That’s awesome! Friends like that are so invaluable.
And you’re right – a good plan makes all the difference. I really need to get my act together and write that list I owe myself. 
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I am up to 676 words. I had a major back flareup yesterday that kept me out of my computer chair (after I fought with it to clean the house some.) I suspect I will be able to write more today. The trouble with names and descriptions is always a hassle. Trying to make a character interesting, but not allow them to take over the writing, etc.
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Nice! Good job. 
Yeah, you’re so right; some characters will steal the show if you let them.
I’m super impressed you were able to write with a back flare. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
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So I started working on my to-do list and then this happened:
Yes, my cat has decided my notebook makes the perfect bed.
I’ll figure it out 
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That’s the good stuff right there! I love that feeling. All the patterns fall into place and everything is just… ‘like it was always meant to be’.
This is my busiest time of year, but I’d really love to get in on this competition sometime. Started life wanting more than anything else to be a writer; since very early grade school actually.
It’s the reason I taught myself everything about building and using computers when I was a kid. I watched my Creative Writing instructor at Brookhaven move a paragraph from one part of the page to another and hit the print button on a now-ancient Radio Shack TRS-80. I was writing a screenplay on an electric typewriter at the time and it was like wonderful impossible magic, and I immediately resolved to learn everything there was to know about computers. Paid off. 
It’s important to not only chase your dreams; relentlessly hunt them down and make them your own. Persistence is so much more important than talent. Just never give up. It really is as simple as that.
That typewriter and traditional uncomfortable desk and chair was also the impetus that triggered the design and fabrication of my Unistation workstations, due to sore back while doing marathon sessions while radar locked on finishing the screenplay… Damn, but that was a long time ago… But you can make dreams come true if you really want to. I built the first one on an upstairs apartment balcony
with a Shopsmith and hand tools. Unistation — DigitalDoyle
Anyway, I will live vicariously through all you who are competing this year and am cheering you on. You can do this! Go DMS! Go YOU!
DD
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Woohoo! Thanks Doyle! Appreciate the support.
Not only chase your dreams. Relentlessly hunt them down and make them your own. Persistence is so much more important than talent. Just never give up. It really is as simple as that
Wise words.
.
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Re: the meme. Not wrong, but this is also pretty classic manic-depressive, which many creative people have.
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Good morning everyone!
Welcome to day 3 (of 30) of NaNoWriMo!
Daily ending word count goal: 5000
Weekly goal: 11,667
Yesterday’s target: 3334
My current word count: 3392
I continue to eke by. I had originally planned to write my to-do list of scenes at the end of the day, but then I changed my mind and decided to do it first thing. This turned out to be a good idea.
Granted, the list is a little intimidating – it’s much longer than similar lists that I’ve written in the past, likely due to a mix of this being the longest book I’ve ever written as well as this being the earliest I’ve done a “to be finished” scene list this way.
I typically do a detailed outline at the beginning of my projects, something I’ve learned helps me as I have written more novels – and I did have one for this project – but this list is specifically what I need to finish, so I can reference it when looking for what to work through and strikethrough scenes as I write them, etc. When I write this list, it’s saying, “I’m serious about finishing. Stop messing around.” Usually, I’ve found myself doing this with about 10,000 words left, not 50K. So this one is long!
Anyway, the good news is that in the process of writing this scene list, I discovered a good place to start on my words yesterday. I wrote the intro to an important scene at the end as well as two excerpts from a fictional book (there’s a manual about psychic taxonomy that gets quoted a lot in these books).
I have no idea what I’m going to write today (and still haven’t written the childbirth scene/s that I set out to write on day 1), but I’m satisfied with yesterday, especially because I was a little under the weather and didn’t feel my best (got my COVID booster Monday night and my immune system got all riled up, worth it for the immune boost but definitely something interesting to work through).
My general feelings on it:
Hope y’all are doing well!
I’ve already found this challenge helpful – it’s forcing me to push through my procrastination.
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That was quite the rigmarole to get to “like” your entry, so now that I have a membership I will say hi! NaNo together is awesome!
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Woohoo! Glad to have you here, Gini
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Good morning everyone!
Welcome to day 4 (of 30) of NaNoWriMo!
Daily ending word count goal: 6667
Weekly goal: 11,667
Yesterday’s target: 5000
My current word count: 5022
Before I get into how it’s going for me, here’s another meme:
Note: Interestingly, Camus never wrote this. The original quote was “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer” (in an essay “Retour to Tipasa” within his book L’Été). The longer quote seems to have been an Internet invention. In any case, it’s lovely.
I am still fighting the good fight. It hasn’t been easy going, but I’ve been managing the daily requirement.
Yesterday was spent still avoiding the chapter I resolved to work on back on day 1. I’ll have to get there eventually to finish the book, but I guess I’m writing pretty much anything else first. Writer Brain is such a jerk. Well, at least she’s doing something, right?
Making my to-do list a few days ago did reveal a rather prominent plot hole that had evaded me at the outlining/excerpting stage. I was cutting back between an A story, B story, and C story (this novel has 3 major plot arcs that follow different sets of characters around, which is why it’s a bit longer than some of the other books I’ve written). Anyway… there were two scenes in the C story that contradicted one another – in which a person in disguise needed to be both recognized and not recognized by a third party to make the dialogue I’d dropped in situ make sense. But because of the interspersed A&B story scenes, I didn’t notice until now.
(Another practice I have when I’m writing a detailed outline is to drop little jokes and snippets of dialogue I want to hit while writing that scene at the appropriate place in the outline well before I get to that place. I call these pre-provided marks “Pac-Man pellets,” like the little dots that he gobbles up when he’s making his way around the arcade board.)
Anyway… once I noticed the discrepancy I had to make a decision – I decided the character wouldn’t be recognized, so I deleted the now-conflicting Pac-Man pellet and dramatized the scene.
But yeah… just making my count again. I would love to hit an inspirational day and build up a lead in case I hit a dry spell, but maybe that’s not in the cards.
I have a bunch of plotting to do on the A story (the psychic-shapeshifter reality TV dating murders) before I can crack into the rest of that arc. It’s all tedious little stuff like who gets the first one-on-one date (which dictates the order of the suspect/contestant interviews). The elimination ceremonies, murder victims, and murder solution are already figured.
As always, the smaller the narrative decision, the harder it feels to make it. (A paradox.)
Hope everyone is doing well!
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Had some late night writing going on as a brainstorm happened got a hole chapter in the bag may not be my best work but im having fun with this also i have no idea how many words ive typed I’ll look into it
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Yay! Honestly any progress is good progress.
I know I’m being really granular about word count, but that doesn’t work for everyone and can sometimes backfire depending.
I’m happy you’re trudging on. Good work!
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i should keep track of the word count since thats the point of this challenge so ill try to be better
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Another day, another progress post from your resident Writerspace group leader.
Welcome to day 5 (of 30) of NaNoWriMo!
Daily ending word count goal: 8334
Weekly goal: 11,667
Yesterday’s target: 6667
My current word count: 6691
Look, everyone! A bard has volunteered to help us on our adventure:
Me (on day 1): Well, I only have to write 1667 words a day…
Me (yesterday, day 4): …30 days in a row. 
I’ve been saying for a few days now that I’m glad I’m making my targets but really wished I was getting ahead – so that if anything went wrong, I’d have a buffer.
Welp. Yesterday, something went wrong. I woke up in the morning to discover my G key was sticking pretty hard on my keyboard.
Here’s archival footage of me typing yesterday morning’s update here whilst having to mash the G key 4 times every time I needed the letter:
Anyway, I talked to my husband/electronics repair technician, who thoroughly cleaned said keyboard. After the procedure, the G key did kinda work (but not 100% reliably), but the O key was completely defunct.
Oh no.
A basic backup keyboard was fetched from the closet, and a new ergonomic keyboard was ordered. Essentially, I worked on yesterday’s words with the wrong feel under my fingers and the wrong positioning of my hands – don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I had a backup. But… it was very strange.
I made the most of it. I put on different music to amplify the effect – and I found scenes to work on the manuscript where things seem off/tense so I could ride the “things aren’t right” energy to write.
Yesterday’s work session ended up being a weird but productive one. I made significant inroads into a scene in the draft where the protagonists realize that they’re actually in danger and are trapped (due to the “exciting twist” schtick on the reality TV dating show, which I revealed through narrating final cut footage as it’s shown to viewers at home versus the unedited janky discarded takes – mostly how I’ve been showing the TV show A story). It worked so well with the experience of cramped hand positioning.
But yeah… the real test begins now, I suppose. The Fri/Sat/Sun combined commitment is 5000 words. I’ll be curious as to how it plays out. I also have another big writing deadline on Monday (I typically owe 2000 words weekly to another project on that day). Last Monday/day 1 of this challenge was a real bear for that reason. Basically, the weekly firm Monday deadline for the other work makes it a poor catchup day for any weekend slackitude.
I’ll figure it out and report back.
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And so begins day 6 (of 30) of NaNoWriMo!
Daily ending word count goal: 10,000
Weekly goal: 11,667
Yesterday’s target: 8334
My current word count: 10,727
Yay! I finally caught a break. Yesterday, I managed to hammer out about 2.5 days of the quota. My plan originally was just to work on a single scene in one minor subplot of the book – but I found that once I’d written that one scene that I naturally flowed to some others. Before I knew it, I was nearly done that subplot/arc. (I just have one scene left to write in it.)
I also thought of a brand new scene that’s not in my outline or to-do while in the shower yesterday and wrote part of it and outlined the rest. I love it… it makes the book (and later ones) make so much more sense. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it in the first place. It serves double duty – helps develop a character who is introduced in this book (a precognitionist who sees past, present, and future but often mixes them up) as well as foreshadows a plot twist that I’ve penciled in for Book 10 (the current project is #5 in the series).
I will say that while adding new scenes into the outline makes it easier to hit (or overshoot) my daily NaNo goals, I’ll need to be careful with it. For one, this is a long, complicated book to begin with. Furthermore, my superordinate goal isn’t just to crank out 50K words on it in November but to actually finish the draft so I can submit it to my editor so we can start doing that dance (and eventually publish the darn thing).
But yes. Yesterday was a great writing session. It was fun, it flowed. I figured out a lot of important things. There were times when I didn’t feel like I was writing so much as sitting there transcribing the conversations that the characters were having on their own – I love that feeling.
Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend!
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Welcome to day 7 (of 30) of NaNoWriMo!
Daily ending word count goal: 11,667
Weekly goal: 11,667
Yesterday’s target: 10,000
My current word count: 12,520
I actually wrote yesterday’s words at DMS after I finished helping out with tours and new member orientation. It took me about an hour which isn’t bad – but it wasn’t a fun session by any means. It was mostly technical work, describing an unorthodox prison facility and dramatizing the security protocols required to get inside.
I can’t believe today is the final day of week 1! On one hand, it feels like we’ve only just begun this challenge – how can we be almost a quarter done?
On the other hand, Godzilla save us, we’re not even a quarter of the way done yet? Aieeee…
I will say that I’m definitely getting a lot out of the challenge and am glad I tried it this year. It’s forcing me to look at my draft with a different eye and force my way through the middle (middles are always the hardest part of the book for me to write, I tend to slow down when working on them).
It’s hard to tell whether the 50K for the challenge will actually finish the book – however, I tend to write REALLY fast when I am nearly done a book (will usually have sessions of 10K plus words at the end of projects) – and I’m confident that the 50K of this challenge will get me close enough that even if I don’t finish, I can get within blitzing range.
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Welcome to day 8 (of 30) of NaNoWriMo!
Daily ending word goal: 13,333
Weekly goal: 23,333
Yesterday’s target: 11,667
My current word count: 14,663
On June 18, 1938, a little more than three weeks after starting his unnamed new manuscript, which would turn into The Grapes of Wrath, one of the most acclaimed works of all time, John Steinbeck confided in his daily journal:
“If I could do this book properly it would be one of the really fine books and a truly American book. But I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. I’ll just have to work from a background of these. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty it is all I can expect of my poor brain. . . . If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no one else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time.”
See? Steinbeck thought he was awful too.
Ah, that’s such a day 8 mood.
You could easily add “being a maker” to that list.
I am fighting the good fight on my draft. Continue to be slightly ahead. Yesterday was also an interesting day because I finally started making some significant progress on the chapter I tried to tackle on day #1 (the labor and delivery one). I still have a lot left to write on it, but it occurred to me that I was having issues not because of the birth scene itself (or the immediate postpartum stuff) but because I didn’t know how to transition into the chapter.
It came to me in the shower yesterday – an easy, effective way to do it. I’ve talked a little bit about it in my classes (especially my class on how to overcome writer’s block), but there’s something called incubation effect – where you can gain new insight into a situation or problem simply by stepping away from it and taking a break. When you return to the situation, you’ll often have a sudden insight that feels like an epiphany.
I’ve found that I have incubation effect reliably in places where my mind gets relaxed/bored – the shower, going for walks, while cooking or doing chores, or while driving in light/easy traffic.
And yesterday was no different. The fix for my issue was honestly pretty great because it hooks into something I alluded to briefly earlier in this book – and also accomplishes a bit of world-building at the same time. Makes it a win-win-win, I suppose.
We’ll see how today goes. At the moment, Mondays are my most difficult fiction-writing days. Before I can even think of getting a start on today’s 1666.67 NaNo words, I have to write 2000 words for another project, a live serial that I’m writing about a bunch of backstabbing angels. New episodes for it come out every Sunday, but between wanting a few days for it to sit so I can have fresh eyes on it to edit it and the up to 72-hour lead time on publishing the new episode, I try to get the new episode written on Mondays.
As a side note, I’m really enjoying being an early adopter of the Kindle Vella program – it’s been a really fun platform to write on (and it’s been worth my while as far as readers and financially) - so if anyone has questions about writing for it, feel free to ask! (Either here or via DM or just when I’m around the space). It’s been really interesting, and I’ve learned a ton these past few months trying it – about writing serials and this particular platform.
Anyway, that’s the latest update from the front lines of my NaNoWriMo challenge experience! If you’re still current, awesome! If you’ve fallen off the wagon, no worries – just climb right back on. Even if you don’t get to 50,000, the fact that you made a concerted effort to write more is a win in my book.
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I am going to jump on this moving train with you! I have a bit of research writing over the next few weeks and it will be fun (well maybe not fun), maybe interesting, to track my words. I just signed up. This will be good motivation. Thanks for organizing it.
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