words), but having a 30,000 word novelette under my belt is nothing to be sniffed at.

Good news: If that happens, i'll just go back to last years and see if I can add 20,000 or so to that in the time left.

[Illven]

Originally Posted by Mercenary Pen

To the best of my knowledge, the NaNo counter bases its count on the number of spaces, whereas other word counters include counting hyphenated words as more than one word.

I'm using Open Office myself, and my comparative counts are as follows:
21,465- Open Office
21,362- NaNoWriMo website.

So to be safe I should aim for like 51000 words?

[Mercenary Pen]

Originally Posted by Illven

So to be safe I should aim for like 51000 words?

Something along those lines... I'm getting most of my discrepancy from a family of characters who had the indecency to have a hyphenated double-barreled name, so your mileage may vary from mine.

[Illven]

Originally Posted by Mercenary Pen

Something along those lines... I'm getting most of my discrepancy from a family of characters who had the indecency to have a hyphenated double-barreled name, so your mileage may vary from mine.

So about an additional half to a full day of writing. At least I'm quite a bit ahead.

[LeSwordfish]

Google Docs underestimate too, but i only lost twenty or so words.

[Icewalker]

Yeah, Google Docs counts hyphenated words as one, it's what I've been writing in. Let's me work from any computer, which is convenient for me.

I'm also a bit concerned that I'll hit the end of my book before I hit 50k! But, I also have 12,000 words which I wrote before November which I didn't count, so I'll have a lot of text. If I finish I may go back and edit and rewrite sections, and add any rewritten text on top of my existing word count to try to hit 50k through edits. Or something.

[LeSwordfish]

Maybe i can add in all the little other bits i've been writing? My assignment, and the Pbp game i'm in, and such?

[Mercenary Pen]

Originally Posted by LeSwordfish

Maybe i can add in all the little other bits i've been writing? My assignment, and the Pbp game i'm in, and such?

Maybe its just me, but I'd only do that if you feel you really have to (as in, 11pm November 30th and a million innocents will die unless you win- that measure of really have to).

My advice is that winning isn't as important as all that (I mean, what do you get for winning? Only self esteem.) As much as I hate to use the cliche, NaNo really isn't about the winning so much as the taking part, and while I'm pushing myself further, that's just to see what I can achieve- not because I must win at all costs (or at least I hope it isn't about that).

Ultimately though, what words you include is your decision in the end, and you still have most of the month to make it, you don't need to rush simply to pad your word count...

[Icewalker]

I'm totally with Mercenary, the goal is to write not to reach the goal. That being said, reaching the goal is a valid desire in its own right. I wouldn't want to not be recognized as succeeding because I finished my book before I hit 50k. So I'd say, if you do actually finish your book and are still short of the goal, at that point adding in other creative writing or the like is mostly fair game.

[Mercenary Pen]

Just finished a day that clocked in at 4649 words, but I still have some catching up to do if I'm to reach my 75k target. Time to put in another three quarters of an hour before I turn in.

[Dumbledore lives]

Well managed to catch back up today after a lackluster yesterday. This is very good.

[Zorg]

Good to hear everyone's going well so far.

Got a couple of thousand words done today and yesterday, most of which I'm happy with (one rather purple bit, but I'm aware of it's narmyness at least).

[Morph Bark]

Got stuck for a week, figured the start I had just wasn't working for me since it didn't start with action and some decisions were just too random, so I started over. Currently on just 180, but at least I got stuff to build on in my head now.

[bluewind95]

Originally Posted by Mercenary Pen

Bear in mind that open office tends to give a higher word count than the validator on the NaNoWriMo website.

Actually, the deal with Open Office is the auto-correct that turns " into "custom quotes". It counts these quotes as an extra word. So if you disable this feature in autocorrect options, both in the Options tab and the Custom Quotes tab, it will stop doing that and you'll get a much more accurate word count.

[Mercenary Pen]

Originally Posted by bluewind95

Actually, the deal with Open Office is the auto-correct that turns " into "custom quotes". It counts these quotes as an extra word. So if you disable this feature in autocorrect options, both in the Options tab and the Custom Quotes tab, it will stop doing that and you'll get a much more accurate word count.

Okay, I stand corrected... have now gone and manually replaced all of my custom quotes as well.

[dehro]

I was thinking of having a go at it in only 3 weeks (not much of a problem, quantity wise... I tend to write a lot once I get going, and in a short time).. but I find that this year I just can't muster the enthusiasm for it, and the timing is also unfortunate, what with work consuming most of my time.

so I'm officially giving up on this, for this year

[Icewalker]

Well, I've basically taken the entire weekend off, with a three day solid plateau of no progress. In about a day and a half I'll technically be behind the NaNo progress line, so I'll probably start up writing again after my neuroscience test tomorrow afternoon, get a bit more of Chapter 17 done.

I also definitely continue to suspect I will finish this book before I hit 50k. I've written all but 6 of the 20 chapters, and it makes up about 34k words, 12k of which don't count cause I'd written them before November.

[LeSwordfish]

Added in the words in footnotes, since Google Docs can't be persuaded to do that itself. 24200 words! What's more, some of my footnotes look really odd out of context.

Spoiler

"A feat of mental strength I’m not sure I could have performed."

"Slang for a fish and chip shop. I know it sounds like a racial slur for somebody or other, but it just means chips."

"I was later told that this translated as “C**k-hurdler”.

[Dumbledore lives]

Go team Bare Minimum! I'm going at a steady pace, doing around 1670 words per day, though recently I've picked it up to maybe 1700. At this rate I will finish right on time. Yay!

[TheEmerged]

So, the halfway mark for time has been reached. I'm just over 30k, still around 2.25 days ahead of raw quota. I had 3 days in the last 7 where I didn't hit quota, but 3 days over 2k as well.

In terms of the plot, the two sides of the story have met. They're about to start intertwining. I decided to skip the part where the established order keeps trying to force the new arrival into its schema. I don't want them handling the idiot ball, and I found I couldn't keep that stage of the plot without it.

I haven't itemized the word count, but overall I think I've succeeded in expanding the "naruto-esque world" part of the story closer to half of the plot. I have more than one character there with a personality now, at least.

The 'interesting wrinkle' isn't as interesting as I'd thought. I find myself having to force it in. The original intention of this was to present a case of mistaken identity (something the established order would think the new arrival was doing) but it just isn't working out that way. If the word count gets well above 50000, I may just drop it. Otherwise I think I'm going to prune it well ahead of intention.

Another minor flaw on my part has occured to me. I haven't had the main character of the "naruto-esque world" in a non-plot scene yet, whereas the "first psionic" has had plenty such development. I need to correct that.

Speaking of the "first psionic" plot, I'm in the middle of the chapter where his character flaws are giving him his first real temptation to cross the line between his good intentions his darker impulses. The second rule* I set for this character is that he is neither a "good" guy nor a "bad" guy -- he's someone who has gotten his hands on more power than he deserves and has to sort out what he's going to do with it. So far he's leaned rather heavily toward his good intentions thanks to a good influence (I mentioned the "second tier character getting more screen time than intended in an earlier post).

*The first rule being, "Under no circumstances does this character become an author insert. To the extent possible, avoid trying to even make it look like it."

[Dumbledore lives]

Well after getting to the half-way point I'm starting to have some doubts about whether I have enough content for the 50,000 words, though I think I will definitely reach 40,000. Still, even I reach that it'll be amazing, so whatever.

[Icewalker]

Okay, so, after taking a break from writing that ended up being four days long instead of two, and then getting sick, I lost a solid week and went from a 6000 word lead on the NaNo schedule to a solid 6000 words behind. But I'm feeling better and will be picking up again to finish writing the last three chapters of my book, starting with a three hour inter-class break sitting in the botanical gardens on campus tomorrow morning.

Then I need to like, edit and add a few sections I'm thinking of adding, and we'll see if I'm anywhere near 50k when the book is done. If it doesn't get there, I might just start doing normal editing for grammar/phrasing/rewriting lines/consistency, and gradually start counting on NaNo the 12,000 words I wrote before November as I edit and improve them.

[bluewind95]

I has a really busy weekend and then got really sick today, so I couldn't really write. I mean. I wrote like 100 words or so just not to get a flat 0 on today's word count. I'm now pretty behind again.

[Icewalker]

I have come to the tentative conclusion that while the pressure to write has done incredible things for my productivity, the focus on word count may have had a negative effect on the quality of my writing.

I'm not positive. But the suspicion is there enough that it concerns me a bit. So I am going to drop out of NaNo this year, a decision probably also influenced on some levels by my recent drop behind for various reasons. I will instead try to find motivations to spend the same huge amounts of time thinking, planning, and writing, but without a push for words as the end goal, simply a general push for progress at whatever rate it needs to move.

Decision also probably influenced by the fact that I'll be finishing the book far before the 50k mark. I'm sitting at something like 26,000 in NaNo (plus 12000 I wrote before November), and have something like 17 or 18 of the 20 chapters finished.

[TheEmerged]

Clocked in over the 38k mark yesterday. Quota at the end of today would be 33k, which is a good thing because I may not get a word done today.

For one thing, the "wrinkle" in the plot just came into its own by going in an entirely different direction than originally planned. Furthermore, one of my "revenge focus" characters for the first psionic went and surprised me as well. I love it when my characters and story surprise me! I don't think I could have planned this change much better!

And here's where the word count & rule about no/limited editting helps me, I think. Ordinarily I would lose the next week editting previous chapters to reflect what was just 'discovered' (and by discovered I mean came to me out of the blue but *works*, darn it!). I would then lose my forward momentum and like "The Emergence" (my longest work, the one I draw my internet handle from) I'd never get around to writing the final chapter.

Instead? I'm taking a light day to let what just happened process. I hit a kind of pre-climax. To compare it to the Hunger Games, this was the kiss in the cave; to compare it to Star Wars, this is when Luke sees Ben die as they escape the Death Star. I feel like I need to spend the next chapter just winding down from this.

====================

On a slightly different note, I was not aware there was a Young Author's variant on this challenge to hit 30k. I found this out when I learned that some local schools are participating - but only challenging the kids to hit 10k for an A or 5k to get a B. Um, if you can't hit 5k in an entire month, you need help. Even if only able to do it on the 20 school days this month, that's 250 words a day. I can *sneeze* a hundred words, but then again nobody's going to call me young either.

[Morph Bark]

Originally Posted by TheEmerged

On a slightly different note, I was not aware there was a Young Author's variant on this challenge to hit 30k. I found this out when I learned that some local schools are participating - but only challenging the kids to hit 10k for an A or 5k to get a B. Um, if you can't hit 5k in an entire month, you need help. Even if only able to do it on the 20 school days this month, that's 250 words a day. I can *sneeze* a hundred words, but then again nobody's going to call me young either.

Where did you find out about this? If you got a link or source, I'd appreciate it.

[Dumbledore lives]

Well I found out my story is not going to have a happy ending. I suspected it from the beginning but now I am really pretty sure it's going to end badly, especially for the main character.

After writing the last couple of 'chapters' I'm pretty sure I will finish as well, maybe with some words to spare. I wasn't sure but I managed to write maybe 7500 words in a couple of chapters and events so I'm pretty happy with that, and think that as long as the big conclusion takes the 10000 words I'm expecting I'll be fine. If it doesn't I can always plot-twist the **** out of it and bring in the time lords.