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Dear reader,
Today I completed NaNo for the second time at 50,094 words.
It's a day early to boot! This experience was really very different from my last NaNo experience. I used to think that writing 2,000 words at a go was too hard, but that became my average towards the end. Which was good, because I had some very awful days in the middle of the month when I was too sick to write.
The methods that I used to write this round were very interesting. I more or less had a routine on workdays that went something like this:
- For 15 minutes in the morning, peck out at least a starting line to begin the day, more if inspired.
- Let the ideas stew while waiting for the bus.
- For the whole bus ride of about 30 minutes, write as much as possible. For me, this averaged about 200 words.
- Get to the office, and while waiting for emails to load, use the 750words site and write a full 750 words.
Sometimes when the empty page started annoying me or the writing was slow, I'd copy my words so far, paste them repeatedly until I made 750 words, and then used the insert button to type over the repeated words. That got my over the psychological barrier of a blank page.
- The above formed my core set of words of about 1,000 words. That would be my minimum.
- Once I had my core set of words down, I'd just leave my writing document open and add in words throughout the day when my work got frustrating, or a good idea hit me. On good days I'd hit my NaNo word count by doing this alone.
- I originally left writing on the train ride home for the days where I was below the 1.7k words needed to NaNo because I didn't want to burn out. Then I started falling behind and used this time to write as well. Doing this gave me 2,000 words on most days.
I also have to say I love technology. I wouldn't have been able to do this if I hadn't been able to load Evernote on my tablet, smartphone and office computer that I couldn't install anything on. There was sufficient web functionality for me to keep my versions straight, but also let me peck out words while the connection was bad without worrying too hard about losing stuff. I think the only exception was when my work computer couldn't connect to the internet for a good few days, but then I typed discreetly on my smartphone.
Weekends bizarrely weren't times for writing a lot, but instead for making sure that I kept my story straight. The idea of a puppy pound was also such a godsend.
I'm going to take a break by WRITING NOVEL RELATED PR0N. Which won't make it into the story itself, because I think that as much as I love pr0n, I don't want it to detract from the rest of my story. So it will only be as treats to myself =)
As for next month, I think I will focus on finishing the story. I'm up to Chapter 10 and one major reveal, but there's one more to go and a possible tonal shift in the final section. Other plans are: do a read through to fix grammar and spelling; start looking at reference images to bulk up descriptions and/or store for a novel related tumblr; record myself reading the novel aloud, and listen to it while editing to make sure there aren't any awkward bits.
We'll see how much of the last para gets done. ^_^
Today I completed NaNo for the second time at 50,094 words.
It's a day early to boot! This experience was really very different from my last NaNo experience. I used to think that writing 2,000 words at a go was too hard, but that became my average towards the end. Which was good, because I had some very awful days in the middle of the month when I was too sick to write.
The methods that I used to write this round were very interesting. I more or less had a routine on workdays that went something like this:
- For 15 minutes in the morning, peck out at least a starting line to begin the day, more if inspired.
- Let the ideas stew while waiting for the bus.
- For the whole bus ride of about 30 minutes, write as much as possible. For me, this averaged about 200 words.
- Get to the office, and while waiting for emails to load, use the 750words site and write a full 750 words.
Sometimes when the empty page started annoying me or the writing was slow, I'd copy my words so far, paste them repeatedly until I made 750 words, and then used the insert button to type over the repeated words. That got my over the psychological barrier of a blank page.
- The above formed my core set of words of about 1,000 words. That would be my minimum.
- Once I had my core set of words down, I'd just leave my writing document open and add in words throughout the day when my work got frustrating, or a good idea hit me. On good days I'd hit my NaNo word count by doing this alone.
- I originally left writing on the train ride home for the days where I was below the 1.7k words needed to NaNo because I didn't want to burn out. Then I started falling behind and used this time to write as well. Doing this gave me 2,000 words on most days.
I also have to say I love technology. I wouldn't have been able to do this if I hadn't been able to load Evernote on my tablet, smartphone and office computer that I couldn't install anything on. There was sufficient web functionality for me to keep my versions straight, but also let me peck out words while the connection was bad without worrying too hard about losing stuff. I think the only exception was when my work computer couldn't connect to the internet for a good few days, but then I typed discreetly on my smartphone.
Weekends bizarrely weren't times for writing a lot, but instead for making sure that I kept my story straight. The idea of a puppy pound was also such a godsend.
I'm going to take a break by WRITING NOVEL RELATED PR0N. Which won't make it into the story itself, because I think that as much as I love pr0n, I don't want it to detract from the rest of my story. So it will only be as treats to myself =)
As for next month, I think I will focus on finishing the story. I'm up to Chapter 10 and one major reveal, but there's one more to go and a possible tonal shift in the final section. Other plans are: do a read through to fix grammar and spelling; start looking at reference images to bulk up descriptions and/or store for a novel related tumblr; record myself reading the novel aloud, and listen to it while editing to make sure there aren't any awkward bits.
We'll see how much of the last para gets done. ^_^
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