NaNoWriMo 2011: Day 22 & 23 - The End?

Daily: 1539
Total: 32997
Last Sentence: "But what about your girlfriend?"

This may be the end, my friends - at least of my chances of winning NaNo. This is my word count from yesterday, the 22nd. After writing that last, uninspiring sentence I had a major melt-down which led to crying which led to a horrible sinus headache that I still have as I write this, 30+ hours later. I wrote nothing today and I doubt that I will write anything tomorrow because of Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my husband who is always willing to take time out from work to talk me down from my melt-downs and who has encouraged me to at least write the end of my story, since at this point that's the only part of my story that I know. Apparently the "Middle" is what kills me - I can plot beginnings and endings but whenever I try to do middles, it always ends up feeling like it's all fluffy filler and completely pointless. Middles are obviously something I need to work on.

My new goal is to write my ending before NaNo ends. I most likely will update only on days when I write.

To everyone else who is still doing NaNo, good luck to you! I hope you'll be able to reach your goals, whatever they may be.

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 21

Daily: 1072
Total: 31458
Last Sentence: “This doesn’t look like Camden,” he said. Indeed, it was not.

NaNoWriMo 2011: Day 19 & 20

Daily: 1982
Total: 30386
Last Sentence: “It’s got the basics and will do for one night."

I probably did four hundred or so words by hand yesterday but I didn't type them in until today. I'm trying, I really am, but it's just not fun any more. I struggle to come up with "what happens next?" Maybe it's my fault for trying to make things happen rather that letting them happen - I've written myself in to a corner and now the only way out seems unnatural and complicated. But at this point when I'm 3000 words behind, I can't afford to go back and rewrite. My only choice is to keep pushing forward and hope it all works out in the end.

NaNoWriMo 2011: Day 18

Daily: 1602
Total: 28404
Last Sentence: “Sit down, Simon,” the demon said. “Let’s talk."

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 16 and 17

Daily Words: 1784
Total Words: 26802
Last Sentence: “Whoops,” Dennis said.

I had a black day yesterday. I spent five hours at the computer and wrote around 300 words before deciding I was ready to quit for good (there was much crying and gnashing of teeth). Today didn't start out much better, but after forcing myself to write about 1500 words by hand, I got back in the groove. I ended with my characters being arrested, which gives me some good places to go tomorrow. Hopefully over the next few days I can catch up since I'm now behind by a day.

NaNoWriMo 2011: Day 15

Daily: 2400
Total: 25018
Last Sentence: “Nonsense. I wasn’t thinking, that’s all.”

Hate it, hate it, hate it. But I've got to force myself to get through my "hate it" phase or I'll never finish. *Sigh*

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 14

Daily: 844 :(
Total: 22618
Last Sentence: "Relax, princess," Cherry said, rolling her eyes. “That’s my coffin, not yours.”

It's just not gonna happen tonight! Something's better than nothing, I guess.

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 12 and 13

Daily Words: 2277
Total Words: 21774
Last Sentence: He tried not to think about the coffins that lined the walls as he took one shuffling step, then another, through the debris of leaves, moss and who knows what else that lined the floor of the catacombs.

Didn't get any writing done yesterday (I went to Disney on Ice with a friend and her kids) but caught up today. Disappointingly this caused me to lose my lead of about 1000 words, which I had hoped to save up for Thanksgiving. I'll try to get ahead again but I don't know if that's going to happen.

I was also disappointed to find that I forgot to update the actual NaNoWriMo site with my daily word count for the past few days. It's up to date now, but on my stats graph it looks like I wrote nothing for five days and then wrote 11500 words all in one day. I wish!

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 11

Daily Words: 1692
Total Words: 19497
Last Sentence: “I don’t know,” she said, exasperated. “Just fight him!”

Ugh, I am feeling the "I'm nearly to 20K and I'm starting to hate this" blues coming on. For some reason I always get this way around 20K and often it causes me to give up. The ideas stop flowing and everything starts to feel forced. I hope I can push through it this time.

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 10

Daily Words: 2186
Total Words: 17805
Last Sentence: “Go, my love!” she called after Dennis. “You’re free!”

I managed to buckled down today and challenged myself to write 1000 words in an hour. It ended up being more like an hour and ten minutes, but that's still pretty good. Two hours and twenty minutes later, I had 2186 words (okay, I did break for lunch in there, but still!).

I'm starting to think that I may need to change my main character's last name. He is male, does not have a PhD and his last name is "Bean." Guess what everyone calls him?

Yup, Mr. Bean.

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 9

Daily Words: 1683
Total Words: 15619
Last Sentence: “Stay away from me!” Simon dodged around the creature, out in to the hall, through the kitchen and, still completely nude, he ran out of the flat.

Yikes, I need to get it together. With practically the whole day free, it should not take me until 10 PM to get my 1667 words. Here's to hoping it gets better tomorrow!

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 7 and Day 8

Daily Words: 3582
Total Words: 13936
Last Sentence: “We were discussing my theory about your associate here,” Mammon said.

I think I only got about 400 words written yesterday (and that was after sitting at the computer for three hours). I had nothing planned for today, so I was able to make up what I didn't do yesterday in addition to meeting today's goal.

A lot of it was being at a very dull point in the story - one character visits the eye doctor, the other is looking for a lost book. Once I got past those scenes, it got much easier.

Here are the responses I got when I asked people to guess my story from the cover:

I think it has something to do with trains or subways, maybe a mystery on the train.  - Charlotte

Based on the cover and title I'm guessing there is a killer loose in the subway system somewhere?  - Erika Jean

I think it is about a writer who needs to desperately finish his book but is having some psychological battle with a ghost who may or may not be a figment of his imagination. - Brigette

Everyone was partially right. It does involve trains and subways, it is about a writer and there are ghosts...and demons, and grim reapers and probably lots of other supernatural beings! I'm not quite at the point where I want to post a full description (what if I decide to change something?) but I will say what I said over at the NaNoWriMo site: it's a paranormal "bromance." Think of that what you will! ;)

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 6

Words Today: 173
Total Words: 10354
Last Sentence: “These lights, are they spots? Flashes? When do you see them?”

It was a late finish today, but I managed. I've got a few responses to yesterday's question about my novel's mock cover, but I'm going to wait a little longer before talking about them in case anyone else wants to guess. I suppose I'm going to have to finally share a description of the story, which scares me more than writing 50,000 words in a month!

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 5 (With Title and Cover!)

I finally got an idea for my title last night - a play on the word "deadline." Of course the first thing I did was stick "deadline" in an Amazon book search. It came back with about seven different books, all titled "Deadline." I don't need that kind of competition, so I decided to go with "Catching the Dead Line" as my rough draft title. It's better than what I had been calling it, which was "Something With Death in the Title"!

My reward to myself today for reaching my word count was making a fake cover. I had hoped to upload it to the NaNo site, but apparently they haven't got the book cover feature working yet so here will have to do. I also made a tiny version to make sure everything was readable at Amazon thumbnail size:

So I have a question for anyone out there:

Based solely on the title and cover, what do you think my story is about?

I'm curious to see how effective the title and cover are in getting the story across. There's no wrong answer! Please post your thoughts in the comments. Thanks!

***

Daily Word Count: 1686
Total Word Count: 8641
Last Sentence: As he passed a set of cranes, relics from the days when the docks where home to ships and warehouses instead of luxury flats and trendy restaurants, he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye.

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 4

Daily Word Count: 1667
Total Word Count: 6939
Last Sentence: “What have you done now?” she asked.

Today wasn't too bad. By that I mean that it still seemed like it took as long to get my words as yesterday, but they seemed to be coming easier. I'm nervous about the weekend because normally I don't write on Saturday and Sunday. I'm not far enough ahead right now to skip them though, so I'm going to have to buckle down!

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 3

Daily Word Count: 1689

Total Word Count: 5272

Last Sentence: “We need to talk about Dennis, Headmaster.”

Today dragged. I kept finding things to do (like Googling London flats for my characters) instead of writing. Eventually I had to turn on Freedom on for an hour to get myself started. That results in 400 words. I used Write or Die for another hour to get 1000 words and then spent another hour and a half pecking out the last 189 words. Ugh.

It's one of those days when I think, if I'm having to force myself to write, does that mean I'm not cut out for it? Or does it just mean that I'll never be one of those people who can hammer out a dozen books a year?

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 2

Today wasn't too rough, though thanks to some internet distractions it did take me most of the afternoon to get my 1667 words. On a whim I made a major change in how my two main characters meet. Hopefully I won't end up regretting it down the line!

Daily Words: 1874

Total Words: 3584

Last Sentence: He would do it right that time, and no one would ever know the difference.

NaNoWriMo 2011 Day 1

I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month again - this is my third year. Hopefully this time goes better than the Camp NaNoWriMo I attempted over the summer! I pretty much crashed and burned then.

Because I'm a little 'stitious right now and have been feeling like my stories "disappear" as soon as I start talking publically about them, I'm not going to post a synopsis (yet). All I'll say is that it's a paranormal "bromance" and that the word "Death" will probably be in the title.

I'm going to try to do a short post every day recapping how it goes (or doesn't go). At the very least I'll post my word count and last sentence. If I get ahead and am able to skip some days (I try to do that for the weekends) I won't post on those days.

If you're participating in NaNo, let me know and feel free to add me as a writing buddy on the site. My username there is Clockwise.

Daily Words: 1710

Total Words: 1710

Last Sentence: “I was just hoping I could get you to sign this.”