Support Thread for those continuing to write in December

I need to finish my story too, but I appear to be the designated person in my family who takes care of people when they're ill, recovering from surgery, in need of child or puppy care, etc. Don't know when I will be able to get back to my novel since I'm currently doing one of the above, and will be until at least mid-December. I hope you all are still here when I'm able to make meaningful progress. So far I still like the idea of my story, but I'm hung up on a couple of things (um, like research, world-building, stuff like that), it still needs an ending, and blah, blah, blah. I'll check back in when I 1-have progress to report and 2-can get an internet connection again.

I'm here and ready to write! Once I find time........did I promise to go to conditioning tomorrow? Ooops. After that! Lol. This is my first serious attempt towards publication and I'm not giving up yet! :D
Word count: 50,328!

wow i really was down with some bug the last few days. I made this thread and then got sick and totally fell off writing. That sucked. What also sucked was trying to start writing again after falling off for a few days. But i did start again, and convinced that writing everyday is the key to keeping the story alive and progressing. Congrats TRegina on finishing!

I feel partially torn, because I am loving watching this story grow and expand in ways that are constantly surprising and impressing me, but also I see so many people are done and celebrating, that I want that joy of being done with mine as well. Of course then starts the editting but that is a whole different beast.

Oh well, I will continue to enjoy the journey and support those of you who have finished, and those of you like me who are trying to keep fuel on their fire and blaze on through their stories.

65024 words. Good to have started writing again today, was getting scared i was about to fall off! I've come too far for that!

Thanks KatherineWriting and EternalLight for this thread.

EL, don't give up, we'll keep checking on you. Perhaps a challenge of some type would help? Just say the word.

Thanks, I'm getting discouraged but pushed a bit further forward again. What helps is that at times my story almost seems to come alive and start writing itself.

66,101.

I got slammed with some OT at work this week, so not much of any writing.

But I'm pretty sure that I skidded past my ending, and was writing the set up for the next book. So hopefully this weekend I'm going to sit down with a notebook and a cup of coffee and write that last scene out longhand. I know what happens in that scene, but now that the Inner Editor is back, she insists that it be perfect. That's bad for word count!

I'll report my final word count for the story when I'm done!

I enjoy it when my story comes alive and almost writes itself. I find that happens after I've worked hard on my story and then - bam - out of the blue everything begins to flow.

The long hours of "thankless writing" are worth those dynamic moments of joyous writing!

I haven't written anything since NaNo, but I'm about ready to start some editing.

I've had to push to get back into my normal editing mode. But it helps that I had feedback on critique circle on a couple of things during November, so I made those updates. I have a short story up, and I just submitted something to 'The Hook' -- where people read your opening and stop whenever they're bored and tell you why. It's a bit harsh, but useful.

I'm not spending as much time on Making Family as I'd like, but I am spending time daily on it.
Making Family is one of the few first drafts that I've written outside of November in recent years and the next book I want to self-publish. I'm trying to get it ready for my copy editor.

What doesn't help the editing is the story idea I got on Tuesday for 'Logical Dreams'. It's not something I intended to spend time on, but it won't go away. Nor does it seem inclined to restrict itself to a short story. But after the insane pace of NaNoWriMo, it is kind of fun to dabble by writing a hundred words, and then ignore it for a day or two.

Well, guys and gals, that last scene is done! It's 1768 words long and takes me to the end of the story. I had some other words that it turns out are exploration for what will happen in book three, but those will have to count for this story for now.

Total words for The Whole of the Moon, including some 20k words that I wrote before November = 101,740

It's done and it sure feels good! :) (Now I'm back in revision mode ...)

How is everyone else doing on their stories?

Larkk wrote:
It's done and it sure feels good! :) (Now I'm back in revision mode ...)

Woot! Good for you.
Note, if anyone wants to read Kirsten's first novel, she has several chapters up in a private queue on critiquecircle.com

(And she is a wonderful critiquer. She has been known to write more words in a critique than I've written in the chapter, or short story.)

70,133

I may end up giving up, but it wont be today :D

I really underestimated how hard it is to keep going in December

72,130!

I've written almost 10K since Nano ended!

Eternal Light wrote:
72,130!

I've written almost 10K since Nano ended!

Go you, keep at it! I think I've written close to 8,000 words. It's a bit hard to tell since I've deleted quite a bit of stuff. I'm about four chapters away from the ending and I think altogether I have another 10k left to this story. I'm at just shy of 60k right now!

Mochomito just joined critique circle and critiqued my short story. (And did a great job.)

I have another short story posted this week.(Barry wrote the first draft and I revised it half a dozen times before posting it.) Is anyone else interested in joining cc and looking at it? (I'm still not happy with the ending.)

http://www.critiquecircle.com/queue.asp?action=lookup&index=84534

Joining cc is a great way to continue to write year round.

Thanks for the support everyone. We can do it. Once I'm done I may have to check out this Critique Circle, as well as the other naperville area writing club that was posted.

75,010. Moving further along.

As somebody who stopped writing as a kid, this whole Nano experience has been amazing.

About one third of the way thru a first run-thru edit and realizing all of the things that I want/need to add to make my ending make sense. (It made sense at the time, but that was midnight of November 28!)

Keep going, EL, keep going!

What are we doing come January? The thread is called 'continuing to write in December' -- Maybe do a new one each month?

I posted a short story on critiquecircle.com that Barry drafted (and I revised) for Making Family -- a novel I intend to self-publish in 2013 that I thought I was almost done with -- and based on feedback, I'm thinking of making this the new beginning of my novel. I like how it establishes one of the main characters even more in the midst of change, although I'm a little leary that chapter two will be a year later. I could call chapter one a prologue, but it's not really a prologue. More an initial 'here's where they are' and a year later is when the two worlds set up in the first chapter collide.

I'm not sure about a new thread each month. Maybe after this December, we could start a thread with "continuing to write in December and beyond", or "continuing to write after November" in the Subject box? If this remains the same conversation, I think I'll start losing track of it if the name changes monthly. And I for one see my novel taking a while to complete. Though I hope pretty soon I'm talking revision/editing rather than just writing the stuff that's still missing. I guess we have another thread for editing/revision, since "After the First Draft" seems to address those issues.

Never mind. I guess I'm fine with whatever people want to do.

heh, i titled this thread with the anticipation that I would finish my novel in December. I was pretty consistent and motivated all through November so this seemed reasonable. Unfortunately I seem to be quickly losing steam with this whole thing and doubt im gonna finish in December, if at all. Oh well.

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Eternal Light,
if it makes you feel any better, I'm stuck at halfway through. My mom ended up in the emergency room, I got dumped, then I got injured, then I got sick, and now I have three days of finals starting in an hour. It feels like my life is against me finishing this story. The worst part is that I showed it to my english teacher and a friend for on-the-spot feedback and now they keep asking ''so.....where's the next chapter?" and I don't even know, it's not even made it into my head yet! :(
Still at 5030?-something.
Good luck everyone!