I'm honestly still trying to decide if I'm participating this year. It's been quite awhile, and I think if I do it I won't be trying to win, but I do have some stories I keep meaning to work on and Nano might be the motivation I need.

I'm honestly still trying to decide if I'm participating this year. It's been quite awhile, and I think if I do it I won't be trying to win, but I do have some stories I keep meaning to work on and Nano might be the motivation I need.

That's it--the motivation. It's not that I must have progress charts and deadlines to write, it just seems to help, especially with bigger projects. This is my fifth year running, and, as always, my goal is to complete the book, as well as reach 50k.

Last year I wrote every day for the thirty days, and then kept right on going, for a total of 120 consecutive days (must admit that word count dropped considerably after November). The end product was one novel, two long shorts and three short stories. I'd love to do that again this year--we'll see how that goes, as dedication meets reality.

No coffee to drink here, but a box of sesame seed bars, one for every 2,000 words; also, one Coffee Crisp per 10,000 words. Nothing like bribing yourself

Motivation, aye, there's the rub.

I first learned about NaNo, way back when, right here on NarniaWeb. I haven't reached 50k words for some years now, but have still enjoyed writing.

I really wasn't sure if I'd participate this year, but came up with an idea yesterday...one my earlier stories had a bit of hand-waving over an important section because the inspiration at the time was for something that came later. So I skipped over a rather important bit in the main character's life hoping to get back to it later. Well, now is later.

No coffee here, I'm afraid. I never acquired a taste for it. However, Mountain Dew is an acceptable alternate source of caffeine. (Chocolate never hurts either).

The NaNo website says I've been participating for a long time. I've stocked up on candy corn and peanut butter cups--not quite as organized a reward method as aileth, but quite scrumptious.

I'm still spinning my wheels a bit trying to gain traction on the story--I thought I knew the main character but it's a bit like trying to get a cardboard cutout to flex in the right places right now. However, since NaNo has consistently been good for actually finishing a project I'm going to keep poking at it until it takes off.

I've been doing NaNo since 2006, though not consistently. I took off last year because I just didn't have the time. My goal this year is to finish the story regardless of whether I finish the 50k in the month of November. We'll have some family travels this month that I need to get ahead for, so here's hoping yesterday's 2500-word day is repeatable.

* drags herself in *

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

I've done nano before, and I honestly thought I had escaped its clutches, and then I got dragged back in to it, kicking and screaming. While I've finished multiple times, I've only had one that I actually considered to be successful--everything else has ended up in the bin.

What's your plan for NaNo this month?

I've got nothing. And every time I haven't had a well developed plan a month or two ahead of time, I've ended up dumping it.

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?

I think the more accurate question would be, when do I not drink coffee? Fairly sure I couldn't make it through a normal non-Nano day without it. Also a fan of sesame treats, aileth.

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

Keep writing, even if you are going to toss it at the end. Honestly, so much of good writing comes from loads of bad writing, because the bad writing is how you figure out what doesn't work.

On the other hand, be sure to take care of yourself and get all the self-care you need, because sometimes pushing yourself for something like this can just drain you so much before the perhaps busiest time of the year.

Well, you lot sure are talkative.

I've been wandering around in my story a bit haphazardly. To be fair, even if I do win this year, I'm not sure if I can count it as an honest win, as I've been working of bits I already had, reworking things, and generally doing everything possible to muddle up my word count as much as possible. It's a bit hard not to, however, as this is an origin story, and I've been writing with this characters for probably...eight years? Something like that.

It's also a bit strange, as this year nano is serving to be a bit of a stress relief. There's so much...hornswaggle...going on that crafting a story that actually does what I want is absolute bliss.

How's everyone else doing?

Ugghh! Aside from being about four thousand words behind, just fine. Actually, that's not too bad. And the writing itself is going well. Now if I could just get started sooner in the day.... It seems to get later every day.

We are making a modular marble machine for friends for Christmas--bad timing, really, so far as NaNo is concerned. Nevertheless, it is a lot of fun, and our house currently smells of cherry sawdust.

I forgot to actually sign up, but I have about half of a short story finished. We'll see if I will get to the other ones I have in mind (they're all in the same universe, so that totally counts, right? )

The machine sounds interesting, aileth! I hope you post pictures after it is completed.

You should sign up anyway, dot, and still enter your words! And I say it counts. I did all of my academic research papers as my Nano one year.

I'm not doing NaNo proper this year, but up until the end of October, I'd set a goal for myself to finish a draft of one of the stories I've been working on for years. I set a goal to do either 10K a month every month this year, or to finish the draft, whichever came first. I finished it in mid-October, and while the draft is a horrible mess and I'll probably toss the whole thing and start over, it felt really good to have it done. I actually debated doing NaNo this year despite having just finished a project, but real life priorities came up and I decided against it.

Something that that project taught me, though, was the value of forcing yourself to just write, even if it's bad. I know that's the whole point of NaNo, but I think that is the biggest thing I struggle with is I always want to go back and fix the problems I can see playing out in front of me. When I started my project this year, I gave myself permission to write out of order, go back and change things, etc. All that lead to was me restarting the story several times until June, when I decided to just start from the beginning and work my way through. And even though I am so unhappy with the "finished product", I'm proud of myself for maintaining the momentum to write a little bit every day for 10 months.

So yeah, I guess that's a long way to repeat what Lady A said - the best advice really is to just keep writing, pushing yourself as far as stretches your writing "muscles" without breaking yourself. My current draft is basically just a compilation of all the ideas that don't work for my story, but now at least I know that.

I blame an old knee injury flare-up for derailing NaNo for me this year. The pain was quite a distraction. A doctor's appointment and it's a lot better now, but I need to scare up some motivation. I'm no longer thinking about 50k but just making some progress on this story.

I finished short story. Not sure I'll get to the rest this year, but I'm happy with myself.

Congarats, Dot!

That doesn't sound good, gazer. Hope you feel better soon.

I'm glad you finished your draft, Rya! In my opinion, all first drafts are complete and utter trash, and nothing is really shareable until draft 3ish. Good luck with all the redrafting.

I've switched gears for my nano. Since I didn't have a very clear idea where I was going, chunks of my story have hijacked the plotline and left me to wake up in an abandoned parking lot three states over. So I've switched gears to work on another project that is much less filtered and pretty much nothing but biting sarcasm (heh, biting...it's a vampire story ). Apparently rebel-dom, here I come!