So during the past NaNo [2007], I was in the process of moving into the new house, living on land again, and going to school instead of homeschool. 2006's NaNo got 64K words, 2007's is another story. Ugh.
I got my 50whateverK, can't remember now. Sent it in before the deadline. Won.
Opened it the next day to go thru it. I only had about 28K. I flipped out. I couldn't figure out how I lost 30K right? Turns out, because I type it by chapters [ten to a file], when I added them together, it didn't save correctly. And I lost the 30K. The ending. The whole stinkin' story. I was really bummed. Still am. It was a good one too, it was neat, fairly edited, and then poof. Out. Don't ask me where the other files went too. I searched my laptop how many times. Every file. Completely bumfuzzled about it.
I haven't gotten around to writing anymore on it. I'd been too upset. At least I still have my ending chpater which I had written in the beginning.

This year I plan to write the second part of my 2006 NaNo. [The Purple Journal, some of you may remember...] 2007's was called The Dance. I really like the plot. Message me if you get bored and want something to read sometime. xD About vampires and time heart, so to explain it easily, and a girl having the save the other time worlds from the evil time world. Yup, fantasy. Thee bestttt. :]

When I'm tired from being sick and working all the time, I make mistakes like that all the time, so when I did nanowrimo back in 2006, I wrote everything into a single file (I used OpenOffice just 'cause), and then I kept that file under cvs. It might have been overly paranoid of me, but it was nice to know that I had everything versioned back to the first day.

If I ever do nano again, I'll probably take it as an opportunity to learn svn.

I tried NaNo. Once. I nearly committed suicide. The stress of writer's block when you're trying to write a book in one month is amazingly excruciating. I'm sure you know.

Should I do it next year? (I'll do it if you do it.)

-Peri

quote:

Originally posted by kli6:
If I ever do nano again, I'll probably take it as an opportunity to learn svn.

Ah, thanks for the reminder! Anyone who wants to have offsite storage for their ScriptFrenzy/NaNo projects is welcome to put them up on my site.

You'll need to PM me for a username and password. Windows users will probably want to use TortoiseSVN, which gives you right-click access to svn functionality through Explorer folders. I strongly recommend saving files as text-only, since that will make it much easier to see differences between versions (or, you could do both: edit in Word, and save as text, and upload both to SVN).

While the files won't be visible to the public, I don't think I have any way to keep users from seeing each others' files, so I expect anyone requesting an account to play nice. :-)

I've recently decided to do NaNo this year and singed up as 'imagine_different_worlds'. (I know it's not a very creative name or whatever, but I wasn't very creative that day.) I'm working on my plot currently. The only thing I'm going to say about it now is that it takes places in a time similar to the Middle Ages, but not in any real place.

My nano was kinda embarresing, though for a different reason then for others...I spent years writing a book, most of that time never writing, but just imagining.
Then i entered Nano and wrote a book in a single month, made up of slightly over fiftythousand words. It wasn'e ven in the same world, except for the very end, and they didn't actually DO much of anything in that...It's just there so that i can bring the two into connection later. It's embarresing! All those years of effort, and i could have just written a book in a month! *still needs to edit, but...*
sCript frenzy should be interesting.

Erm, so it's almost halfway through ScriptFrenzy.. and I was wondering how everyone is doing (who's doing it of course)???

I have 29 pages written.. although I'm collaborating with my sister so, it's easy to get that far. But I'm stuck in a rut and can't make it go to 30. I need to get a move on though. Some people I've seen already has 100 pages written!!

Good Luck...

I haven't touched it since the first couple of days. I'm kind of disappointed, but I guess it's ok: it was just a fun thing to do, rather than something I had any serious plans for.

I almost abandoned my original Nightrunners adaptation plan to instead write a Torchwood episode where the team is closing in on a couple of Weevils, only to see a blonde girl jump out and drive a stick into their chests. "Oh, no, there's a _British_ Initiative?" (whited out for pushing the no-fanfic boundaries)

Bump. Those who are about to nanowrimo--we salute you. We buy you coffee at midnight. We leave you alone to type for an hour during Thanksgiving, and we pray for your swift recovery in time for the holidays.

I would also like to mention that thumb drives are a good way to go, and in case you're paranoid like me, I recommend the open source software TrueCrypt for keeping folks from seeing your stuff, especially if you tend to go cross-platform like me, using OpenOffice on Mac, Windows, and Linux. (Open source. It's a good thing). This way, you're not limited to using a single computer.

Also, svn and cvs (or any form of version control) is really a smart idea, if you find you'd like to rollback to an earlier state, or just for backup purposes.

Thanks for the tips Kathy! I'm definitely saving my story on my thumb drive.

It's the second day of Nano. To all of you who are doing it, how are you guys faring? On track or a little behind?

For me, I'm a little behind but I'm hoping I'll pick it up soon.

What are you guys writing about?

As per usual, I'm behind at the beginning of the month. NaNo always falls right at my end of year exams (and script frenzy at the mid-years), but I'm going to try anyway. I've always managed to get it done in the past.

I'm writing a prequel to one I wrote a couple of years back. Should be fun .

What are you writing about, Emi?

I've actually not gotten anything written yet and am unsure how far I will get. I decided to try after November started when I realized I wanted to come up with more of a backstory for my D&D character. So I'll attempt to write a story for NaNo so I have the backstory for the game I'm in.

I don't expect to finish, I expect to be far from done at the end of the month. I'm taking a grad class ontop of a full load and sitting in on another class. But I have to try now that I have an idea...


edit: Well once I posted this I actually started, wrote about 1000 words - a prologue and part of chapter 1. I'm going to have major problems with stuff in between the plot points however.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tuttle,

Thankfully, I'm not doing full-blown NaNo this time. Not well enough (though I used to be ML for my previous area) and I can't write long fiction as much as I used to these days. So I'm doing mini!Nano - between 3,100 and 31,000 words for the month.

alla: I'm writing about this girl who's stuck with a number curse... and it's starting to threaten her life. I've gotten over 3600 words written so far... (ones I have counted) but I still need to type of the rest of what I had written today.

Tuttle: Cool idea! Hopefully school doesn't end up getting hurt.

Trialia: That's so cute, a miniNano? Is that part of the competition, and where did you find that?

I am so behind on my NaNo, about 10,000 when I mathematically should have more than 15,000. Unless I completely ditch schoolwork for this, which will so not happen, because I like being alive, it's not going to be a winner again this year. I wish the parental units weren't so paranoid about my computer use. They must think we're going to join chat rooms and meet up with serial murderers or something, because the computers have to stay downstairs, and whenever I go on a typing frenzy there's my dad, asking what the *bad word* I'm doing all the typing for. He doesn't really use an explicative. So I tell him, as I've told him countless time before, that I want to major in creative writing (which I do), so I'm adding to a work in progress. But hey, that's what scheduled open labs are for.

Adding to the fact that I'm drowning is that junior retreat is next week, Wednesday through Friday. I need an aspirin and a miracle, not necessarily in that order.

I am really far behind on my story, too. I have 15,000 words when I should have 20,000. I am going to see how much of the gap I can make up by tomorrow.

Anyway, my story is about a girl who goes to England with Study Abroad and meets a guy there.

I've entered Nano this year, but not aiming for 50,000. More like 20,000. And I'm behind for that. I'm at 8,126, and still introducing the characters for my story. It's about eight people kidnapped by (someone, don't know who yet) for a social experiment. Some of my characters I thought of fully fleshed out, but others I'm still fighting with. They just can't decide what kind of a person they want to be. But it's all good fun, and this is only my second year doing it, and I'm only 14, so I have time to improve.