Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo before, if so, how many times?
Third year for me. Tried twice, won twice (not really sure how ) Going to try again this year--must be crazy!

What's your plan for NaNo this month?
Working on a set of interconnected stories, Ruritanian in nature. Three are written--at this point, there will be *counts on fingers* at least nine books; in other words, I have my work cut out for me. And new stories keep appearing--so frustrating.

Do you drink coffee during NaNo? Do you think you could make it through NaNo without it? If you don't drink coffee, what is your drink of choice for the month?
Never could abide coffee! I usually avoid food and drink while I'm actually writing--too distracting otherwise. If I need a break, I'll stop and eat something, preferably an apple--something hard to bite into, so as to relieve latent frustration.

What's the best advice you could give yourself for the upcoming month?
I have to remember that winning NaNo isn't the most important thing in life. Because of circumstances, I may not make it this time. However, I can't turn down the chance to get another book ticked off of my list. So I'm going to try.
Several things that help:
-Set high daily goals
-Have a cheering/whip-cracking squad i.e. accountability
-Find my optimum writing time (evenings, usually), and stake a claim on it
-Keep plugging away

*sneaks in against her better judgment*

Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo before, if so, how many times?

I've participated twice; once in 2010 and 2011. I won both times, by the skin of my teeth.

What's your plan for NaNo this month?

Well, I was quite sure that I wasn't going to try this year because my past attempts were slightly disastrous and left me questioning everything I believed about my writing abilities, despite reaching the word goal. I went back and read some of what I had written in 2011, though, and it was better writing than I had expected and I was glad that I had it to look back on. I also remembered an idea I had for a novelette/novella last summer, and then characters started paying visits in my dreams. So, I found myself wanting to try my hand at the madness again, even though life is quite busy right now and I ought to be focusing on other things... but sometimes you've just got to write a fairy tale.

Unless life gets even busier than it already is, I'm currently considering going all NaNoRebellious and setting a soft goal of 25k, leaving the door open for 50k if I can manage it. Inspired by some of the George MacDonald fairy tales I have read in the past few years, my current story idea is to let my creativity run wild and just write a few metaphorical, metaphysical fairy tales in a collection that I am tentatively calling The Ultraviolet Fairy Book as a nod to the Andrew Lang series. (I am assuming that short story collections are allowed in the NaNo rules, and if not... well, NaNoRebel. )

Do drink coffee during NaNo? Do you think you could make it through NaNo without it? If you don't drink coffee, what is your drink of choice for the month?

I drink coffee, but I don't drink more than I usually do during NaNo. I have enough trouble getting regular sleep without consuming a ton of caffeine. I do drink more tea, though; especially herbal spice tea sweetened with molasses.

What's the best advice you could give yourself for the upcoming month?

I would point to myself in 2010 and 2011 and say, "See that goose? Don't be her."

Back during those two attempts, I was ignoring everything about my personality and my writing habits. Writing has always been an intensely introverted process for me, and balancing the social aspect of NaNo with the writing side was really difficult. Word wars were too distracting and disruptive for me to write anything that was decent, but I did them anyway because that's what everyone else was doing. (Or so it seemed to me.) I also felt bad because I didn't enjoy sharing unpolished excerpts when everyone else was sharing them, but I've always been a perfectionist and I should've expected that. So this time around, I am going to pay a lot more attention to what has helped me succeed in the past as a writer and less attention to whether or not I'm doing NaNo like "everyone else" is. I'm gonna let myself be a scribbling, tea-hoarding hermit and I'm gonna (hopefully) have fun with it.

Oh, and if anyone wants to add me as a buddy, my username is Rosabel on the NaNoWriMo site. You'll probably be able to look at my word count and feel better about yours during the month of November.

Lady Arwen, I've never tried reading over my novel with chocolate. I feel like I'm probably going to have to adopt this tradition to make it less painful.

Alieth, I'm not familiar with Ruritanian-style stories. Do you mean that they will be individual stories, but all connected in a bigger theme (and world)?

Rose, I'm (somewhat) familiar with both of those authors and your idea sounds neat. Do you have any general ideas for the fairy tales, or are you completely waiting for November? Also, I added you on NaNo! My username is the same on NaNo, so I shouldn't be too hard to spot.

And for my answers to the questions asked:

Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo before, if so, how many times?
I have participated before, and if I counted it up correctly, this will be my eighth NaNo. The first three years were done with the Young Writer's Program's word count flexibility, but the rest of the years were done with the 50k word count.

What's your plan for NaNo this month?
Well, this year, I have actually made a bit of a plot! I normally try to do this, but I have never succeeded (and to be honest, my plot is still not complete), but I'm a lot closer this year!

My story is about a non-magical bakery in a magical world. It's family run and my main character is one of the middle daughters. At some point, there are false accusations that they are secretly using magically grown products. I haven't figure out the end, but hopefully it'll come to me at some point.

Do drink coffee during NaNo? Do you think you could make it through NaNo without it? If you don't drink coffee, what is your drink of choice for the month?
I don't really drink coffee. Um...water, probably? I'll probably have some tea and hot chocolate over the course of November as well. I always plan on having tea during NaNo, because it sounds really neat, but then it always seems more trouble than it's worth--and if I'm actually invested in my writing, I don't have time for drinking anything hot.

What's the best advice you could give yourself for the upcoming month?
Several pieces of advice:

1) Have fun with the story! I have a lot of ideas swirling around, so
I'm hopeful that I won't run into as much of a writer's block as in
years past and get into a rut where it's not really fun to write.

2) This ties in with the above, but don't switch around in the story!
I didn't always run into this problem, but for the past couple of years, I've always gotten to the point where I ended up going to another point in the story. I'm going to try to stay with it chronologically this time.

3) Avoid being distracted when I'm supposed to be writing! Due to less free time, I really have to make the time I spend count, and so I will have to avoid goofing off when I'm supposed to be writing.

I'm not sure if any of that counts as my best advice for myself, but those were the things that popped into my head right away.

I learned about NaNo right here on NarniaWeb, and have enjoyed participating a number of times.

The NaNo website (nanowrimo.org) has a lot of valuable info, including forums that discuss everything from grammar, style, and technical info (what perspective should I use? Can I quote song lyrics? etc) to a games section similar to the one here. I like perusing the "Reference Desk" (where people can ask for factual information about almost anything, because sometimes a Google search may give just too much info), not only because I can occasionally offer information on topics, but because it helps me hash out things in my stories I may not have thought about (including some astronomical topics, like having a planet with two moons).

The games section may also offer unexpected help with your story, because some topics ask you to reply as your character and may bring up questions you'd not considered.

Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo before, if so, how many times?

Will this year really be the 8th time? How time flies!

What's your plan for NaNo this month?

I'd be considered a 'rebel' by the old rules (which required 50,000 words of a new story to 'win') since I'm continuing to work on last year's project, a swords-and-scorcery type tale set on another world.

Do drink coffee during NaNo? Do you think you could make it through NaNo without it? If you don't drink coffee, what is your drink of choice for the month?

Sorry, like aileth, I can't abide coffee. Mountain Dew is the drink of choice, though chocolate is a good caffeine source too.

What's the best advice you could give yourself for the upcoming month?

SummerSnow's points match mine perfectly.

Make sure it's still fun, quit skipping around because a later scene might be easier to write (so now I'm left with a lot of those skipped-over bits), and reduce the unnecessary distractions.

Got so distracted filling out the questionnaire that I forgot to comment on your short story plan, aileth! I really enjoyed reading (well, listening to) The Prisoner of Zenda not long ago, so your interconnected stories sound like they'll be a lot of fun. I also like your suggestion about taking out one's writing frustrations on an apple.

I really like your story idea, Summer! A "muggle" bakery in a magical world? That sounds really whimsical and cute! Oh, and Ruritania is the fictional country that is the setting for Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda. The word has now become a "generic term for any small, imaginary, Victorian or Edwardian Era, European kingdom used as the setting for romance, intrigue and the plots of adventure novels." (Zenda is a fun book, by the way; I recommend it!)

Do you have any general ideas for the fairy tales, or are you completely waiting for November?

I've got two principal tales that I'm developing at the moment, but others are percolating as well. The first is a retelling of Snow White and Rose Red, which I had attempted in NaNos past as a proper novel-length story for slightly older children, but I've completely reworked the plot structure, retooled the characters and shortened it quite a bit. The other is an entirely original fairy tale that might be most succinctly described as being about a dryad that has a near-death experience. I know that sounds a bit odd, but it's actually shares some elements with Andersen fairy tales like The Little Mermaid and The Garden of Paradise. The idea for it came to me while cloud watching on a particularly spectacular day!

Hey, gazer! NaNoRebels unite. (Seems like the rules for NaNoWriMo have gotten a lot vaguer in recent years.) Thanks for the tip on the Reference Desk; I'll have to check that out.

Ooh, it's so fun to see what everyone is doing. I'm surprised there are so many anti-coffee people here.

Aileth, if you need short term accountability stuff, might I suggest writtenkitten.co? (Yes, there is no M at the end. It's just a .co)? The only problem with that one is I will occasionally lapse into writing jibberish, just for want of a new kitten. The bright side is, if you accidentally close out of the window, it saves what you wrote for a short period.

Rosie, I would suggest adding mulled tea to your list, then. Basically, it's black tea and cinnamon and mulling spices in apple juice and it's pretty amazing. I first found out about it last year from our local coffee and tea shop, which got me hooked.

SummerSnow, chocolate definitely helps. As does nutella by the spoonful. The latter was actually how I managed to cope with my bone lab exams in college. I'd have an exam on average once a week, for 2-3 hours, and afterward I'd just come home and eat nutella straight from the jar with a spoon while watching Netflix like a zombie. It was quite therapeutic. Anyway, back to substantive things, your storyline sounds very interesting. Good luck with crafting your ending!

I'm interested in the fact that you're so against skipping, gazer. I do allow myself to skip, but I usually leave a diatribe in its place about what is frustrating me and why I'm skipping that particular section. So far, the skipped sections have all gotten cut out in the second draft, but the rant has often been helpful in figuring out what was missing that made it awkward in the first place. Do you tend to skip the same sort of scenes, or just like transitional pieces? Also, seconding Rosie's thanks for the tip on the reference desk.

I've had a twisted version of The Little Mermaid that I've wanted to work on, too, Rosie, although mine is technically still a mermaid, and she does die in the end

. It's a bit of a mashup between the original TLM and an Andersen's Fairytale that is called something like Seven Brothers--but not the seven brothers everyone thinks about. It's the one where the youngest son is trying to save his father but his lazy brothers keep sabotaging him.

Which leads me to the quandary that is keeping me from deciding what I shall do for November. I've found that, for me to complete a nano that I don't look at in the end and go "this is a complete load of dirigible", I need to have a well laid out plot (at least in my heads) before I start off--often I have a few pages of an utterly breathless "and then...and then...." telling to work off. If I try to pants it entirely, or, worse, don't know the ending, then it just ends up being...awful. Like, not even salvageable. Since I don't have a full plot for a novel, I should pay attention to my senses and not try to pants a novel. Plantsing it (pants + plan) is more successful for me, historically. On the other hand, I have a variety of smaller projects I've been working on that I've really been procrastinating on, and they need to finished. So I *could* cobble together 50k between finishing off my doll short stories series, working on one of novels, and other little nits and lice. But I don't know how successful I would be, since there wouldn't be one completed project at the end for me to point at and go "yeah, I did a first draft of another novel. I'm actually acting like a successful human." The other complication is, I'm much in need with getting my rear in gear for my personal blog, since I'm actually scheduled to be teaching a class on blogging in the spring. I wonder if I could count my blog word count toward my Nano....

I'm not really against skipping sections, Lady Arwen. The issue might be that I do it way too much. I'm not terribly worried about it right now. The problem is that I'll get an idea for how to write the next part of the story, but the transition from here to there can wait. I want to write when the inspiration strikes, and sometimes that leaves gaps. (For example, last year I skipped the section about how the main characters get rescued after a couple of them are kidnapped. I'll work on that this year, among other things).

It's a good point that some of the skipped sections may well end up on the cutting room floor, to mix metaphors. Like you, I'll often include a blurb describing what's going on in the skipped section as a reminder for later.

Mmm, that mulled tea sounds amazing, Wren! I'll have to try that soon.

If I try to pants it entirely, or, worse, don't know the ending, then it just ends up being...awful. Like, not even salvageable. Since I don't have a full plot for a novel, I should pay attention to my senses and not try to pants a novel. Plantsing it (pants + plan) is more successful for me, historically.

That's one thing that's nice about retelling a fairy tale for NaNo—you get a ready-made outline to work from, even if it's not a really in-depth outline. Your take on The Little Mermaid sounds interesting!

The other complication is, I'm much in need with getting my rear in gear for my personal blog, since I'm actually scheduled to be teaching a class on blogging in the spring. I wonder if I could count my blog word count toward my Nano....

Weeell, you're allowed to write fictionalized memoirs, but they don't specify how much of those memoirs need to be fiction. So if you turn one of your friends into a six foot tall talking rabbit for the duration of your blogging in November, maybe you'd technically be able to squeak by.

Researching the rules about this actually made me remember that I'm pretty sure I included my "family Thanksgiving memoirs" in my word count for 2011. I know I didn't include anything fictional in that, so I've switched 2011 from winner to participant. Supposedly you're allowed to validate even if you're a Rebel, but I feel better listing that year as participant instead. They say that if you believe you're writing a novel, then they believe you are, too... and I don't consider the genre-jumping fragments that I wrote in 2011 to be anything close to a novel. I don't mind a bit; it was still good to write the 50k regardless.

(Here is a thread about what makes a NaNoRebel and what does not.)

I've skipped ahead in the past, just to help with getting words out quickly as the clock was ticking down, but I like the idea of at least including a description of what is supposed to be in the skipped-over portion. I'll have to try that if I find myself hitting a wall with a particular scene.

Rose, Ah, that makes sense. I'll have to look into The Prisoner of Zenda! Thank you.
I really Snow White and Rose Red, so I'm excited about that one. The next one sounds interesting and I can see what you mean (that is shares elements with those types of fairy tales). It's neat that you found inspiration from a cloud. Sometimes I feel like they have stories to tell.

Lady Arwen, if you'd like, you can call me Summer. Nutella is quite delicious, so I can how that would be very relaxing. Thanks!

I know that Rose mentioned she doesn't find word wars to be helpful, but would anyone else be interested in possibly doing a few during NaNo?

Hey everyone! I've enjoyed reading everyone's plans for this years nano. Also missing everybody too. I need to come on here more often like I used to.

Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo before, if so, how many times?

Yes, I've participated last year and I believe either in 2012 or 2013. I never won either times. This time I'm hoping to change that this year.

What's your plan for NaNo this month?

So many to actually put down. But my main goal/plan is finding the right time because of my now busy schedule. I'm hoping that I can work around this.

Do drink coffee during NaNo? Do you think you could make it through NaNo without it? If you don't drink coffee, what is your drink of choice for the month?

I used to drink coffee a lot but I don't think I will be doing that. I will stick to herbal tea and water.

I don't know what to say about advice but like Alice in Wonderland would say, I seldom ever follow it.

Also you guys I can't log into my account on nano, I don't have the same email as well to get a new password. Luckily I've had a backup for a few years so please everyone add meh.

http://nanowrimo.org/participants/fantasylover101

I can't wait to write along with most of you again.

DamselJillPole, do you have your novel idea for NaNo?

Hey Summer!

Yes I have chosen a novel to work on. I wrote this story before but in script form back in 2010. This time I'm making a lot of changes to it. It's a science fiction novel that I now plan to turn into a trilogy.

Who else is starting on it tonight?

I'm not completely set against ever doing word wars, Summer, just planning on avoiding them as a general rule if I feel like they'll throw off my groove. So it's possible I might be up for riding into that hallowed arena at some point if the mood strikes me.

Glad you joined us, Damsel! Your novel sounds cool. Hopefully the third time will be the charm for you! I'm probably not going to start writing tonight because I'm really sleep deprived, but I'm hoping to at least get a few words dashed down tomorrow if I can find the time.

Statistics say that you're 60% more likely to win NaNoWriMo if you upload a cover, so I threw something together the other day for fun. It's just an Arthur Rackham illustration of sleeping Titania from A Midsummer Night's Dream with the colors skewed to make the scene look more surreal. Most of the fairy tales that I'm writing will be quite dream-like, so it seemed like a fitting image. I do feel that the dreamer ended up looking like some sort of cousin of a Smurf, though, with that blue-green skin.

Anyone have any rewards planned for making goals? I got a couple of those single serving Häagen Dazs ice cream cups for 25k and 50k respectively. If I don't make it, I suppose I will watch my brother eat them. How's that for motivation?

Good luck, everyone! Alllmost time.

I'm glad you like the sounds of the tea, Rosie, and that you like the fairy tale. It's a long way off from being written, though.

I'm not sure the blog would count, even for being a rebel, because it's pretty much as far away from one cohesive bound work as one can get, imho. But I'm currently leaning more to just crashing all the word warring events, and not actually being an official nanoner. That said, I'm officially interested in word wars, Summer.

I quite like your cover, smurfness aside, Rosie.

Ugh, the first is only a few hours away and I still haven't decided if I'm going to do Nano or not. I almost decided yes a few days ago, but I feel so tired and unplanning that I'm still waffling. I might do something like just try to write every day or somethi--I totally forgot to write my blog post today. Drat.

* lets head thud into desk *

See? I can't even seem to pull together a measly 500 words for a post where I know exactly what happens.