The NaNoWriMo 2009 Commiseration Thread

Wow, great job guys! To lighten the mood, I'd like to submit Atlanta Nights for your enjoyment.

caustic77 wrote:

Cracked 10K last night. Sitting at 11,304 at the moment. However a certain Dominic Knight is making my literary pee-pee feel shriveled and inadequate.

Don't worry. My 20k may be impressive, but my brain is definitely sprang a leak at some point. Duct tape isn't going to hold all the metaphorical goo inside for long.

Dominic Knight wrote:

metaphorical goo

The best kind of goo!

wordsmythe wrote:
Dominic Knight wrote:

metaphorical goo

The best kind of goo!

I agree. A history teacher in high school said that to us when we were writing essays and tests. Although maybe he used metahporical brain vomit... Yeah, that sounds right.

Ohthankgoodness, I managed to crank out 2500+ words at today's write-in. Cute girl was a no-show, but I'll take what victories I can. Aiming for 4000 by the end of tonight in order to really assault my 5000-word deficit that I accrued in the latter half of the week, so maybe I can return to "on target" by the end of the weekend. Gah!

Friday sucked for NaNo. I cover high school football, so that left zero time last night. Hit yesterday's quota this afternoon and need to puke up about 2,000 words tonight to continue my pace. If all goes well, I'll crack 15K tonight and can go to bed feeling like a useful human being.

You guys have the opportunity to give me a hand with a portion of my novel. I need two mascots for the sports teams. One is the soccer team and the other is the baseball team. They're both pro-teams, but the mascots could be completely ridiculous. The country the story takes place in is made up and the flag has a duck on it (the Seattle region's mascot is a duck, so we all use it in our story somewhere). So to me it would make sense if the mascots for both the teams were just random.

For the baseball team, I was thinking they could be the Squirrels. But I want to add some community involvement. So put up your best suggestions for both the baseball and soccer team, and I'll choose the best and use the others throughout my novel.

Give me the town names, please. A good mascot name flows with the town name. I like stuff like this, so I'll be glad to help.

caustic77 wrote:

Give me the town names, please. A good mascot name flows with the town name. I like stuff like this, so I'll be glad to help.

The soccer team would be international... The country's name is Denland. And the baseball team is from the town of Holzman.

Squirrels is a little bland for me. Flying Squirrels would be better. With the soccer, it's hard to go wrong with something like FC Denland or Denland United. Uninspired, yeah, but there's always rewrites.

Let's dig deeper. What is the topography like? Any major geographic features? That sometimes plays a role. For example, the Holzman Mud Puppies is a fun sounding name, but wouldn't make sense if Holzman was in an arid environment. The world has to be real before you can make the sports team real.

And you thought you were making a simple request.

Sunday goal of 2,000 words is in the bag. I didn't have a bustout day this weekend, but I stayed on the pace I laid out for myself. Total word count as of the end of Sunday: 17,458.

caustic77 wrote:

Squirrels is a little bland for me. Flying Squirrels would be better. With the soccer, it's hard to go wrong with something like FC Denland or Denland United. Uninspired, yeah, but there's always rewrites.

Let's dig deeper. What is the topography like? Any major geographic features? That sometimes plays a role. For example, the Holzman Mud Puppies is a fun sounding name, but wouldn't make sense if Holzman was in an arid environment. The world has to be real before you can make the sports team real.

And you thought you were making a simple request.

Writing requests are never simple.

The location of where Denland is in the world is Vancouver Island. I didn't want an overly large country to have to fill with lots of details that could change the world map drastically. Not to mention, weather is similar to Washington, so climate research, etc. isn't that hard. Basic history of Denland is that it was originally a shared purchase between Denmark and Finland. It's original name was New Denmark-Finland and was later shortened to just Denland when people would reference it. But over time the mother countries didn't have time to check in on their colony so they attempted to sell it to the rest of the world. With no buyers, they relinquished control to the highest bidder in the colony.

Granted, the background I've created still isn't complete, and I'll probably adjust things and the history will change after WriMo. But that's just what I'm going off of until I can really look at the history more seriously.

I like the idea of Flying Squirrels. Holzman Mud Puppies is actually a cool name.

OH, yeah I'm doing this. I haven't uploaded my word count for a while (or checked) but I'm at about 5,000 right now (which is pretty far behind).

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/59...

My novel is badly written and makes no sense.
But it's radically extreme to the max.

Sorry if anyone takes this seriously, but I'm just attempting to write as much as I can with the least amount of effort because a friend bet me I couldn't do it.

Story name is: Craig: A story of love, battle, and some other totally radical sh*t

Excerpt wrote:

Craig rappeled down to the floor while throwing glass shards into the badguys and then he landed and pulled out his gun and shot five guys with it and then threw it into another guy's face. A ninja ran at Craig with his sword shouting "I am going to kill you now with my sword" but Craig kicked him and took his sword and killed him with it.
"My hero!" said the woman. She then started making out with Craig but Craig was like "Sorry babe, I only make out with super hot chicks and you're only like a 9". "I'm really sad now" cried the woman as she ran away.

Do we get to read all of these when complete?

Tamren wrote:

Do we get to read all of these when complete? :P

Remember, the byword of NaNoWriMo is quantity over quality. FedoraMcQuaid has the right idea with his writing, actually.

But if you are insistent, here's the excerpt from mine... http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/42...

Tamren wrote:

Do we get to read all of these when complete? :P

Absolutely not in my case. I wouldn't let my mother read it, nor my roommate Evil Cyranix who is also doing NaNoWriMo, nor Jesus himself even if it would get me into Heaven. This abomination that I am writing will be printed out on December 1 and summarily burned.

Tamren wrote:

Do we get to read all of these when complete? :P

I'm sure something could be arranged. They'll be in dire need of editing, but I'm more than willing to share parts of what I do or the whole damned thing if someone is bored enough to read it. Maybe I'll take a cue from McQuaid and post passages from time to time.

FedoraMcQuaid wrote:

My novel is badly written and makes no sense.
But it's radically extreme to the max.

Sorry if anyone takes this seriously, but I'm just attempting to write as much as I can with the least amount of effort because a friend bet me I couldn't do it.

Story name is: Craig: A story of love, battle, and some other totally radical sh*t

Make no apologies, sir. Any reason to do NaNo is a good reason. Furthermore, if you can keep up the style of that passage for an entire book, you deserve all kinds of credit.

Here's another excerpt from Chapter 2.

After Craig finished saving the bank from the badguys he remembered that he had a gig that night and had to rock people's socks (something he did like all the time because he was such a radical dude).
Craig jumped back into his Delorian and drove to the theatre where his band was playing.
"Oh sweet, Craig is here" said Ozzy Ozborne (being one of Craig's biggest fans ever) "I sure am glad I know such a rockin' dude"
Craig told Ozzy to shut up because he was bothering him and he didn't have time for old dudes who couldn't kill badguys like he could.
SUDDENLY 20,000 ninjas came down from the roof and were all like "Craig, you have killed our ninja brother and now you will pay for your acts with your life by us killing you with our swords and ninja stars and kung-foo skills".
The ninjas ran at Craig but he didn't move an inch. Craig pulled out his guitar and played a sweet ass solo and the ninjas were like "Oh my god, it's so beautiful and totally rockin'" and they all blew up and so did Ozzy but he was cool because he didn't blow up.
"Stupid lame-ass ninjas" said Craig and he started to play another solo and all the people in the place were like "whoa" and all of their faces melted from the awesomeness but it was ok because it was so hardcore and they didn't even like their faces that much.

I'm just having as much fun with this as I can.

Tamren wrote:

Do we get to read all of these when complete? :P

If anyone wanted to read mine, they could. It's turning into less of a comedy and is starting to take itself more seriously... I have a friend that really wants to read mine, so we'll see how it goes when I try and send it to her via e-mail.

I'd say we could all use GoogleDocs to host these, but mine will definitely be way over the maximum file size.

FedoraMcQuaid wrote:

My novel is badly written and makes no sense.
But it's radically extreme to the max.

Sorry if anyone takes this seriously, but I'm just attempting to write as much as I can with the least amount of effort because a friend bet me I couldn't do it.

My story last year Writers vs. Writters: The EPIC Battle was similarly written. Everything was a joke or a parody. It makes the story incredibly easy to write and reach 50k.

What, did you take my ninja suggestion from page one?

Some other good sites for random inspiration: They Fight Crime!, Fantasy Novel Title Generator, Romance Novel Title Generator, Plot Generator, Evil Overlord Plot Generator.

Did not meet quota last night. A softball double header ate into the writing time. Got about 1,200 in before my brain staged a mutiny. Wanted to hit at least 19K, but ended up with 18,602. Will do better tonight.

Crossed 20K last night. Ding ding!

A friend of mine sent me this site, The Always Amusing Euphemism Generator. Some of these are pretty hilarious, and it's honestly just fun hitting reload to see what comes up. Granted, that does waste precious writing time, so be warned.

Dominic Knight wrote:

A friend of mine sent me this site, The Always Amusing Euphemism Generator. Some of these are pretty hilarious, and it's honestly just fun hitting reload to see what comes up. Granted, that does waste precious writing time, so be warned.

Hahaha, this is pretty great!

They found him naked in the alley behind the bar,
inserting the battering ram.

Clemenstation wrote:
Dominic Knight wrote:

A friend of mine sent me this site, The Always Amusing Euphemism Generator. Some of these are pretty hilarious, and it's honestly just fun hitting reload to see what comes up. Granted, that does waste precious writing time, so be warned.

Hahaha, this is pretty great!

They found him naked in the alley behind the bar,
inserting the battering ram.

It'd be fun to see how many of these euphemisms you could fit in you story. Definitely awesome for word padding.

Passed 30K last night. I know that DK is well past 50K, but you others haven't been updating your nano pages. Who's still alive and who has abandoned all hope?

I'm still writing, I just haven't updated. The site is really slow for me and it's a pain to update it.
I'm at 23,435. Think I'm a few days behind.

Yeah, yeah, as thread creator I'm sure I'm supposed to be an upstanding role model, but I've pretty much given up hope. The main problem was that my story really didn't have the legs to reach 50K words. I had the time, and I even used that time to write... until it because painful to watch a decent idea for a story become mangled and incoherent as the word count rose.

I do intend to do a little writing over the Thanksgiving holiday and at least give the story its proper climax and conclusion. NaNoWriMo was successful for me in that I actually did write some fiction, which I didn't know that I'd ever attempt; it was even successful in that I'm thinking about trying again next year, armed with a more tenable story concept. However, I cannot say I intend to win any longer. Best wishes to the remaining victims!

Once more I'd like to pose you guys with a plot help question...

One of my characters needs to be interviewed by a famous TV personality/anchor. And I was curious which of the following would be the best choice? Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, Oprah, Meredith Viera, or other recommendations?

Dominic Knight wrote:

Once more I'd like to pose you guys with a plot help question...

One of my characters needs to be interviewed by a famous TV personality/anchor. And I was curious which of the following would be the best choice? Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, Oprah, Meredith Viera, or other recommendations?

1 vote for Bawbwa Wawas.