/lit/ - Literature

100 words per week her, it should be 0.5% finished by December

>>5701380
haha loser, i've got 300 in two weeks

>>5701176
pls help OP i keep forgetting and i can only do like 300 words an hour

5000 or so. Most of which I wrote in a day. I'm sure I'm not alone in finding it difficult to go back to that horrible, forced mess.

>>5701605
>Most of which I wrote in a day
mirin
how long did your write for?

>>5701620
I took frequent breaks, but I guess 8 hours or so of solid work. It was exhausting, would not recommend, but sometimes I just sort of need to keep going, while other times I can't get started.

>>5701629
do that 20 days in a row and your novel will be finished
then you can take a year's break :P

>>5701633
Yeah, I wish. I have a bunch of half-started projects that I get distracted from and a year later realise I abandoned.

Later in life, when I'm confident in my writing ability, I'll get back to those, probably. I have loads of ideas stored away. Most of what I write is about the ideas, like world-building and characterization, storylines and themes. I've probably written more about what I write than I've actually written my writing.

>>5701645
>Later in life, when I'm confident in my writing ability
that will never happen. it's easy to keep putting actual work off. you'll keep putting it off, it's so easy. and you'll never develop a schedule or learn to force yourself through the awful process of a first draft.

>>5701176

10,500.

Yup. I'm getting there.

Time to start day writing 5,000 at a time.

>>5701176
I'm not even trying. I'm a "rebel," still working on a story I started a year ago.

i'm at 11k
So far so good...but i'm on day two of a writing break.

I've been slacking for the past couple of days, so I just got done writing 2400 words in 1-2 hours. Finally hit 15k.

280 words and going strong

>>5701176

7,400. Crippling.

>>5701176
14,000 words. was going great, getting the minimum daily goal pretty much everyday, workday or day off day. Got a day ahead one time at a write in, and stuck with it, cause I keep putting the word count in after midnight and I can just imagine doing that on the final day and hating myself.

I decided not to bother this year, because I realized that I am incapable of writing anything I can own up to within the time constraints NaNoWriMo imposes.

I seem to lack the sort of artistic conviction that lets you just write straight through something - first draft or not, I have to ponder over my progression, because otherwise I find myself cringing at the nonsense that my stylistic/thematic progression becomes.

>>5703960
I've found people who jump from project to project are actually really successful. A kind of procrastinating by being productive. But whatever you need to get rid of the self-conciousness really

>tfw job, school and gf

I don't think I'll ever get this novel finished. Why can't days be longer?
Anyone got advice on how to fit writing into a daily schedule?

>>5703042
You'd be completely right if that was the only thing I did. It's almost, but not quite, entirely the only thing I do.

>>5703983
Are you sure it doesn't just look like they're being really productive, because they seem to be doing so many things? Still, you give me hope.

>>5704185
No, it's not that they look constantly busy and I'm impressed with them always on the run doing something. It's the one that jump that actually have some sort of finished product. Very rarely do I find sticklers who like to do one thing at a time or go in chronological order etc get as many or any finished products.

i caved on the first day.

i thought i was ready this year. i'd been writing around 1500 words a day consistently for two months before hand (just short stories). i was amped. had my story out-lined. characters and pictures all clear in my head. first day came, i sat down to write and my mind was like how does i do english well.

psyched myself out i guess. c'est la vie.

Haven't written in a few days. Lot of things kept me busy and away from home. Had some good momentum going that got me just past 5000, but now it's hard to feel the same motivation.

>>5704214
since you gave up, write how you normally do now.

>>5704379
yeah, yeah, i'm back to it now.

my approach is just a little incongruous with nano-wrimo because i like to juggle several stories at once so i don't burn out on any given one (so i'm only about 7k words into my 'nano-wrimo' story). worse, often enough i'll drop a story completely if i'm not feeling it.

the former tendency isn't so much an issue, but the latter is and i was hoping nano-wrimo would be enough of a driver to get over that habit, since i think hiccups are inevitable and there's value in being able to work when you don't necessarily want to.

anyway, it wasn't enough motivation this time. i think i'll get there eventually; it's just going to be a slow road i guess.

My word count is at 11478. I'm writing a suspenseful Choose Your Own Adventure so hopefully I can boost it pretty quick.

I'm under 4k but I don't really play the NaNo game anymore. I lost the first times, learned how to win by killing myself to finish, and have lost since.

I've figured out my writing process, where I measure hours/week spent writing instead of wordcount. I'm more productive when not doing NaNo but I still like going to write ins to meet people and find writers groups.

13.5k words in. I'm basically at the point where I'm realizing that I haven't said anything that I wanted to say with this story and that all of the themes I planned on writing about have either been ignored or abandoned.

I am at 7300
This week My dad fell off a ladder and got hurt. Then my grandma fell and broke a few ribs.
Can't make excuses, but man have I been struggling to find time.

>>5704949
Keep going. It will get better. You will get better. Keep going.

>>5705012
Keep going. Experience love, experience sadness; do it all. Learn from it. Turn it into inspiration and material to write about. Keep going.

>>5704636
You can do it.

>>5704229
Start writing again. Beginning to write is the hardest part. Try to write in one long run and be amazed at what you can do.

>>5704097
Cut out the time you're spending on 4chan. Write at night. Finish it, unless it's a matter of life and death. Then fix that and come back with new experiences to write about.

>>5703892
>>5703910
Good job m8s.

>>5703733
Nice.

>>5703716
Get back to it.

WE'RE ALL GOING TO MAKE IT BROTHERS

My girlfriend broke up with me after five days of NaNo. I was hoping I could channel the grief and heartbreak into writing, but it hasn't bee going well. So I'm spending the rest of the month getting over her and making my outline for my book much more detailed. December will be my NaNo.

>>5705453
Also I'm only at 5k.

how many words a day is this shit supposed to be?

is it too late to start do you think?

i feel like trying but this is the first ive looked into this.

>>5705468
1,667 a day if starting from November 1st. If you started tomorrow you would have to write 2,500 words a day to finish on time. Starting today, 2,300ish. A less realistic alternative to these would be to pump out 16,670 words today and get on track with the normal 1,667 a day starting tomorrow, which is possible I guess.

>>5705515
Not to sound cocky, but I will probably try and do two-three days catchup.

I'm used to volume writing from uni, but that was philosophy so chances are i'm biting off more than i can chew but im sure it will be fun regardless!

thanks

What would you guys rate the quality of your to-be novel? Quantity is one thing, quality is another.

>>5705695
It's the best thing I've ever written, and undoubtedly is a colossal piece of fucking shit.

>>5705695
I like how it's turning out, but yeah, sometimes I feel like I'm just racing through and fudging up the order of it. doing it without an outline this year. But I feel like I'm taping into a better voice and tone than I usually am able to get to.

>>5705695
mine are basically notes and experiments for the real writing to take place after nano

>>5705695

I don't even know anymore. Its probably shit.

I decided to start on a fantasy idea i've been kicking around for awhile in the back of my mind, just for fun. I didn't actually sign up for the event, I'm just following the rules for my own fun and a challenge.

So I've never actually attempted a longer format fantasy story before.

WHAT THE FUCK, why is this so hard? Is this why fantasy mostly sucks and 99% of it is tropes?
I'm just trying to make some believable characters and a city. SUDDENLY I'm drawing fucking maps and doing the last 300 years of rough history. Where is the capitol city? why is it here? what the fuck does that characters title mean and why does he have it?

It's so fucking hard to actually make fantasy shit that sounds good and isn't trope-y. Then even if you DO base the idea properly you can't over explain shit or it becomes so boring so fucking quick.
I just want to explore these two characters I came up with, but everything I write opens a massive bag of dicks that needs to be flushed out.

Fuck this is going to end up so bad but I've put a lot of work into it so far. I have like 20 written pages of text and drawn maps, just, JUST so that I can have characters talk to each other or about things that are going on and not have myself fuck up later and forget what/where shit is happening.

what a fucking mess.

Just cleared 10,799 total word count, 2238 of which came this morning. I got a slow start on NaNoWriMo but I'm building steam. Thank you based gods for granting me a chill-ass job where I can do pretty much whatever I want for 60% of my graveyard shift. Feels good man.

>anglos seriously count use of "the" towards the final word count

>>5707016
'the' is a word
so it is counted
pleb

>>5706967
what job?

>>5707016
Sorry you need to use at least ten substantial words to post here. Away cretin.

Added 2000 words to my Nano word count today!

i just came back from a write in. met some peeps. wrote some words. ate some food and drank some drink.

>>5707903
16,041 - i took a day to go back and edit and it fucking killed me, now it's all catch up

Side character just died. I wanted to spend time writing the prose. It's shit because I have to make the quota for the day

>>5705695
I am sure 95% of all writers do this: They write out their book and it is shit. They then spend much more time editing and rewriting the book, and then the book is not so shit anymore.
It is much easier to write a book, then it is to turn the book into a good one.

Main thing I learned from NaNoWriMo is write, write, write, don't worry about editing.
It is hard to do this. Because I think we all agree; the first thing we write is shit, the thing we fix it into is much better. So we want to fix the dumb shit we wrote.

>>5706742
Man, I'm so there with you. I feel the urge to over-explain everything in my fantasy novel, and it's hard not to even when I'm trying to make a novel which is the exact opposite of that.

Basically, I recently read a Dresden Files book and everything felt so forced and explained that I decided to write this in the exact opposite way. It's so hard to know how much anybody could understand the world I created, though, so I add more explanation here and there and suddenly it's like a whole page explaining a simple concept.

I just try to keep telling myself that readers are smart, they pick up on tropes about fantasy worlds so easily that I shouldn't have to explain almost anything, and they'll understand.

>>5708953
>ohshitwhatareyoudoing.jpg
Bad anon! No editing or revision until December 1st.

>>5707041
Direct Support Professional at a group home for developmentally disabled adults. Not much to do on graveyard. I do a little light housekeeping and make sure the sex offenders don't run off in the middle of the night. When they're sleeping and the house is clean, I write.

>>5709510
If readers were smart, then Twilight would not have sold millions.

14k words here, haven't written in 5 days. Real world responsibilities hit me. I'm not sure I will go back to writing.

After you guys are done, you could put your novels on Widbook so you can critique each other's work.

>>5710335
nanos are horrible. i hope no one would post them without taking a good long while to edit first

7526 words. Not written a thing in 3 days. Still like my story, but hate how I am writing it.

>>5709510
It's not that readers aren't smart, it's that they've been convinced that over explaining is a GOOD thing. It's called "world building."

>>5710356
This. The NaNo event creates the alpha build of a novel. You should at least clean it up before you call in the beta testers.

Guys, I'm 24k in and feel sick. I haven't eaten in like two weeks, I weighed myself the other day and I've lost 4 pounds, my sleeping cycle is fucked and though I'll probably win this round it might cost me my life. Is it normal to be throwing up from staring at a screen for so long?

>>5704847
I can see that working better. Been trying to tabulate and get to 40hrs dedicated to my 'writing career.' Been missing it by 5hr, sometimes 20. Uphill battle, but I can see how keeping up with amount of hours vs. word count is too much, ya gotta pick one to push, and it's whatever leads to better productivity.

>>5710757
It's normal for a writer.

>you chose this

>>5706742
Keep going! Just reading this is awesome. The process is a pain but a journey and it's awesome to read about. And it'll be awesome to read the final product too. Sometimes, when you're going through the shit, it sucks and you're like, why am I doing this to myself. But then look again at the events and the story you are currently playing out. It's an adventure! You wouldn't be the protagonist in your own story without the struggles. btw, it might take you longer than any of us, although, if you're at 20pages already, you're kicking butt already, considering the amount of work you're putting in is a lot more than mine. (romance)

Started 5 days late and have been forcing every word. Missed a day of writing so caught up yesterday by doing 5000 words which fried me. Completely ignored writing today. finding it hard to force myself to get back and add more to the pile of forced shit

>>5710335
>>5710356

I honestly wouldn't, anons. To be perfectly blunt I'm sure most of them will be shit but if I see a good one, I'm grabbing it and throwing it on Amazon or some shit before anyone else can and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Post chapters and take care.

>>5712665

I hope you die

>>5712854

I hope I die too buddy. Let's hope it comes soon and is over quickly.

>>5712869
I'll write a book about it

Slowly. I'm only at 2,000ish words at the moment. I wrote this shit teir postmodernish novels the last few years that easily hit the word count, but I couldn't suffer through the rereading and editing because they were such trash.

3,800 here

I'm slowly getting into it. Luckily I have played my share of Binding of Isaac and now I don't feel the need to play vidya instead of writing anymore. Also, I have arrange some free time later this month to push for the 50,000.

imagine if you all devoted this time to something that mattered

Have any /lit/erati used past NaNoWriMo events to kickstart the writing of a novel that eventually got published? It would be nice to read some success stories if we have any.

>>5712665
That's why the first people I'm going to show my novel to are my two best friends IRL. They're also doing NaNo so we can all trade feedback.

this is the last thing i wrote after 55K words and im afraind i might be loosing steam

> He was called Robert Laboush. it would have been unfair to say that Robert was a booring person, everyone is special, we are all different. It doesnt matter how unremarcable someone might seem, we all have an inner world filled with stories, ideas, desires, dramas and dreams. we are all a little crazy and Robert was no exception ( if he was an exception that same exceptionality is what would give him distinction). he was just as special as all those other seven billion persons who were more or less special than him....well is not like it was a competition or anything anyway.

>>5714729
the problem with ever asking who on /lit/ has published is that usually a writing career is such a fragile creature nobody wants to endanger it further by associating with 4chan.

Not sure about nanowimo but i know there are some published people on lit.

Halfway done, bitches!!!

Has anyone read the novels of the winners?

How are they?

>>5715956
they're extremely rough drafts.

>>5714729
like water for elephants and the night circus are probably the two most famous nanowrimo novels.

>>5715481
agreed. i will get published eventually but there's nothing to gain by admitting i'm a 4channer.