GNamer "Things We Done Wrote" Thread

...Holy faeces. Nice job! You really are going to beat me, aren't you?  

I dunno man, I had a big head start and you've cranked out those ten thousand pretty sharpish.

On a Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  The real struggle will be keeping it up over the week.

Also, given that I'm doing NaNo I have an advantage: there are thousands of people doing the same thing, including several in London.  So most of my 10k have come from sitting in a room with other people who are writing, wary of being judged if I don't write.

Oh that's pretty cool that you went to a meet.
I just got secret weapon as well; it's now not just my mum who is reading it as I write it, it's also a pretty girl!
okay, sorry mum, you're pretty as well

Two meets! Lots of lovely socially awkward people. Great fun.

Got her reading your book, did you? Well done. You must have confidence in it if you're showing it to a date!

To be honest, I was just keen to have another person read it!
If there's one thing I have its oodles of confidence, even when it's not deserved

I really wish I could be joining in on this - sadly with two essays due next week I can't.  

Chapter 10! 35,000 words, 63 pages. Hot damn!

JayMoyles wrote:

I really wish I could be joining in on this - sadly with two essays due next week I can't.  

Yeah, I should be looking at the stuff for my degree more. But its really boring and easy at this stage so I'm not too worried.

I was on 14,013 yesterday - hoping to be on 15,680 tonight, after six days.  (EDIT: 15,758!) Then I've got a write-in tomorrow, so my average should go up. You've got to keep moving, Busk!

Also, this is possibly the place to say that I enjoyed Jimbob's recent Tumblr entry. Especially the coins.  

I know, I'm ploughing on at the expense of literally everything. Barely been to the gym, for a steel of games I haven't played and been eating takeaways and snacks rather than cooking.

Progress: currently on 24,999 words. I've heard that there's a tradition of applauding writers when they get to 25k, so I'm stopping there for the night. Mid-sentence.

Balladeer wrote:

Progress: currently on 24,999 words.  I've heard that there's a tradition of applauding writers when they get to 25k, so I'm stopping there for the night.  Mid-sentence.

I just finished chapter 16 and I'm on 48,000. I'm taking a few days off before I go back and power through to the end because, to be quite honest, I was burning myself out. I wasn't doing anything but write. I wasn't going to the gym, I wasn't eating proper meals,I want playing the games I bought, I wasn't sleeping...
Worth it through, I'm quite proud of myself. Can't wait to swap manuscripts, balla.

Blimey, lads, you've both done brilliantly well! I remember slogging for hours on end to finish mine...

You should've gone for this NaNo thing, Buska!  You'd have finished it easily!  Well done, anyway.

EDIT: So the best thing I've written this month may not in fact be part of my novel.  There's this thing called "Nanorilla" (the name being a portmanteau of "NaNoWriMo" and "guerilla"), in which prospective authors stop at various places in London, sit down, and write until they're chucked out.  Anyway...

I was hoping it was a thing where you handed the laptop to a gorilla, got them to type and used that as your opening.

Or give an infinite number of gorillas laptops, and there's your novel written for you!  And every other one in existence.  Anyway, I beat 30k over the weekend.  I've realised that my book lacks any real pacing, but that's okay: it's not meant to be any good.  That's not the point!

See, I am actually trying to write something good. But I started out with a chapter-by-chapter plan and will go back and edit like a crazy person as soon as I finish a first draft.

My problem is I'm a perfectionist and edit constantly.

I suddenly realised that a section about a dress was extemely inappropriate - it would be far better without it. The trouble is that dress is referenced multiple times in various time periods, so I'm slowly going through the book taking out every single reference to it. Sigh.

And this is what NaNo helps to wipe out! The idea is that you just don't have time to do any major edits. Trouble is, I'm so far ahead of my target that I'm going back to edit anyway: I need both sides of the initial ambush to have guns for the main character's origin story to make sense.

Places where I did some writing today:

• Trafalgar Square;
  
• The National Portrait Gallery;
  
• Some set of steps going through a tunnel near Traffy Square;
  
• Hungerford Bridge, over the Thames;
  
• By the South Bank Christmas market, within tantalising smell-range of several food stalls;
  
• In the South Bank Centre.

Places where I did not manage to write today:

• Starbucks, after the steps.  Coming in from the cold, all I wanted to do was chat, eat my Yule log and drink my mocha.

Sunday EDIT: 50k words written! In 17 days. Happy with that.

Balladeer wrote:

Sunday EDIT: 50k words written!  In 17 days.  Happy with that.

Bravo sir. I forgot to check my word count, but I did get back on the horse today. I'm 100 pages and 19 chapters in, with four chapters (which I think after more likely to be three chapters) left on my plan. Pretty confident I'm gonna finish the story I want to write tomorrow

Hope so, Buska! We'll all be wanting to read your story by close of play (that's office speak there) tomorrow.  

As for me, I'll give you my 50k+ on the 30th November. Between then and now, I'll be editing my story and adding in an epilogue...

So was it literally a "write until I hit 50k" job or was there an ending you were aiming for all along? I gotta finish it before I dish out addresses tonight!

No, there was an ending. I was relieved to hit the maximum with not many words left! I'd plotted the whole thing out against wordcounts, but I was running a bit short of my totals in the home stretch.

Bosh!
Just finished the first draft of my novel, The People Versus Xanzar the Soulflayer.

Its a fantasy comedy about a human rights lawyer. Weighing in at 60,000 words, 110 pages and 22 chapters, its still miles away from being in a condition where I would want to send it to a publisher or anything, but I'd love it if you could read it, Balla, and give me feedback so I'd know what to do now. I need to know what meat to put on these bare bones!