NaNoWriMo

Made it to 12k in the first 24 hours, woooop.

I took a break a little while ago to watch some Doctor Who, I'm getting tanked up on coffee, and I'm about to see if I can't at least write a couple thousand more before bed.

http://nanowrimo.org/participants/hawthorn/novels/across-centuries-whirlwind

That's awesome! Congrats. Here I am trying to break 500 words

Very impressive. It boggles my mind that people can get that sort of output in such a short space of time. I'm struggling to meet the required minimum at the moment (Averaging about 1300 a day on last check).

Any words of wisdom for a first timer?

I've had a ton of practice. My first nano, I fretted and struggled and barely got the minimum most days. I only got a few thousand over, and I finished with just a few days to spare. The next time I did nano, life was much busier, and I finished, getting my 50k by going back and 'fluffing' some of my previous pages, adding more descriptions, a few lines at a time, because when I finished the story it was still a little short of the goal and it was the final day. Ahaha. I didn't start getting really crazy with the insane huge wordcounts and finishing in less than half the time, until about my 7th nano.

It's easier if you try to divide up in your head what you have to do. Instead of constantly fretting over 50k, think to yourself. "I'm going to do 2000 words today. That's 500 in the morning, 500 after lunch. 500 in the afternoon, and another 500 before bed." A description of a room, or what someone looks like, and a brief conversation between two characters can make up 500 words.

Know where you are going. Sometimes I can dish out 1000s of words going on an unexpected tangent, but you need to know what you are writing about. Make a list, or a little mini outline that covers the events you want to happen.

Cut back on distractions. Sign out of Facebook and Skype, or anything you find yourself spending non productive time on. At least while writing, don't let yourself constantly get distracted and pulled into things like that.

Don't be scared that your writing isn't going to be good enough, or perfect, or that you aren't following classic writing rules, or that your story is too cliche. Even experienced and professional writers end up writing some crap during nano. It's funny how you can get better at writing by just slamming down words and writing as fast as you can, but it will happen. For now, don't worry about the quality, nano is about pumping out the words and finishing.

Music! Helps put you in the mood and filter out background noise. I like using stuff with no lyrics (or if it has them, they aren't in english) So my brain doesn't zero in on the lyrics and get hyper focused on the words.
Right now I'm using this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmUVXOXiLeM&list=PLkaZDAE6kBok2GbCeNklycyl7J_Ehr2Ka

Way to go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have only managed 1465 today and couldnt start yesterday but I plan on writing more tonight so we will see

I'm not doing Nano this year, but I'm a five time winner and used to routinely dish out 100k+ words in November. One time, 200k+ (I had wrist issues for a year after that one. I don't actually recommend it.)

For me, the most helpful thing was letting go of the idea that I was going to have a readable novel at the end of the month. To me (and according to the official handbook!), Nano is about writing your heart out, without worrying at all what anyone else thinks, and so I gave myself the gift of freedom from that fear. I made a pact with myself that I would show it to no one until after I'd had a chance to edit, reflect, and edit again. In fact, most of my Nano novels NO ONE has read, or else the version they've read has been drastically different from the raw material I created during NaNo itself. And I have absolutely no regrets about that. I didn't even participate in sharing excerpts during November, because to me, it's not at all what the high holy days of November are about. I don't even read the ones other people put up, because I don't want to have to compare my Nano writing to theirs and risk feeling bad or inadequate in a way that could slow down the creativity train.

This allowed me to just write. To write like the wind and not spend a fraction of a second second-guessing myself, censoring myself, or worrying that it wouldn't be "good enough." It became a wild bacchanalian of creativity, where well-structured dialog would give way to 3k words of notes to myself about ideas for world building, cultural idiosyncrasies for the fantasy kingdom I was creating, character background I wanted to find a way to work in, and so forth. So long as it was fiction, it did not have to make sense in that particular spot in the book. I'd sort it out later. November was for wildly creating, not holding anything back.

Not only did this give me massive raw building blocks for refining and expanding on my book(s) when NaNoWriMo was over - sometimes even enough material to create entire spin-off books, like sequels and prequels, or just other stories set in the same universe - the effect that this kind of unfettered writing has on your brain is hard to overstate. Colors were literally brighter during November. I was happier. People were more interesting. I had tons more energy. It was very much a perception and mood altering drug for me when approached this way.

I managed to just barely make 23k by midnight. I was hoping to get to 25k tonight before day two was officially over, but I got caught up in a few things.

I'm really tired and getting a bit burned out, but I am going to try to go ahead and push on to 25k before I go to bed.