Today's the 10th. According to my schedule, I should have 40 pages by this evening; in fact, I have one and a half. I have no plot; the entirety of my planning is four lines of synopsis from a series bible I wrote. I have half a dozen characters, none particularly fleshed out.

More to the point, apart from a vague idea of where the story's going to end up, I have no clue how to get there.

Anyone else close to giving up?

Don't give up! I had about four pages for a while, and haven't been keeping up with my necessary page count, but I'm still going! What a story you will have to tell at the end of the month if you keep going.

I have a calendar on my desktop, and it says that you should only have 35 pages today. Use the weekend to catch up. You can do it!

You're using a different calendar, then. ;-)

Four pages a day, leaving five days at the end for Rewrite, Tweak, Adjust, Fix and Finish.

Either way, a third of the way in and no plot... besides, in my world the weekend is just days with different names.

I'll keep trying, but I'm not sure what the point is now.

Oh! Don't give up!

I know exactly how you feel. But you know what, I just ditched my plot and started a new one! Suddenly, I have a great idea and I've written a whole 4 pages already and I started two minutes ago. (I'm a fast typist.)

Take a day or two to gather your thoughts or get a new idea. I promise you something will come to you if you don't stress over it.

Feel free to send me a message if you'd like to bounce ideas off of me. Who knows, maybe I'll give you an idea worth using? XD

Joce x

Oh you can do it! I know, I have 42 pages but ignore that - keep at it! Keep plugging out those pages and even if you don't win, you will have achieved something brilliant.

CrimeWriter:
"Oh you can do it! I know, I have 42 pages but ignore that - keep at it! Keep plugging out those pages and even if you don't win, you will have achieved something brilliant."

Heh - I wish. This is supposedly my job... :-p
(Or at least will be, if I ever get anything sold. The script I'm slogging on is the pilot for a show I'm making up.)

Jocelyn Corinne:
"I know exactly how you feel. But you know what, I just ditched my plot and started a new one! Suddenly, I have a great idea and I've written a whole 4 pages already and I started two minutes ago. (I'm a fast typist.)

Take a day or two to gather your thoughts or get a new idea. I promise you something will come to you if you don't stress over it.

Feel free to send me a message if you'd like to bounce ideas off of me. Who knows, maybe I'll give you an idea worth using? XD"

I think I might do that, cheers.

As for new ideas... I suppose I could skip ahead, write a later episode, one I have a more fleshed-out outline for. We'll see what happens.

Very close to quitting. Twenty pages behind, with two separate...bits of plotline and no idea how to join them together, plus I don't have enough hours in the day to get back to a point where I'm happy (ie three pages ahead!) I'm going to try and keep at it though - insert random scenes that I don't need and generally cheat my way to twenty.

hang in there! I'm doing worse, have done one and a bit pages and the plot changed so I need to redo them! Haha. But I have used the time to get a proper outline and research so am getting down to it as of right now! Good luck, Emma.

I got close several times in spite of good progress, because of writer's block and disinterest. But, I've gotten good material by keeping going. I've never lost an official Nano challenge, but I've worried a few times about this one. Point of honor--I will finish.

I won't. I haven't written a word on it since the fourth. And I signed up for a screenwriting contest which started this morning, so I now have six days to write a short (<15 p) drama on the subject of a postcard. I don't have any ideas for that either.

It's remarkable, really, how easy it is to start disliking oneself. Ah well. Win some, lose some, eh? At least SF didn't have an entry fee, unlike the compo.

So...i'm supposed to have...a ton of pages (cant bear to figure it out), somehow i lost motivation/will to write. last year i chucked myself over that finish line, strange how i now am failing. Any advice on what i should do?

Gosh, in spite of all the encouragement I see here, I'm pretty discouraged. The last two years were a breeze (see what happens when we get over-confident?) Anyway, I still only have 1/2 page done.

I think I liked the first year better where we counted the words--since I could "kick start" myself with the words I wrote in planning. Once I had generated enough words in the script, I subtracted my planning output and still made the total.

I guess I'm just feeling overwhelmed. April is a difficult month for me (while again in June it was pretty easy to set "everything" aside while I wrote).

Guess instead of lurking, I'll try to get back to putting words on "paper."

Well I'm not quitting, but I'm not expecting to get to 100 pages either.
I'm at 20 pages now, which I don't think is too bad considering I only really started to get going last week and its my first one! I'm now aiming to get to 50. Its the research time that's killing me, stupid idea doing a big scale historical drama in a time I knew almost nothing about! Anyone want to join me for the 50 page target..? Or for a smaller target of your own? If you can write even a few pages more you should. Its not like you are missing out on a big cash prize by not getting to 100 :)
Emma

It's not so strange at all. It's called the "sophomore slump", and I think it's usually because you start to take yourself too seriously. The first year, it's all fun and games. The second year, you want it to be something meaningful. And it will be - about 6 weeks after 4/30. So get your inner editor back into his/her closet and lock it again!

I seriously considered quitting. I'm glad I didn't. Keep going! You can make it! If you don't, then you'll still have more than you had if you had quit!

I think at this point I'd be happy with your 20 pages!!

... so I guess I'll aim for that and we'll see where it goes.
Thanks Emma!

If you have characters who takes FOREVER to say anything, it helps a lot. Have some obscenely old person who keeps getting off track and has to have people prompt him/her continuously. I've never done it, but it seems like it'd work well if you didn't know what you writing about for a while. :) Good luck to you all!

I'll join you. Care to aim for twenty pages by midnight Sunday with me?

Let's see... 92 pages left with just 3 days to go... Yes, I'm tempted to give up. However, considering that I wrote 40,000 words in the last 3 days of FebNo '08, this shouldn't really be a problem. All I have to do is write faster than usual, and take more time to write.

I did in fact give up. My body did, actually. I collapsed in exhaustion shortly after writing the previous post and getting home. I knew right then that I was doomed. So, having put all my efforts into moving across town, 15 is my final page count. I won't get back to Bad Company, novel or scripts, till "BadCoFiMo" (Bad Company Finishing Month) in June.