I clocked in yesterday at around 15,700 words, and I'm hoping to reach 18,000 tonight! *crosses fingers* I'm running sort of low on sleep, though. (Aren't we all? ) Right now, for lack of substance in my traveling scene, my MC has settled down to read a detailed history of his homeland and its kings (which another character conveniently had in his bag). That should boost my word count a bit, right?

Arwenel, just for the record, I sincerely approve of Star Wars fanfics. Nice quote! I would so read that.

Thanks for all the word wars, everyone. Without you and them, I would have quit by now from hopelessness!

Thanks to you too! I seriously doubted I was going to get my 1,667 words in yesterday, and I probably wouldn't have without our word wars.

I'm having a blast, everyone, and your word counts are blowing me away - keep it up! Only three weeks to go!

I love my characters. I really do. But some of them are doing some very unexpected things. And my ditzy blonde cheerleader is just plain freaking me out. Take today. She was flirting with a guy - not so disturbing in and of itself, but...

Ruby ruined the moment. "I can do the splitz and bring my back leg over my shoulder," she informed Sebastian. "Want me to show you?"

OH DEAR. And THIS is the girl who has chosen my heroine as her best friend.

Well, I'm truly shocked. I had VERY little time to write today; I had maybe an hour in the afternoon, and then I was out all evening, and didn't really sit down at the computer until 11:45. And I only had 1.5 of my 5k in the bank for the day. Eeep!

But I got it done! Shaved just over 40k one minute before midnight. That is the closest I've ever done, lol! But it's a great boost at the end of the night...knowing that I actually got all my words written, and I didn't slack off, makes me feel very happy.

Gymmie, you blow me away!! Seriously! Are you saying that you had 3.5k words to write at 11:45 PM... and you got it done on time?????? How on earth did you manage to pull that off???

I'm currently sitting at 30,129, and feeling pretty good about it. I've gone back in my book and I'm filling in a few scenes that I put off writing earlier cause they just weren't coming. They are flowing pretty well right now though. I had a blast writing what I did yesterday (I got to write the archery scene in which Robin out-shoots everyone and wins the silver arrow. Too much fun to write! Robin got to be all awesome and hero-ish. ), and today's is going really good as well.

Oh, here's one of my newer favorite quotes...

He felt as hollow and lifeless as the grave next to him.

... melodramatic, much? Honestly, though, that was a somewhat difficult scene to write. Will was having a positively horrible day that day. Like I told some people the other day, if he wasn't so stinking good at suffering I wouldn't be compelled to have all of this bad stuff happen to him! I say it's his own fault.
Ahhh, don't you just love NaNo?

I'm 3/5ths of the way there!!

Keep up the great work everyone!

--- flambeau

Well, I'm truly shocked. I had VERY little time to write today; I had maybe an hour in the afternoon, and then I was out all evening, and didn't really sit down at the computer until 11:45. And I only had 1.5 of my 5k in the bank for the day. Eeep!

But I got it done! Shaved just over 40k one minute before midnight. That is the closest I've ever done, lol! But it's a great boost at the end of the night...knowing that I actually got all my words written, and I didn't slack off, makes me feel very happy.

Gymmie, you blow me away!! Seriously! Are you saying that you had 3.5k words to write at 11:45 PM... and you got it done on time?????? How on earth did you manage to pull that off???

To be honest, I don't really know. Here's the facts that I know. I didn't get home until at least 10:15pm. As of that time, I had no less than 1k, but no more than 2k, already written. Between 10:15 and 11:59pm (pretty sure it was 10:45), I bridged the gap between 37000k and 40000k. So go figure.

I will say though, that doing a few WoD sessions, and not short ones, rack in HUGE numbers for me. I've discovered that two 15 minute wars does not equal 1 30 minute war...I write much faster as the time goes on, so the longer I write, the more words I average. I know at about 11 I did a 30 war, and I wrote about 1550 words, more or less. At 11:57 I was three hundred words shy, so I scribbled some stuff out really fast. I now know what it feels like to be at 49000k just before midnight on November 30th, lol! Except my novel isn't at stake; just my honor.

A little friendly competition goes a long way, I will admit. My home region is taking on a neighboring region in a team vs. team word war, and I signed up for it back in October and didn't think about it again until a few days ago. Now apparently the other team is taking on members of our team to match word for word, and I do admit, that was enough motivation to keep me going when all I wanted to do was sleep last night. You do not challenge me personally to a word war, hun...you just don't. Mmmm hmm!

Well, after miserably failing yesterday with only 200 words, I made up for it by writing 2600 words today. I'm hoping to finish out the day with 3k before going to bed. Thank goodness I'm far enough ahead on my word count that skipping a day did not put me behind.

Hi! Good job guys! You all have awesome word counts! I have 1,785 words so far! Woot! Antd yes I am behind a lot! Fantasy is my book but I am having difficulty figuring some plot twists. If you have a suggestion let me know please! And in case you were wondering...this is my first year. Thanks!

Oh, I forgot: I was gonna ask, does anyone have/know of a strange/really long name they'd be willing to let me borrow?

Humperdink
Oswald B. Biggles
George Henry Wentswold[/listprx0ca6k]

Ooh, those are perfect!! Thanks!

Gymmie, you blow me away!! Seriously!

May I say "ditto" to this? Gymfan, you are the Wordcount Queen.

Yesterday one of my characters decided he wanted to be named Ulysses. I have decided I hate him on account of I can't spell Ulysses.

I'm thinking I really cannot write a complete story in 50k. I ramble waaaay too much. I feel like I'm still on the exposition/introduction and I'm 15,000 words in. I think I should have made my word goal higher like I did last year. In light of this, I plan to attempt to write a lot tomorrow since I have the day off of work, but we'll see how that goes.

One of my favourite parts of my novel:

My mother, aware that severity had failed, now turned to sensibility. I nearly felt bad for her. I’d been her daughter for nineteen years, and still she had not realized that I was not the least bit sensible.

^I’m trying to decide if this applies to me or not.

I tried out Write or Die for the first time today and it was not as scary as I thought it was going to be. I forsee much wordcount-goal achieving and grammatical errors in my future!

I was writing along yesterday, happily putting my MC through misery and confusion, when it hit me that I'm nearly halfway through my outline...and we're only on Day 8. After a massive freakout in which I wasn't sure what to do, I decided I didn't really care. The end of the story will come when it comes, and if that's on Nov 16th...so be it, though that will kind of suck, because then I'll have nothing else to write.

On the other hand, new mathematical calculations have informed me that my story, which started out as set in 2010, has to be moved back in time...to the 1980s. Wierd, but there's really no getting around it. I wanted to cry, becuase I had to scrap my mental description of a character's beautiful black dress, which is now totally out of style with the era...

I know that names are a big deal for a lot of us, and I was wondering what kind of names you all have given your characters. Any favorites?

I know that names are a big deal for a lot of us, and I was wondering what kind of names you all have given your characters. Any favorites?

Here are a few of my favorites: Aina, Rowne, Stianne, Galen, Jaela, and Ri.

I'm nearly to 20k... Hopefully later today I'll be there. Emphasis on the hopefully.

I'm still behind a bit. I also need to update my NaNo word count.

My favorite names so far are Thalia, Raechel, Tariah, and Ning.
Yes, the last one is a little bit weird.

Lion Lover, http://nine.frenchboys.net/plottwist.php is a plot twist generator. I use it when I need ideas, I just generate one twist and a time until something hits me. Some times I will find a twist that will fit in my novel and be really useful and other times a twist will provide the inspiration for something completely different.

Yesterday I had a less than satisfactory day of writing. (This is due to lack of inspiration, a trip to the zoo, a headache, and watching several Monk episodes instead of writing.) When I got up this morning I was still uninspired so I wrote down a list of all the characters I have that are between Very Important and Not Important and where they will be when the story ends. Example:

"Angela--dead.
George Lydda--married to Nevada, very rich, captain of the guard, has a son.
Thomas--becomes just what he wanted to be
The king of Spai [who I should probably name]--lives happily ever after"

It actually ended up being very useful for more than one reason. One of the reasons is because it helped me to discover that two of my characters (a secondary character and a barely mentioned character) have actually been in love for the last 20,000 words without me knowing it. So far I have been spending today adding in this Very Important sub-plot.

To those who are behind: please keep writing! If you give up you will make me very sad. I might even throw a little guilt into the emotions machine.

I have officially lost my first year doing NaNoBloPo. (This is on topic, right?) That's National Blog Posting Month, if you post ever day of the month you will get entered into a drawing for a lot of little prizes. Unlike NaNoWriMo, if you miss a day than you are out and I totally forgot to blog yesterday.

I'm thinking I really cannot write a complete story in 50k. I ramble waaaay too much. I feel like I'm still on the exposition/introduction and I'm 15,000 words in.

You and me both.

Re names: I named most of my characters after Shakespeare characters. So I have Viola, Lysander, Kate, Miranda, Mercutio, Regan, Laertes and Portia. On the non-Shakespearean side I have Vivian, Paul, Ruby and Lance... which I took from Launcelot, which is a Shakespearean name, so ha. I gave most of them fairly ordinary last names, since some of their first names are rather unique.

Lysander Dominick
Regan Scott
Portia Fletcher

So I saw this on either the dare thread or the Adopt A Plot twist thread on the NaNo forums: "MC dies and new person takes over!" Oh my goodness, you have no idea how much I want to do that to my story. One of my side characters and her brother are turning out to be so very interesting and they completely stole my heroine's back story.

My success with names is few and far between. I try to make them unique, but not so much that they stand out as being hopelessly contrived when I read my story later. There's nothing worse than going through a book and seeing a name and going, "Oh yeah, the author clearly had a great imagination when he/she came up with THAT one."

That being said, here's some of my names and why I chose them:

Erica Larkay: MC. Erica has ALWAYS been her name, and Larkay is a short abbreviation from the original last name that my best friend gave her. She LOVED thinking up very elaborate names, and I thought that Larkaynay was a bit...over the top. So Larkay it is, and so far it's holding up well.
Rae Waller - LOVE the name Rae. I think that's why she is turning into a bigger character than I originally thought.
Jeff Reese - Erica's love interest. I could have sworn his name was always Jeff, until I went through my character bios that I wrote YEARS ago and apparently his first name was Paul. I mean, really? Reese was chosen because I was stuck for a name and I just went with what I originally had. We in the chat room had a really fun time one night when I realized that I didn't have a name for him, and we tried to come up with something that fit his character but hyphened with Larkay well. Suggestions that were shot down included Harrumph and Parkay. Although the latter WILL be making it's way into my novel eventually; it was too awesome to pass up. Can't you just see it..."And now, competing for the United States of America, Erica Larkay-Parkay!"
Pepper Darcy - TOTALLY stole this name from NWeb. I was doing a Write or Die session and suddenly I had to think up a name for a bit character that had suddenly appeared. Here's my line of thought:

Me. "Okay, okay. Names, quickly! Um...um...Pepper. Like Iron Man. I like Pepper. Last name....Brown...no. Darcy! No wait, that's a NWeb username. Something else, something else...aaaack, the screen is turning red! Name, quickly! Okay, fine, it's Darcy!"

And hence Pepper Darcy was born. And then promptly died in the next paragraph. But she keeps getting referred to, and I like that I can just say her first name and instantly everyone knows who she is, because Pepper is an unusual name.

So far I have only had to include one foreign name in my novel, and that is Erica's new coach, Ksenia Marclova. Ksenia is a Russian name that I think is purty, and Marclova just...happened. Originally it was going to be Markalov, but then I realized that in Russia, girl's surnames are a feminine twist on their father's name (ina, lova, etc.). Not that I'm being all technically correct. But I have a far greater chance of accuracy with Marclova than Markalov, so, there you have it. Interesting note: Nastia Liukin is an Americanized version of her proper name...if her family had decided to stay in Russia, her proper name would be Anastasia Liukina. Fascinating, no?

Yesterday wasn't the greatest day of writing in terms of word-count, but i had some vague ideas of what i wanted to say, and didn't have too much trouble writing them down. It's hard to say what, exactly, I felt yesterday - reinvigorated, perhaps. It might have something to do with the fact that my MC is finally off the mining colony and on Telos ... Anyway, i made it to 26,722, which is pretty good for day 9.

Sadly, the names that will be used - with the exception of my MC's - are not my own invention, so i can't really have favorites. Her name is Anna Davastarian; which is unfortunate(/meaningful) for her, because she's most famous for being responsible for one of the worst battles in a recent war. I can just see disgruntled troops calling her "General Devastation". Her traveling name is Morana Travers ... which means "death travels". Poor Anna.

A minor character - not named by me - is Lieutenant Grenn, which i keep misspelling as 'Green', which makes me think of 'Clue': Lieutenant Green, in the hangar, with the blaster.

I celebrated today's record-high temperature (65F) with a trip to a local park for some good old-fashioned writing. But my handwriting is sloppy and so much slower than typing on a keyboard.

Rather oddly, I'm already closing in on the word count (about 34k) that I achieved for all of last November! (To be fair, things conspired to keep from writing much the last half of the month in 2009). Even so, until this week anyway, I thought last year's plot idea was more fun to write. Now I'm into this year's fun stuff, however.

Interesting story about your characters' names, Gymfan! I'm boring in this regard...my story is fantasy, but set in a world very much like our own, so the names tend to be common ones.

I'm afraid my own characters' names don't have very interesting background stories:

Erik has always been...Erik. Spelled with a 'k' (he's quite insistent on that! ). I don't really remember where his name originally came from. His last name, Silvermoon, I added about 5 years ago just because I thought it was cool - especially for a story-telling astronomer.

Abby was a nameless female character at first, until I named her after a child some friends adopted from China back in 2002. Awwww....

Molly, their daughter, has always had that name too - even before I actually wrote anything about her birth. I think it comes from one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Time's Orphan," in which little Molly O'Brien has some interesting adventures.

For general information about first names, and a place to look for names if you're just plain stuck, I recommend behindthename. It includes lists of names by ethnic origin (French, Irish, African, etc) as well as alphabetical and gender-specific lists. And someone previously suggested its sister site for ideas about surnames.

Edit:

...which makes me think of 'Clue': Lieutenant Green, in the hangar, with the blaster.

I love it! Maybe you could work that in somehow. (I've occasionally used Erik's oddball sense of humor to work in pop references like that, if they're appropriate to his world, that is).

Angela--dead.

Nooo! (Right now I don't have the guts to kill off 'my' Angela).