I couldn't finish last time because I had semifinals starting on the 2nd, which went on for two weeks, and then my annual school trip on the 23rd, which went on for a week.

Plus, my brother got pissed off at me, so at about 10,000 words, he deleted my document. And I had no back up.

@Ritu

Argh, how frustrating! If my brother did that I'd actually have killed him.... painfully.

I threw a big tantrum :P

And he got in trouble... I think he was grounded by my parents or something :D

My Mum was being the right pessimist last year. "If you're not going to finish it, what's the point in wasting all your time? You could be doing something useful!"

Well, I showed her! And it was useful -- I'd never finished anything before and now look, I've written a bunch of novels. Ha.

I made Spook and Elo sign up, as well as Azoth and Raina who both go to my school, but I'm not optimistic about how long they'll bother to do it for :D Also someone I know has signed up of her own accord so that's good.

Good idea. I think it's much easier if you're not on your own because you can have word wars and stuff, though I managed well enough without last year.

Also, try this:

www.writeordie.drwicked.com

Don't know if you've seen it before, but it saved my NaNo, and quite possibly my life.

Writeordie doesn't work for me. It makes me anxious, which makes me not want to write xD

How is yWriter? I've tried out writing software before and it always seemed unnecessary and complicated.

I have yWriter but I don't use it, because I didn't like typing directly into it as I couldn't format it how I wanted, and I saw very little point in copy and pasting. I write in Word, leave it in Word, count it in Word and edit it in Word -- but I plan it in OneNote :)

I usually leave myself a 'comment' to show where I started each day so that I can count my words; it helps, normally!

@MadelynLee said:

Writeordie doesn't work for me. It makes me anxious, which makes me not want to write xD/blockquote>

I like it for writing tense scenes, ha ha :) Also, it's useful because I can see how fast I type, and me and my friends have word wars.

Del is it Spook and I or the other two your worried about *grin*

As Del said I've got a lot planned out. I am an organizer, it's what I do. Still however rigid my structure seems to be there is room for movement; however it's got some convoluted connections that have to be unravled, so I kind of waht to know what they are before hand. We'll see how it works really. *grin*

:} Elorithryn

WriteOrDie worked for me.... it helped me finish off a story that was dragging on for far too long, and I've started using it for one of my new projects too... very tense, but I always play some dramatic music with it and I usually end up writing a lot faster than usual xD

As for planning... Word all the way. xD

I tried one note, but since I"d already started planning in word, and I'm used to formatting in Word. Well in fact even I would consider myself a power user of that program (and excel, but not as much). I know how to do all sorts of nifty things. Comes from having written manufacturing procedures in Word for 8 years now...

I don't think I could deal with writeordie though. I don't work well under that kind of pressure.

:} Elorithryn

So I downloaded yWriter. It's lot of fun but totally unnecessary xD I use it more for organization and keeping track of my characters than actual planning. Also, I like to mess around with some of the stuff that's supposed to be more professional and just have fun with it; for example, one of my scene goals is set to "who the hell is this guy?"

I write the bulk of my story in Word, though.

Same... and I love to play with some of the bits on word too. I once had a character's name always corrected to be in "horror" font... it amused me greatly xD

I once wrote a story where I named the characters after colors, and put all their dialogue in that particular color. Formatting can be quite amusing and add a spark to the writing experience. x3