I also have weakness in grammar, I never really learn the past tense, or whatever tense to heart.

"I didn't WENT there."
wahaha....
and I always get mix up with prepositions... at night or in the night? in America or at Mexico?

English grammar is really wonky. There are are lot things that you would think were right because that's how you say them, but written they're wrong.

Like, I'll always say "there's" when I would right it in a sentence as "there are"

I still don't know when to use "effect" or "affect" or when it's write to say "me and you" or "you and I"

I am weak in grammar in all the languages I know... *sweat*

@xuvrette: If that was a question, it's "didn't go there," at night and in (whatever country), respectively.

@Sho-Shonojo: "Effect" is a noun; "affect" is a verb. So you'd say, "The effects of global warming include..." and "Carbon emissions affect ozone depletion," for example. Whether it's "you and I" or "you and me" depends on the sentence and whether that phrase is the subject or the object. If it's the subject, it's usually "you and I" (e.g. You and I can go together). If it's the object, then it's "you and me" (e.g. They're picking you and me up later).

Well my grammer's not so hot in Spanish either.


My friend taught me RAVEN for the affect and effect. Remember Affect Verb, Effect Noun, I just don't bother to remember when it count. Same goes with the you and me and vice versa. They're all rules I don't bother to remember. How bad of me as a writer.

I just chose words that looks and sounds right withought really thinking. lol.

Luenola: Thanks. I usually filter two or three stupid mistakes out of my posts before I even bother to click at the 'reply' button. xD
Sho-Shonojo: Yeah. I assume it's not that strange, in fact. I mean, if someone you only know online, as some kind of pixelated avatar with a random username doesn't like your story, it's no problem. After all, you could either ask them what you should change or ignore them.
In real life, you keep meeting that person who called your story 'utter crap', and that hurts. 'specially because it often changes their opinion on you.

And if they in fact DO like your story, well, often you get a whole different spectrum of problems; they want to write a story together (while they have a completely different writing style or can't even write out their damn words right) or they keep pressuring you to write faster so that they can read more. xD

Both are equally annoying.

And indeed, as Luenola said, there are things I write about I don't really feel like having my parents or sister read. Or even my good friends, with perhaps a few exceptions. But those are mainly the 'writers' among my friends, those who write as well and often about similar subjects (or at least you know they don't mind reading about named subjects).

I tend to be not too bad in grammar - at least not in Dutch, Latin, Ancient Greece.
English depends on *what* part of the grammar - German is not too hard but I should perhaps bother to read those rules again. It's getting rusty.
My French grammar complete and utter sucks.

Ugh. I'm not sure, but I think if it was November, I would be done with the daily amount of words just by this post. xD It's so long.
Sorry. xD

xuvrette, sometimes that's the easiest thing to do.

Wow Silenia, you sound pretty knowledgeable about the subject. I take it you've had a friend want to write a story with you?

I always stuck to roleplaying with my friends and keeping my stories to myself.

Wow...that's a lot of languages.

So it is more like using the memory of sentences I read rather than thinking of the rules. XD

I don't think I will do a good job co-write with people unless it is non-fiction, as in, it is a kind of book for knowledge, nothing involving characters creation and story involvement.

That makes sense xuvrette.

Well guys, we're just about half-way through October. I don't know about you guys, but this month is blowing by like a breeze. Usually I'd be upset by how quickly all the weeks keep passing, but NaNoWriMo is on the way! I still can't wait!

I'm really too bogged down by exam after exam right now to be all too excited about NaNo, to be honest.

And when it comes to collaborations, I usually find that I work well with a certain few people. Usually though, I do most of the actual writing, while they mostly just do plot outlines and character design, etc.

xuvrette: If you want a quick review on English grammar, I've actually (and this will sound silly) found English Grammar for Dummies to be quite useful. I downloaded the e-book version of it earlier this year, and it has helped me create guiding worksheets for the English-Language-Learner class that I tutor in.

Thank you so much for this thread! I found out about NaNoWriMo two years ago, and missed it last year. I'd never have remembered on my own-- I have a mind live a sive. :sweat:

I'll start in on my outline! I'd love to participate this year-- it would give me some relief from scholastic pressures.

That's too bad Luenola Marxiel. :(

Welcome Aislin, I'm glad I could be of some help. Do you have an idea of what you're going to write about? If you want to be writing buddies on the NaNo site my name is Sho-Shonojo over there. What's yours?

ooo, thanks, Aislinlin.... maybe I will look up to it.

Luenolala, I found it hard to cater everyone's idea for story. lol. especially if there is extreme support to like say, good ending and bad ending.

Woo! I did NaNo for the first time last year and I WON. *flail* It was some of the worst crap I've ever produced, but it was so much fun. I can't wait for November to start.

Only problem is, I have no plot. I had a plot briefly, hated it a few hours later, kind of liked it the next day, hated it again, liked it a little, and right now I hate it with a fiery passion and I'm wondering what kind of moron I must be to have come up with it. XD;;; It's really getting to me. Last year I had a ton of ideas and I just sort of smooshed them all together. This year I just...I feel like I'm totally sapped for inspiration. I used to be able to daydream for an hour and come up with a couple random ideas. Now...nothing. Nada, zip, zilch. I'm running on empty.

*sigh* Oh well. We'll see what happens. My username is Mizure, by the way! Feel free to add me!

My username on the website is aislebean. I'm so excited! And rather pleased, actually, as the automatic-response e-mail to my registration kindly told me that it loved me and doesn't expect me to edit my work until December. Very sweet, that.

As to my actual plot: no idea yet! There are several things that I'm interested in doing. There was one which I was working on last year before my laptop went on the fritz, but I think that it's somewhat too delicate to be a NaNoWriMo novel. I focused on stylistic circularity with that one, and it required heavy editing as I went along. I was 50 pages in before the laptop ate itself.


I think that I might want to write something fun and young adult focused, rather than my usual cerebral fluff. I've gotten no more specific than that yet. :sweat:

Are you guys going to outline or just go with the flow? Is either mode more simple for writing at a 1.7k-words a day pace?


(I'm open for friending on the NaNoWriMo website also.)

Is it breaking the rules if I already started on character designing? lol!

Mizure: See, that's what makes NaNo fun. You can write complete crap, but you wrote a novel nonetheless and that's what counts. Well if you're really desperate for plot ideas then you could always run around the forums on NaNo. There are usually threads for people who have no idea what to do.

Aislin: Yes, no editing until way after it's over with. In my case, that's like, two...three years later. D: As for your idea, I think it sounds fun. This year I'm kinda doing a breakaway as well. My last two have been a series of fantasy stories but this year I'm gonna do a teenage, modern romance. It's quite a turn, but I'm excited and I hope you do well too. And I'm sorry to hear about your laptop eating your last work. My stuff is mostly handwritten, so if it spontaneously combusted, I'd understand how you feel.

I'm not going to do any outlining. I've never done it before, except on really old notes that didn't match the story within a month and I never looked at anyway. I've been thinking about my ideas for months, so most of what I want I've remembered and hopefully I'll remember to write it all. Which is better? I would guess outlining would be because you'd already know where you're going, but I think it all comes down to the person.

Xuvrette: Not at all! You can plan out as much as you want as long as you don't start writing until 12:01 AM on November 1st and it shouldn't be something you've written before. Though I tend not to listen to that one. O.O;;; The story was five years old anyway.....

Oh and I added Aislin and Mizure as my buddies. I think I've got everybody now.

*reads.... reads replies for OTHER people. XD*
hmmm? so you can't go back and edit the part during the typing frenzy?

Well, you could if you really wanted to, but seeing as you need to write 50,000 words in 30 days, most people would be slowed down by having to go back and check their work.

I know that if I check what I wrote before then I tend to hate it. It's much better to just go with it to ensure that I finish.

but 50,000 doesn't represent finished the story? DX
50,000 words... seems to be achievable~~~ <33

Well, I guess not, I've certainly never finished a novel in 50,000 words. It just wasn't enough. It's actually quite achievable.

I actually was thinking why not make it a round number of 100,000? XD

You can try that, but I won't be joining you! :D

Well, you could if you really wanted to, but seeing as you need to write 50,000 words in 30 days, most people would be slowed down by having to go back and check their work.

I find I am more slowed down when I see an annoying spelling error three sentences back, than when I just fix it. I did well during the last few days on my stories.
Rewrote a 31-pages-long chapter from one story, finally decided on a way how to put three different versions of another story together, checked up to which point the documents were the same and made sure everything was exactly the same, as I tend to edit things during writing, which caused me to have to check 49 lines per page, nineteen pages long, in three different documents up to details as punctuation, different order of words and all. That was a damn lot of work - but it was worth it, at least they're the same now. Wrote some of the parts I need to get the different versions back together (about 1.2k of words), wrote further on the third part of the versions which is going to be the last part of the story as far as written now, once put together. About... 900 words.
Wrote a hell lot of words on the story I reworked the 31-pages-long chapter - I reached 19 pages, about 14k of words, on it. I wrote down three new story ideas, started on the first chapter of one of them. This all in... I don't know, perhaps three days, I think?

Bad side of this is that I got so caught up in my stories that I barely reached 1.5 hours of sleep this night.

Sorry for not being around for almost a week. Really busy. Test-week (kind of like exams although less important), three projects I had to finish, my job, then the stories. I really didn't have the time or energy to log on and chat at Mene.