I'm definitely participating this year. :) I participated & won in 2014, but last year I was too busy with school and work to even attempt it...

I've written 5,394 words so far, which feels like a lot! In 2014 I could barely reach the daily word count goals, so it felt like I was struggling to keep up all the time. I think the story I'm going with now is much easier to write than the one I did in 2014, so maybe I'll actually get through this November without overdosing on caffeine lol.

Word count so far is 1672. But I'm going to put in another good chunk by the end of the day.

My puppy broke her leg on Halloween night so it's been tough to find the emotional energy to actually write as much as I need to :P

Man is it really November already.... Time flies.... I wish you all the best of best of BEST wishes in your endeavors. Happy writing!

- Awww poor little puppy! I hope she's ok, and that it doesn't affect your writing too much.

Starting 2016 in my typical manor, about 2k words behind! Go me!

: I sure hope your puppy is going to be alright.

Dearest Nanaos: I tend to not prepare for NaNoWriMo except to have a basic idea of where my story is going to go. For Benji The Greaser, my current story, I had this notion of a peasant who rises from being an insignificant and reviled outcast from society to a savior and one of the community's greatest historical figures. I've had this notion for about eight years now and it was just casually mentioned in one of my other books. After finishing my last manuscript, I felt that the time was right to work on 'Benji' and I just sat down and started writing about who I thought Benji was. Often my stories start out as character studies and settings where I describe in detail who the story is about and where the story takes place. And while much of a character study might end up not ever appearing in the final book after edits, it is still part of the story to me, the author. After I finished writing out who Benji was, it was easy to write about his mate, margo, their eight children, how he provides for them and suddenly I as hit with a conflict...he gets beaten up a lot in the outlying villages because there is a war bring and the 'undesirables' are being harassed into leaving the community...like a progrom. Before I knew it, 50,000 words happened. ( this was last year. )

I don't worry about grammar, punctuation, spelling, and sentence structure as I'm writing, I write as my characters reveal to me the story. (stream of conscious writing. ) My goal is to get the story out of my head and to type as fast as I can to free my mind of the words as they flow. ( I don't let sentences run on and on and I'm pretty good at grammar on the cuff...I just don't revise my writing as I'm writing. )

I don't know if that helps, but it's just one way of getting started and I've had pretty good success with it for the last eight years that I've done NaNoWriMo.

Good luck...Keep Writing.

Quick question. Does anyone know of any free writing programs? Like ones that can offer spell check and grammar advice along with keeping word count? Thank you~

She's doing better, thanks for the good wishes 😊 Complimentary cute portrait of said broken puppy.

I ALMOST broke 4000 yesterday! This is the farthest I've ever gotten and I feel like a winner already whoot ❤ I've kind of gotten over my writing anxiety pretty well. Makes me happy.

: Google Docs and Google Drive may be free. Wordpad is free on Windows machines. TextEdit is free on a Mac.

The best writing program out there ( and one of NaNoWriMo's sponsors is Scrivener. It's also very reasonably priced and made just for writers. ( it's not a full office suite like Word is.) There is a free download available to try for the month of November. If you post your 50,000 words, they will sell it to you 1/2 price ( for $25.00 ) Visit Literature and Latte to give it a try. ( It's what I'm using. ) It's a great program that doesn't get in the way of writing.

: You get two Wahoos...one for your little doggie and one for getting close to 4000 words. Got For It!

THanks so much!

I second on Scrivener. Just bought it a couple months ago for a different project and it's SO well-done and helpful!

there is also openoffice, which has the option of converting your documents to pdfs later on! Some prizes you get for hitting 50k include a free hardcover copy of your novel, but many sites require you to convert to PDF. OpenOffice was one of the first I ever used that could do that.

Also, I am almost 16k in already! I'm hoping for 75k total on this novel C:

Thank you so very much! Also wow congrats, I wish you the best!!!

: I just checked NaNoWriMo and Scrivener is again offering a free download trial for 30 days and a 50% off at the end of November if you post 50,000 words. However, they are also offering a substantial discount just for participating win NaNoWriMo, even if you don't post 50,000 words.

: I love Microsoft Word for it's awesome power, it is like a nuclear aircraft carrier going fully armed into battle. But when I want to write, Scrivener is like a squad of well armed Navy Seals, quick, light and efficient and perfect for the job.

: Is open office free? Congrats on reaching 16000 words. I hit 15,000 today and closed out a major chapter to boot.

: this was the forum I referenced earlier.

It is free! It's a great alternative to Microsoft Word for documents in general. Scrivener is definitely at the top of the list but as far as free programs, I always recommend OpenOffice first.

Randomly joining in, but is super right about OpenOffice. It's basically Word but for free. I mean the design is different and the features have different names, but a lot of what you can do on Word you can still do with OpenOffice. When I ran out of free Microsoft Office suite (my mother used to get it through her workplace and she'd let me put in on my laptop, then in college they had a deal with Microsoft that all students could get it for free...'as long as the promised to delete it when they graduated.' Except you know no one deleted it - the only reason I lost it is because that laptop went kaput) OpenOffice was what I turned to.

as for NaNo - I'm about 3,000 words behind right now but I'm hoping to catch up in the back half of the month. Aside from the you-know-whats in America, my work has mandated training for this entire week which put my schedule completely out of whack so I'm really nervous that I'm not gonna make it to 50K this year, but I'm definitely going to give it a good old try.

- Oh dear, your puppy is turning into a leopard! lol. Too cute. I was expecting the cone of shame lol.

I am so very very behind, only at about 5k words :( Gotta catch up. My tummy's been feeling all kinds of weird lately, even though I made sure to pre-make a ton of meals so I would actually stay fed during Nano.

I really need to re-learn how to use scriviner. My old monstrous Nano projects could really use it.

Yay! I passed 20,000! I tend to write more in the evenings now that Daylight Saving Time has FINALLY PASSED. That and writing to Eric Clapton....

What's your Writing Playlist?

Tonight mine is Eric Clapton, Korn, George Friedrich Handle, The Rippingtons, Dixie Dreggs, Little Feat and Wendy Carlos. I think I threw in a Jackson 5 one in there...ABC-123 .

- These days I can't write to any sort of music. Rainy Mood sometimes works for me, but I usually write in silence.

Upped my word count by almost 3k today. I think that deserves a break.

Congrats :D I have met and surpassed my 1667 goal for two days in a row now, I'm so pumped. Finally catching up to where I need to be!

- aweome. Here's to hoping I can do the same! I've got the day off, so hopefully a lot of writing can get done!