Today, in Poor Decisions:

[soc_puppet]

Okay, I've done it. I've signed up.

I am now Socchan at NaNoWriMo.org.

...I have no idea what I'm doing! 8Dbb Someone hold my hand please.


Since I'm planning to write by hand, I guess getting a good words-per-page estimate would be a good idea? And/or finding someone to help me count words ._.a I'll scan the damn pages if I have to! ...Alternately, I will work with the estimate, and aim to be finished on the twenty-fifth, so I can have a good five days to type it up.

I'll also be researching the heck out of things like chronic pain. And stuff. Oh, and purchasing drinks with caffeine. Lots of them.



Clearly, my birthday being on the last day of November is divine will, as being done with NaNo will likely be the most wonderful present ever.

Comments

[inarticulate]

How I got a general idea of handwritten wordcount is by counting a number of lines and averaging that number and then counting the number of lines on a page, and, well. It won't get you an exact total, but it'll be decent enough for Nano, which isn't a SUPER EXACT sort of thing. ♥

[soc_puppet]

XD That sounds much easier than I was planning. I was going to go for a whole page or three and then average those out; by lines seems much simpler, and possibly more accurate.

[lightbird]

Good for you! Best of luck. That will be an amazing birthday present. :D

I signed up for it 1 year (I think last year). And never wrote a word for it. I totally fail.

[soc_puppet]

Thank you! And yes, I suspect it will X3

I'm going to give it my best shot! And please feel free to bug me to continue if I post about suffering from Wanting-To-Quit-Already-Itus in the second week or so ;)

[pellucere.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, good luck! I wish I could do NaNo too this year ):

I found it easiest to aim for a solid 2000 words a day -- it's a nice round number, it's big enough to give you a solid sense of accomplishment but it's small enough to manage, and it gives you those five spare days to type it up. And yeah, if you'll be writing by hand, then you should do the thing where you write a few lines, count the words, divide by number of lines, then divide 50,000 by that number to see how many lines you need to write. Don't stress if you don't do exactly your required amount each day, because sometimes you'll be on a high and doing twice your required amount, and some days it'll be a slog just to get through two-thirds of it. It evens itself out over the course of the month.

Get down at least a basic chapter-by-chapter outline for the plot, but know that it's not the end of the world if you deviate from it -- sometimes stories just morph on you. What I did was sort the plot/subplots into exactly twenty-five sections on the outline, so that I could write a chapter a day and not have to worry too much about picking up again in the middle of a scene. Maybe that would work for you?

[soc_puppet]

T-thanks ^^b

That's about what I was planning to aim for; I did the math to account for the five typing days, and there's nothing wrong with finishing early ;) ...I guess this is a more literal example of a word problem? *ba-dum ching!*

Hmmm, that might require a bit of stretching - which only suggests that my idea wasn't necessarily long enough in the first place. Maybe I'll "pad" it with some short-stories-in-the-same-universe.

[ytak.livejournal.com]

*holds hand*

pellucere is right. 2000 words a day is a good goal. If you do that and have a bad day or two, then you don't fall behind. You're ambitious to write it by hand. There is no way I could do it that way. I type much faster than I write.

Or you could write a story like I do and wing it most of the way. :) Truth be told, I've got more outlined this time around than I have in years. Mysterys must be plotted.

[soc_puppet]

*wringing your hand now kthx*

I was definitely thinking in that area, goal-wise. The good thing about writing by hand is that I can take it with me. AWAY from the computer, and similar distractions. And while I can technically get words out at a faster rate while typing, my writing pace seems to be about the same. *something of a perfectionist - yes, even in first drafts*

I've got a really basic plot idea down, but it could probably stand a little bit of fleshing out. And having a good idea of what the end will be has always helped me actually finish stuff in the past, so.

[ytak.livejournal.com]

First of all, you need to understand something. Take your perfectionist self and your internal editor and throw them in a closet and lock the door. Leave them there for the month of November. They have no place during NaNoWriMo. It's all about quantity, not quality. If I ever even dreamed of showing you my third year novel, you'd understand (if it were paper, I'd probably burn it, it's that bad).

That's good to hear. A basic plot helps a lot. I'm plotting more than I ever have before (mystery novels require it) but I intend to have fun while writing it. And then there is the fine are of word padding. Oh! And I recommend a gratuitous explosion (it worked for last year's novel).

[soc_puppet]

I'll try :/ I mean, I do get the point of it, I really do, but I don't think I've ever written anything without a modicum of my perfectionist self contributing, so I don't know how well it will go. If I can, though, I probably will.

...Actually, a gratuitous explosion would probably solve my "not enough plot" problem nicely. *makes note of this* And I have no problem pulling an S. Morgenstern and describing the scenery/clothing/what-have-you for pages and pages if need be. Or, well, paragraphs and paragraphs, at least.

[ytak.livejournal.com]

It isn't easy, at first. Once I get my editor locked away, I have -fun-. Instead, my personal cheering squad tells me to write.

It does! It solved my problem last year. My story was ho-hum and then I remembered I promised myself an explosion. The next thing I know, my story has turned on its head and there is a global war that has my character making a break for it off the planet (it takes place on another planet). It made my story interesting.