Saturday, November 24, 2012

NaNoWriMo Update

You know how no matter how nicely you put away those earbud headphones, they still end up completely tangled the next time you take them out? (I blame that on what I call headphone gremlins. Nasty, mischievous creatures.) Well my novel feels like a huge box of hundreds of tangled up headphones. It is messy. It is out of order. It is a messy, out of order, tangled jumble of character development and storyline.

All right, maybe it's not THAT bad. But I am a neat freak and so it is bugging me! But NaNoWriMo is all about pumping out that first draft without worrying about going back to edit, so as much as I want to, I am trying not to look back.

On the upside, since I started late to NaNo, I made a 30,000 word goal for myself, and I am at 26,000 words now, so I've upped my goal to 40,000 by the end of the month. Hurray for getting words down on the page!

How is your NaNo project coming? Fighting off the temptation of going back to edit and organize too? One week of madness left to go!

22 comments:

  1. That's the hardest thing about NaNo, not looking back and editing. But it is a great way to just pound out a book and then go back and make it all nice and neat.
    Hopefully I will be able to participate next year. Good luck on reaching your goal! You can do it. :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm surprised how messy it is even though I started with an outline! The pantsing just comes out when I start to write, I guess... Thanks!

      Delete
  2. Yeah, I found Nano impossible. I just cant' write that way. But I truly admire everyone who is succeeding in it. Good luck!! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I admire those who have surpassed the 50,000 word mark already!

      Delete
  3. You can do it!
    And yes, my earbuds get tangled all the time. Earbud gremlins.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great progress! I have a hard time plowing through without revising, too. :-P

    ReplyDelete
  5. YAY! Glad you joined in on the NaNo fun, and that you've set a new goal (I started on time, and my goal's been bumped down to 35K. Thanks a lot, grad school haha)

    Good luck with the rest of NaNo!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well 35 is certainly better than nothing! Good luck to you as well :)

      Delete
  6. I just commented on another blog that my NaNo novel was messy - the headphone analogy is perfect! I can't wait to edit, because I'm sure I've left out loads of important stuff, but I'm trying hard not to until December. Which means, I'm writing rubbish for the word count, but I don't care. Good luck reaching 40k!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. haha I feel the same. Good luck to you as well!

      Delete
  7. So, so, SO cool, Allison. You are totally rockin' it! Proud of you! You'll easily reach 40k! :D

    ReplyDelete
  8. That is cool that you are exceeding your goal. I am about 400 words behind after this holiday, but I wrote over 3k today, so I'm feeling okay. Only a few more days to go, too, which is unbelievable. Dude, my headphones have gremlins, too. As do my stories. I finished my last year's Nano novel for 15k and then wrote a bunch of short stories to fill in the rest of the word count. The stories are a mess, but I'll edit them later. That's what December is for!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hear, hear. Although I think my December will be still for finishing the first draft. I'm hoping to get it to 80,000 words eventually.

      Delete
  9. You can do it, Allison! You might even be able to hit the full 50K too, which'll be awesome.

    As for the tangle goblins (they really exist) I heard that the reason why earphones get tangled so much is that, according to the laws of probability, there are more ways they can become tangled than there are ways to become untangled, so the odds are always in favour of tangling them up.

    I wrote a comic about tangled wires a while back: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=399451811784&set=pb.89817831784.-2207520000.1353912257&type=3&theater

    Jamie

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That would be awesome! haha, those comics are fun! I didn't know you wrote them.

      Delete
  10. YEAH! Go you!!! Congrats on the word count progress. And amen to the headphone gremlins. I just spent like 15 minutes on the treadmill at the gym yesterday, looking like an idiot, trying to unravel my headphones so I could listen to my music. Hate it!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Way to Go on the word count!!! I am far, far behind, but . . .I'm actually ok with it at the moment.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sometimes life just gets in the way, doesn't it?

      Delete