Creepy-Crawly — NaNoWriMo Day 11

NaNoWriMo, writing 1 Minute

Down to a crawl. I got a little over 1100 words written yesterday, so about 500 short of the daily goal. I’ve been trying to get 2000 words a day. I’m still marginally ahead of where I’d be at a steady pace of 1667 words per day, so not too bad but I’m starting to fear falling into a repeat of last year’s outcome.

I knew eventually I was going to write this book as it’s intended to be the prequel to the novel I was working on before I started the vampire novel, but I had done almost no planning for it, had the barest idea of a couple of characters, the setting. Now I’m struggling to get acquainted with the characters and I have so much research I’m going to have to go back and do later when there’s time. Right now I’m just focusing on word count, and wow is this bad!  I’m taking Chris Baty’s suggestion of putting anything I’m going to take out later in bold italics but not actually deleting it. I figure if he says it’s fair game, I’m good with it. I already know some scenes will be deleted in toto, the storyline may change, some conversations that are in there now will never see the light of day.

But that’s ok. I’m getting to know my characters, and it’s all part of the process. Although, I really need to have a chat with female MC  ’cause sometimes I just want to smack her.

Published by D. D. Syrdal

Writer of vampire stories and science fiction. First novel, "Revenants Abroad", available now at Amazon. If you like a vampire you can go out drinking with and still respect yourself in the morning, I think you'd like Andrej.

Published

12 thoughts on “Creepy-Crawly — NaNoWriMo Day 11”

  1. You’ll catch up. I felt well enough to crank out a little better than 2K tonight – the fever’s gone and I finally felt as though my words were making sense. That’s not enough to bring me up to speed (my goal is 2k words per day, 6 days a week) but I have this nutty idea that I might be able to catch up towards Thanksgiving when I have a few days off and no big family obligations. We’ll see!

    Like

  2. Glad you’re feeling better. Sounds like you had the flu? Chicken soup and megadoses of Vitamin C! I’m dealing with a sore throat and congestion, but no other symptoms (other than fatigue).

    Just keep chugging on the word count. If you get a couple days off you’ll probably be able to make up a lot of it. Someone in my regional forum today said she’d done 12,000 words in one day!!!! I dream of that kind of day.

    Like

  4. It feels good to be a couple days ahead of schedule on word count. Now that I’m feeling crappy, though, I don’t know how much I’ll get done today or tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be well enough to go to the write-in Sunday, I am really enjoying those! They’re such a great boost for word count, and all the moral support of fellow WriMos is wonderful. We had a huge turnout last weekend. I can’t even tell you how many people came, it was a scream.

    Like

  5. What I learned at the doctor yesterday is that although everybody & their mother seems to be sick, there are actually a few different strains going around – H1N1(swine flU), influenza A, and a nasty little respiratory infection, which is what I had – no barrel of laffs, but at least I didn’t have to contend w/nausea or debilitating body aches. I’m back at work, feeling pretty human, and hope to crank out some word count tonight. I actaully arrived last night at something that resembled the end of a chapter :)!

    Like

  6. Congrats! That feels so good, doesn’t it? 🙂 Strangely, I hardly ever make chapter breaks. I’ll have to go back and figure that out later. I made the mistake of inserting the 5 asterisks for chapter breaks in the vampire novel, and now I can’t get rid of them to move stuff around! I don’t know if it’s a difference between the different versions of Word I’m using (97-2003 at the office, 2007 at home on the new laptop). I can’t figure out how to delete the bloody line of squares it turns into. 😦

    This is just a cold or maybe that respiratory infection. I won’t go into the symptoms, but I have no fever, bodyaches or chills, none of the tell-tale signs of flu. I ramped up the Vit. C again, and have my Gypsy Cold Care tea to drink.

    Like

    1. Eventually you might just have to cut the text previous to the asterisks/ squares into a fresh document. I love Word but every once in a while it does something wacky that I can neither understand nor undo.

      I keep the wellness tea people in business – whether it’s psychological or not, I truly feel better after a nice hot cup of Throat Soother tea w/honey. Another odd-sounding but soothing beverage is a few spoons of orange-flavored Tang dissolved in hot water – I never want this unless I’m sick, but when I am it’s a big help.

      Like

      1. I found the answer to getting rid of those things:

        Get Rid of Little Black Squares

        I don’t know why that page didn’t come up in my search before, but there it is if anyone else is having the same problem. It’s the paragraph border that needs to be set to “none” and away they go! That site, AllExperts, has been very handy.

        Like

  8. You guys are blowing me away with the word count — I’m only up to a bit over 7K, but I am proud of the fact that I get something down everyday. It’s like exercise, once I get into the habit, I miss doing it at the appointed time. And with me there was a psychological block — my thinking that there aren’t enough hours in a day to write. I’ve surprised myself with the “just do it” aspect, and even if I don’t make the 50K it will give me the confidence to keep at it (and even enjoy it) every day.

    Thanks again for all the support and advice. It does help! I can’t really get to any of the local write-ins (I get home too late on the weekdays and my weekends are a crush from now til Thanksgiving as we wrap up a re-modeling project), but i’m hoping to add a few hours over this weekend to pump it up a notch.

    Knock wood I haven’t been hit with any of these bugs yet, but with a mass-transit commute I feel like I’m spinning on the wheel of disease roulette.

    Like

    1. That’s fantastic, Rosie, that you’re managing to make (or take?) the time to do it! It’s HARD to get into the habit, we all understand. That you’re doing it at all is a major accomplishment. Don’t feel bad about the word count, it’s the getting into the habit that is the most important thing.

      Hope you can avoid the flus and colds and all!

      Like

Comments are closed.