You know what? f**k it. I'm gonna start on the novel one day early because who needs an extra day of planning when you have crippling social/monetary anxiety and powdered donuts?
I'm currently also doing this! (because I'm having a day and keep amusing myself with silly pictures).
Whoo! 10,461 words on my first day! An ∞x improvement over NaNoWriMo 2013 through 2016 combined! I know I'm only supposed to do 50,000 words, but I can tell you right f**cking now that it's gonna be longer than that. 10,000 words and I'm just now finished with the first Day*. *In the story. The story takes place over 14 days. This can't seriously be 140,000 words long. I'd rather cut it off somewhere between 70,000 to 100,000. Eh, it'll probably get cut down in post.
I wish I could do that in a day... My max floats around 4k in six hours and I've got no more time after that...
I use Write or Die. writeordie.com The paid version is surprisingly harrowing. I can do 4k a day easy... as long as you give me the full day and a lot of time to procrastinate. But with this, I'm able to push about that much in about an hour. So it's definitely an improvement on my end. And holy hell, does that sound like I'm reciting an ad. I can also tell, just by reading my notes, that tomorrow's 10,000 is going to go by so stupendously fast because that's the first part of the story that I so desperately want to write. I was hoping to get there today, and I might start on it before bed, but that's the point at which the story really starts going somewhere. The first 10k were basically setting everything up. Feels good to write what you want to write, especially when it's been on your mind for the better part of a decade. At the same time, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't constantly freaking out over "Oh god, I'm going publish this and it's gonna debut at #500,000 on Amazon and I'll try to get a BookBub and I'll be rejected and I should've just written a story like Awaken Online or Way of the Shaman instead of trying to be all original" and whatnot. Because yeah, it's definitely the story I wanna read— but I've long since learned that what I like and what the rest of the world likes are two circles that rarely overlap.
I haven't tried Write or Die before. I'll definitely have to check it out. With the long hours of my new job, I'm having some trouble getting a fire under my butt to do anything more creative than shower and go to bed during the week.
NaNoWriMo Tips: 1. Establish a routine 2. Write down ideas 3. Eat five dozen eggs 4. Become roughly the size of a barge 5. Kill the Beast Nooo oooone writes like Gaston makes deadlines like Gaston writes such needlessly complex outlines like Gaston.
Using my own experiences as an example, I'm fairly certain I'd be at about where I am right now whether or not I did that outline. The real question is how much time I'll spend editing. If I pantsed it, would I spend more time editing and rewriting or less? You can argue either way. Depending on how you work, you could have a completely different experience and your editing period could be a lot shorter as you realize that all you really need to do is clear up the story and fix any errors, whereas I could read it over and think "Yeah, no, 3/4 of this story just don't bloody work" and wind up going back in and redoing the whole thing. Or vice versa.
Done! I mean, not the novel, but I completed NaNo 2017. 52,187 words as of November 4th, at 7:38 CST. And holy hell no, I am not done with the novel. I'm just now getting to Day 5, and I'm still at least 500 to 1,000 words away from that.
It goes from November 1st to November 30th. Knocking out half the novel in four days was more to win NaNo than anything, but I may keep the pace up. Because I know for fact I'd probably drop out by the 10th otherwise.
No, no, I meant in the novel! If you're already 50k+ words in just "four days", how many days are you going to have overall?
Ah, I see. Long story short: 14 Days. Well that's just it. I've been doing roughly 8k to 10k a Day. What's more, one of the chapters actually cut off early. I realized it yesterday when I started on Day Four and kept referencing events that I couldn't remember writing in the novel itself but thought I did in the subnarrative, events that are pretty damn crucial to the plot. It just happened that I didn't paste those notes into the subnarrative. So that's at least another 3k to 4k words to Day 3. So altogether, that's probably 56k up to the present. Four Days. My intention, as I mentioned in my WIP thread, was to do two weeks. So to answer your question, 14 Days. It's becoming pretty damn clear that's not happening— otherwise I'd probably be pushing 150k to 200k for one book. I am super-damn lucky that every weekend is a climactic battle/event/plot twist (remember, it's basically a quasi-retelling of The World Ends With You), so I could actually end it on Day 7 if I wanted. Which works out for me. But it's Week 2 that has all the real fun stuff happening. I mean, week 1 is still a fun time (I wouldn't have written 52k words in four days if it wasn't), but Week 2 is the week where "Astral Falls", the story I'm working on, finally becomes the story that's been screaming from my mind to bleed through my fingers since 2009.
1. What kind of crack are you one and 2. can you send me some, Yuli??? I'm kind of behind since I'm in a lot more pain from my surgery than I expected, and my brain keeps doing that thing where it whispers, "Here's a better idea, do this instead!".