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The worst things you write will take you closer to 50k just as well as brilliant things would. I wrote a lot of bad stuff today. Well over 2,000 words of badbadbad. 2,000 words are 2,000 words, though.
Considering how much I suck at editing, this isn't good news. I guess it's time I did something about my poor editing and revision skills, then.
Here's my NaNoWriMo link list with all sorts of sites I find useful when I get stuck in November.
If you have a Linkli.st account, feel free to clone it and adapt it. And if you know any good NaNo-related sites, leave a link in the comments.
I spend all afternoon writing - but not my novel. I had a deadline for one of my regular freelance gigs today. Since I am being paid for that, it obviously was my priority. It's okay, I've got over 11,000 words altogether.
I wrote just over 3,000 words and crossed the 10k mark today. Yay!
The first 2,000 words were easy. Then I started up Seesmic and checked my Twitter stream. Bad move. I don't spend much time on the NaNoWriMo forum because I could easily write several thousand words in forum posts a day (now here's an idea: I could become a NaNo rebel next year and write 50,000 words in the forums ... ) and don't make much progress with the novel in return. I know the forum is a major distraction, that's why I avoid it. I think I have to apply the same treatment to Twitter. It appears to be harmless because a tweet is so short. But then I don't just follow one person, but 50, and some of them tweet quite a lot. Then I check a few searches, and before I know it I've wasted an hour. Yeah, no more tweeting for me before I've hit my goal for the day.
Great advice for writers: Read bad stuff.
Not only is it encouraging to read bad fiction, it also is a great way to learn what you shouldn't do and improve your editing skills (handy skill post-NaNoWriMo). It's so much easier to see other writers' mistakes than your own. Read a bad piece of fiction and edit to make it better. Then go and check your own work for the same mistakes, and if you spot one, apply the treatment you applied to the bad stuff.
I've written more than 2k yesterday, and I'm currently at 4112. Not quite sure if I'm done for today yet.
So far, I'm happy with my slow approach. Even though seeing people who've hit 10k already (and probably 20k by now) makes my competitiveness spark into live, I know I'm better off taking my time.
My daily goal for NaNoWriMo is at least 2,000 words. I can write that in an hour, easily, if I just go for boosting the wordcount. This year, though, I don't want to write wordcount padding - words that will be cut in the first round of editing. I want to write only words that are relevant to the progression of the story and the development of the characters. So I'm taking it slow. I take time to think, and write only when I know what I write matters.
I'm at 1519 words now. A good first day.
A little over two years ago, my old laptop died. Luckily, I had a back-up plan.
With NaNoWriMo kicking off just about now (in the UK), I'd like to draw your attention to backing up your work regularly. Do you have a back-up strategy? Do you stick to it? If you don't back up your work, imagine for a second that you couldn't access your hard drive anymore. How does that make you feel
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I wrote about the free novel writing tool yWriter4 a while back.
I'm sure yWriter5 has been out for a while, so this isn't exactly news. Still, I want to point it out. It is a great tool for Windows and Linux (not all distributions, though) and has helped a lot of people write their novels over the years.
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Comment by Sonya 1
on Word Count And Such
Writing Words