What we learned...

NaNoWriMo is over as of yesterday and I'm curious... what did y'all learn while trying to hammer out 50,000 words?

I learned:
1 - The first thousand are the hardest of the day
2 - The 20Ks were the pits and the 30Ks were loverly.
3 - Writing is infinately easier when you're alone in the house.
4 - Knowing that your brother is going to ask you what your wordcount is the moment that he walks in the door is a wonderful incentive.
5 - I only work for about an hour at a time and then my mind needs a ten minute break.
6 - Starting to write at 8 o'clock at night is a very baaaaaaaaad idea for me.
7 - Writing with your brother mussing up your hair and you're little sister reading over your shoulder is also a very baaaaaaaaaad idea.
8 - cookies are yummy, but highly distracting.

- Make friends with one of the 125k'ers. They make you feel horrible and hopeless and pathetic...and then you write five thousand words to make up for it.

- Plan out your first thousand words to get you through to where it begins to flow.

- Word wars= love.

- Have another story to obsess about whilst you write- you tend to go faster if you don't care about your story at all (but sometimes get terribly caught up in it...).

That encouraging people can be fun!

Snoink wrote:That encouraging people can be fun!

I wonder if you wrote 50,000 words of encouragement.

-I care about this novel like it was my baby. Even though I hate it and want to kill it/edit it! I'm attached to it, because its so long.

-I can write 1,000 words in 15 minutes if I try hard enough. So I can write 5k in an hour and 15 minutes.

-I write better (better=I get it out. NOT =it actually is good writing) if Its forced.

-I should be band from the chat if I haven't written enough/satisfied my need to write even though I hate the scene I'm n.

-back up your files like crazy

-Nanoism accidents are fun.

-Grammar/spelling check takes a lot longer when you haven't done it at all...

- I actually CAN write that much in a month.

-I can write 7K in one day.

-Writing under pressure actually forces me to finish a real novel.

-I'm sad that it's over.

-I CAN write a novel.

Yup that's what I learned. Also that I skipping plots holes and skipping time isn't a bad thing to do to stave off a frustrating part for later editing.

--First person is yummy. It gives you the opportunity to ramble.

--Writing buddies are a huge incentive to keep writing. Yay for competition!

--If you try hard enough, you CAN make time to write every day (though I haven't continued to do this since I won...)

--It's good to get friends from the real world to bug you about it. I had this one friend who asked me every day what my word count was, and I felt bad when it hadn't gone up much.

--I'm doing this again next year!!

-- That I can write if I force myself to.

-- Late-nights/Eearly-mornings are the best time to smash out two-thousand words in an hour, or something.

-- A reward system (After 1k, I will watch an episode of Stargate) makes me want to get the writing done.

-- Like Dusky said, it feels a lot easier to carry on after you've already written a thousand words.

-- Telling EVERYONE is a good move, and really helps my word count, 'cause I hate the thought of telling them I've done nothing.

-- Third week is when it really gets fun, 'cause I've got into a routine, but I'm past the 'second week slump'.

-- Once I start to see the finish line, I can write 4k or more in a day, just 'cause I'm so desperate to finish. [That was my last day.]

-- I work best when doing small chunks spread through the day. E.g. 200 words after breakfast, 500 before lunch, and generally a lot more after dark.

-- Rewards are good, but only if they're ones that you can resist if you haven't done the work that you wanted to do first. So for me, liquorice > chocolate.

- Writing some thousand words or more is easy in an hour

- Hours are hard to come by, quiet or not, at a computer

- Plot anamolies don't matter in NaNo and make for longer, odder scenes

- Fencing is diametrically oppositional to half-crazy NaNo writing--can't be done in the near vicinity of each other

- Inner editors are vaguely apprehensive of certain sword-wielding characters courtesy of Crysi

- A character's thoughts can easily give a good thousand words

- Write at least one indecisive character, as they double all word counts involved with them


...With all of that, I still didn't finish. !_! I believe I dropped off after about 12,000, and never got back to adding more than a couple hundred.

- don't give in to the depression attack at 35k

- you don't need an outline to write a lot of words

- never hold off a good plot development for later in the story. You need ideas for now. Holding off ideas makes you start holding every idea and it just doesn't work.

- writer's block is optional.

- if you get stuck, change the circumstances so you're not stuck anymore.

- sleep is good.

-- Don't procrastinate to the point where you have to write half your novel in week four.

-- After 35k everything goesreallyreallyfast!! and it's fun. ^_^

-- I love putting interesting plot twists in the last 5k of my novel, unplanned from before.

-- M&M's hit a really nice soft point about sitting on the top inch of my laptop keyboard for about fifteen minutes.

-- M&M's also sweat and leave a greasy sticky substance on my lappy.

-- Unfortunately, late at night, after everyone is asleep are my peak hours of writing hence...

-- Mornings and school sucks.

-- Always have a crazy character who can ramble on about nothing in particular when ever your plot line is failing or you've hit another rough patch of writer's block in week two.

-- And last... I LOVE NANO!!! However insane it makes me.

I learned that:

I did not write a novel over November, oh no. I wrote a plot hole!

The whole thing is a plot hole...