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Underground > Creation >

Sometimes Quantity Is More Important Than Quality

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Alex's Grandma

20:24 / 01.11.04

Nightclub Dwight;

I think it's important, at this point, to remember about that fable to do with the hare and the tortoise.

Tomorrow we'll both write more, and it will be amazing.

( Plus I think JF, amongst others, might be, y'know, um, kind of making this up )

Squirmelia

21:10 / 01.11.04

I'm on 2201. It's not going too badly, but then again not much has happened yet.

Jack Fear

21:59 / 01.11.04

Making it up? Of course I'm making it up: it's fiction, after all...

Oh.

Oh, you mean...

Well.

Ahem.

I say.

Ahem.

Whisky Priestess

23:22 / 01.11.04

I've just had a look at the site. Little did I realise that only 50,000 piffling measly words were required - why, that's barely a novella! That's how long Mills and Boon books are, for God's sake!

Of course, I may be saying this because I got up at 6 this morning and am feeling positively turgid with virtue, having beaten my own day's target by 400 words (3,477*, fact fans). Stay tuned for my bitching about impossibly high demands tomorrow when I have written precisely fuck-all.

*However, at least 300 of these were spent writing a slapstick blow-job scene, which I'm not sure counts.

HCE

23:40 / 01.11.04

Five hundred and eighty three words.

And I knitted the other half of a pair of baby booties.

*frown*

Alex's Grandma

00:15 / 02.11.04

At least 300 of these were spent writing a slapstick blow-job scene

Funnily enough, I've plotted 175 pages on exactly that subject. It remains to be seen if it's workable really, but my feeling is, yes.

HCE

06:04 / 02.11.04

Baby booties knit and delivered, family visited, half bottle of Williams Selyem 2002 Pinot Noir downed (better after decanting) and 3000 words I don't feel the need to discard (yet) written.

Jack Fear

10:45 / 02.11.04

Laaaaaaaaaah-vely. Knew you could do it.

Don't even think about discarding anything until December 1st. Those 4,000 words I wrote yest'y are probably the worst 4,000 I've ever set down, but y'know what? This konth, it doesn't matter. See thread title for details.

Jack Fear

10:46 / 02.11.04

konth = month, obv.

Or a horrendous swear-word shouted by a drunkard with a cleft palate.

KONTH!

Eloi Tsabaoth

13:29 / 02.11.04

I wrote only 583 words yesterday, all of them a prologue I really don't need. But I am terribly poorly at the moment.

HCE

14:04 / 02.11.04

You're all a bunth of thorry KONTH!

Bizunth, feel better soon. Perhaps you could write about what it's like to feel sick?

Eloi Tsabaoth

14:32 / 02.11.04

It would make a pretty crappy thriller. 'The Da Vinci Colon'.

betty woo

15:33 / 02.11.04

Yesterday I turned out about 800 words on a YA fantasy novel I've been meaning to get down on paper. This morning, I realized that I hated all of those words, switched to a different novel concept, and have written about 2000, which I am slowly realizing that I also hate.

At this rate, I will have written 30 first chapters by the end of the month. Go me!

Whisky Priestess

16:01 / 02.11.04

Thirty First Chapters: A Novel

See? I like it already. I'd read that.

MJ-12

16:51 / 02.11.04

Just figure a frame tale for it, you're good to go.

Eloi Tsabaoth

18:39 / 02.11.04

Very Italo Calvino.
I'll catch up on my word count while watching the election coverage tonight. If I run out of ideas I'll just fill my book with thinly disguised political rants. It worked for Iain Banks...

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

21:29 / 02.11.04

I'm at 4600 words so far and no one has died. I think that's a record for me...

So I would worry if I was one of my characters at this point, since there ARE a hell of a lot of zombies shambling about.

HCE

22:29 / 02.11.04

I ate a pound of raw tamarind as a snack today, knowing full well it would give my teeth that horrible feeling of enamel peeling off in shreds. I believe this can be usefully incorporated into the novel, as a metaphor for something ... something ...

Whisky Priestess

11:28 / 03.11.04

The protective enamel of civilisation peeling off the vulnerable dentine of society?

Can anyone point me to an mp3 of China Girl by David Bowie? I tried googling but I just got a lot of anally-fixated porn.

Protennoia

13:39 / 03.11.04

This one is at 18,000 words. Really, 18,000? That is over 5,00 words a day! I feel ineffectual in my little world.

Alex's Grandma

23:05 / 03.11.04

That seems to be the way to approach it though, just go hell for leather and hope for the best.

I am very behind.

moriarty

05:01 / 04.11.04

I'm in, but unfortunately I'm writing my novel out on the only word processing program available on my computer, and it not only doesn't have a word count option, but I can't seem to transfer the file to a computer that does. Oh well.

HCE

14:09 / 04.11.04

Moriarty, if you can email your file or copy & paste it someplace, I'm sure one of us can do th count for you.

moriarty

14:22 / 04.11.04

I no longer have internet at home, so neither of those potions were doable. Thanks for the offer, though.

Happily, I have found a computer in which I can open the document and check my word count. So, no worries.

betty woo

15:56 / 04.11.04

Well, I've gone back to my original concept, mostly since I found my old plot notes which put me back on track, and because it's one idea I have that makes people go "oooh, tell me more!" when I start explaining it. 4164 words so far, not bad considering that my post-US election funk left me too despondent to write yesterday.

Jack Fear

18:04 / 04.11.04

Just about 6800, which puts me right on target even though I took two days off--I had no powers of concentration on Election Day, and in the aftermath was crushed by both despair and a lack of sleep.

In previous years I'd sat down on November 1 with nothing, no outline, no plot, no real ideas, and just watched what came out. This time I'm working with characters and a vague plotline with which I have been toying for some time, though I hadn't written anything besides a few pages of background notes. And with that very general framework in place, I'm just exploding. Knowing the beats, knowing what I'm writing towards, is making the process much easier.

Jack Fear

18:08 / 04.11.04

By the way, Woo, that word counter meter thingee you're using is cool-o-rama. Inspired me to sign up for one of my own.

Whisky Priestess

18:49 / 04.11.04

Point of information: Do you actually win anything (apart from respect and awe) if you complete your 50k and are a Nano "winner"? Like, do they read the qualifying entries and judge them and give prizes and that? Or is it an honour and achievement thang?

Jack Fear

18:51 / 04.11.04

The prize is a lifetime of personal satisfaction. But you can buy a T-shirt on the site.

Whisky Priestess

23:39 / 04.11.04

Ah, I already have that. The personal satisfaction, I mean. I am strangely encouraged by the terrible awfulness of some of the writing I've browsed through though (no-one here, BTW). And also by the people who've only done 500 words so far.

Less than 2,000 words yesterday (I went out in the evening and got terribly, terribly drunk, but used the experience as inspiration for today's chapter) and over 4,000 today. If I get up before noon tomorrow I might even beat that.
Which is good, because I have another evening of getting t.t. (maybe even o.t.t.) drunk planned for tomorrow night.

Eloi Tsabaoth

09:57 / 05.11.04

I'm now 5000 words behind my target. Why am I not giving up? Is it pluck, determination and good old fashioned gumption?
Who could say?

Whisky Priestess

11:19 / 05.11.04

It's because you're a WINNERRRRRRRR!

Eloi Tsabaoth

11:43 / 05.11.04

I think you missed out an E there.

HCE

13:47 / 05.11.04

5400 words, a paragraph or so over the mark. At this point, I'm starting to get some gaps and stutters in the structure. I don't mind things being a little bit lacy, but I'll have to take care it doesn't get out of hand.

Jack Fear

14:12 / 05.11.04

Bah. It's a first draft: it's designed to fail. When you hit a ropey patch, just put something--even it's "Note to self: insert fight scene here in second draft"--but do not, under any circumstances, sacrifice your velocity.

Remember the words of Kerouac-roshi, the bodhisattva of Lowell: "Imagine it better, and then move on."

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