November 8 – Day 8. Word count: 5040 - Dave

Well, what a year this week has been. After coming out on fire the first 4 days, motivation sunk. These are actually the first words I’ve written since Tuesday. While I am behind by a few days, I am still confident that I’ll get to the 50k by the 30th. Onto what is written. I don’t know why I am surprised by the discovery writing (Pantsing) process, but it never ceases to amaze me. I had a solid idea about where I wanted to start, but once I started typing, the opening scene morphed into something different. Then, about 1000 words in, the story went hard left and I was in the middle of a nightmare sequence. I am a true believer of the characters and the story taking the writer where they want to go rather than forcing them the way that we want them to. I’m not sure where the main story is going yet, but I am excited on where it will go.

This week brings up some good points about this NaNoWriMo experience. It is all too often that we can get discouraged and feel like giving up when we fall behind that 1667 word count per day par. Some days the words will flow and we will crush that goal and go beyond. My personal record is 13k in one day I think. Since we aren’t investing anything but time, even if we do not hit that daily word count goal, we are still in good shape. Also, any words written – 100 to 13K- are good words and will contribute to the story we are telling. We can’t tell a story on a blank page, can’t edit words that are unwritten. Keep going, even if you find yourself “behind” or unmotivated for a few days. You’ll make it; we have 22 days.

Also, allowing the story to go where it wants to keeps us from staring at the page and not writing as we try to force the narrative in a direction we want it to go, rather than letting the characters tell us what the story is. We can have our general directions, plot points, and scenes we love to write, but allowing the creative process to flow and allow characters to adventure and tell their own tale, allows for some real interesting writing.

So, I leave you know to put more words to the page, play catch-up a bit. Keep it up, we’re heading into some difficult writing times, the muddy or murky middle. Don’t get discouraged, tell your tale, and we’ll see what the next week brings.

Joe Scipione

5 days and about 9,000 words

I knew this would be hard, but I didn’t realize it would be this hard. I write most days as it is, right around 1000 words a day. I think over the years of doing that, my brain has grown accustomed to stopping its creative juices at 1000 words. So once I hit 1000 words in a sitting, I start to lose momentum. If I’m at a good part in the story I can keep going easily (as I’ve done prior to this) but if it’s a scene moving from one section to the next, or worse, the end of a chapter, I have a hard time getting motivated to keep going. I’m sure my brain will adjust.

I have a few days coming up where I can sit down to write a few times and I’m hoping I can hit 1000 or so words each time to play a little catch up since I’m behind the word count right now.

As far as the story is going, I’m liking the direction it’s taking and that is keeping me motivated even though I’m falling behind the Nanowrimo word count. If the point of this month is to get most of, not all of, a novel written then whatever happens at the end of the month I will have achieved that goal. Whether or not I hit the 50,000 word goal remains to be seen. Until next week....

Bud Fugate

Ok, so I figured out how chapters work! Which is fantastic news, I’ve been using as a marker for scenes I want to write about on specific days. The first three days of the month went really well, I hit my numbers and on some days exceeded but then the election happened and my phone exploded with all sorts of conspiracy theories about voter fraud, Russian hackers, shapeshifters with polygon iris and MKUltra brainwashing so my writing suffered. Then the next day I had a migraine, certainly a government plot to stop me from sharing the truth and my numbers dipped again.

On Thursday I started to focus, I turned on The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 and pecked away at the backlog of words that grew over the last few days. Now, I am happy to report that I am all caught up! Actually I’m a few words over, there’s just one problem…

This is supposed to be a horror novel and so far it’s just a romance novel. At 10k words this is the longest thing I have ever written and by this time in a normal story I write someone would have had their entrails ripped out, transformed into a booger monster or ate a fleshy part of another human. It’s weird to have written this much and nothing scary happen or no one died. Just a growing pain of the longer form that I need to get used to.

7 days in still having fun, still learning a lot.

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Written by Dave, Joe, and Bud!