NaNoWriMo 2014

[CountDeMoney]

Don't try to copy CDM's style; it is inimitable.

And if you wrap it around a brick, I'm suing.

[garbon]

NaNoWriMo? Wtf?

Only something that we have a topic on every other year or so. Don't worry your lumpen little head.

[merithyn]

Oh bother, it is that time of year again. Fresh off finally finishing last year, I figured I'd give it another go this year.

I've forgotten how painful day 1 can be when I don't know my characters that well and I haven't yet conceived most of the plot beyond a chapter or two.

Earlier today I stocked myself up my pantry with caffeine sources as well as wine. Two things I found invaluable last year.

Go get 'em, G!

I'm not going to even try this year. I'm already too stressed as it is, and adding this to everything else would, I think, kill me. Instead, I'm going to make the effort to just write each day for a little while from now until the end of the year.

[merithyn]

I'm throwing my hat into the ring again this year, after three or four failed attemts.

There are no failed attempts. There are only words written, which move you forward. Even if you don't hit 50k, you've done more than you would have otherwise.

And this time, I have faith that you'll hit your 50k.

[merithyn]

I really don't dig how every year they talk about how the first week is the easiest as you are bubbling with enthusiasm that will dissipate by week 2. I always find week 1 to be the most difficult with it being nearly a literal fight to get words on page.

I usually spend October learning as much as I can about my characters, so I'm ready to tell their story on November 1. By November 8, I find them trite, dull, and their stories boring.

[merithyn]

And I've hit the wall of, "this story sucks, why bother" a few times. The more tim you spend with a project, the more you will notice its problems. The trick is to fix them, not dwell on them.

I disagree. The trick is to ignore them, remember the Big Picture, and keep going. If I stop to fix them, I'm lost in editing mode and forget to tell the story.

[garbon]

I really don't dig how every year they talk about how the first week is the easiest as you are bubbling with enthusiasm that will dissipate by week 2. I always find week 1 to be the most difficult with it being nearly a literal fight to get words on page.

I usually spend October learning as much as I can about my characters, so I'm ready to tell their story on November 1. By November 8, I find them trite, dull, and their stories boring.

I told myself I was going to get more detailed ahead of time this year. That turned out to simply be fitting in some character names - many of which have already changed in the last couple days.

[Brazen]

Writing as a leisure activity seems entirely alien to me now. Nothing's as motivating as not getting paid if you don't put words on several blank pages by the end of the day.

[merithyn]

Writing as a leisure activity seems entirely alien to me now. Nothing's as motivating as not getting paid if you don't put words on several blank pages by the end of the day.

I was the same way when my primary income was freelance writing. I think I wrote two paragraphs of fiction during those 10 years.

[Syt]

I'm throwing my hat into the ring again this year, after three or four failed attemts.

There are no failed attempts. There are only words written, which move you forward. Even if you don't hit 50k, you've done more than you would have otherwise.

And this time, I have faith that you'll hit your 50k.

Thanks.

[Syt]

I'm not going to even try this year. I'm already too stressed as it is, and adding this to everything else would, I think, kill me. Instead, I'm going to make the effort to just write each day for a little while from now until the end of the year.

I found in recent months that doing "morning pages" (just two or three pages in long hand, stream of consciousness style) kept my kinda, sorta in practice.

[mongers]

I really don't dig how every year they talk about how the first week is the easiest as you are bubbling with enthusiasm that will dissipate by week 2. I always find week 1 to be the most difficult with it being nearly a literal fight to get words on page.

I usually spend October learning as much as I can about my characters, so I'm ready to tell their story on November 1. By November 8, I find them trite, dull, and their stories boring.

This describes the problem I have with new friends. 

[garbon]

Looks like they need to invest some money into a more stable server. I can't recall if it is generally so laggy and buggy in these early days when everyone is still with it.

[garbon]

Over the last few days, you may have noticed some issues on our website.

Because of the heavy site load during the first few days of November, novelists everywhere experienced frequent 404 errors when trying to enter novels, word counts, and forum posts.

We are incredibly sorry about this. We invited you to the biggest writing event in the world, and you arrived to broken functionality and understandable frustration.

As of yesterday, November 4, we are thrilled and relieved to announce that the major issues plaguing our site have been fixed. While you may get occasional slowness or a minor glitch, you should be good to:

Create your novel.
Update your word count.
Or, if you missed updating the first few days, you can always retroactively update your daily count.

And with the good news, we owe you an explanation:

Throughout September and October, we plan for the crowds. We add servers upon servers, and our two-person tech team load-tests and optimizes as much as they possibly can. This year was no exception: we ticked every box and dotted every "i" so we could be sure to bring you an amazing creative experience.

On November 1, we began noticing errors and immediately took action to fix them. They seemed small-scale and par for the course, and the repairs held for a while.

Ultimately, we discovered that these site issues were related to deeper (and stubborn) elements in our database. While we'd been actively fixing things on the surface, we couldn't see the larger problems lurking. (For you tech/server buffs: we plan to cover this more in-depth in an upcoming blog post, so get pumped.)

Our technical director and web developer spent days looking at these errors and exploring potential solutions. We have a fantastic team who, like all of us during NaNoWriMo, are sometimes thrown off by an unexpected twist. But in the end, they pushed through and prevailed.

We hope these first few days haven't discouraged you from rocking the rest of November. Remember: every obstacle, whether it's a website issue or a bad case of writer's block, can be conquered.

AH so it was an issue for them specific to this year.

[merithyn]

Looks like they need to invest some money into a more stable server. I can't recall if it is generally so laggy and buggy in these early days when everyone is still with it.

Always. I rarely bothered trying to log in the first week. Just not worth it.