Hi Caleb! I’m excited to see that you’re taking up another novel idea! My (unasked for) advice to combat your issue would be this: Most people are able to visualize things at a base level. When I say “green dragon” most people would be able to put a good idea of what you’re describing in your head already. And this goes for a lot of things. With this in mind, the description you add after than can only serve to further immerse the reader, but is not imperative. There should be no pressure in setting a scene if you can just say the first thing, which is what it is at a basic level. Don’t worry, you’re not responsible for articulating every blade of grass in a field. If you just say “field” your readers can do the work for you. Good luck on your NaNo journey!!

I'm only at ~3,500 but I haven't written for tonight yet. I'm jealous you can write so much each day. My current project is a visual script (either tv or a comic; not sure how it'll end up, but just writing down the story for now), so it's harder for me to hit daily word counts when I can't write chonky paragraphs of descriptions.

you manage to make every topic interesting, i swear to god

I've only won NaNoWriMo once in the few years I've participated, and I've always struggled to find the motivation to continue projects, especially during school, but for some reason this year I've been on go-go-go mode. I'm at around 7,000 words so far, and I'm eager to keep up with it, but honestly who knows. Also I'm very excited for these updates, I've missed your videos so much!!

Kaleb you a KING!!

I remember trying to friend you on nanowrimo like a year ago and couldn't do it asdfgfds it's crazy you're talking about it now! I had a wild October so I took the first 2 days of nano off so THIS IS MY OFFICIAL DAY! I'm so happy you're doing well with nano so far! I've got 5k to make up for so pray for me 🤣🤣

Hi Caleb! I just found this vlog channel and I've never heard of NaNoWriMo before this so it's very exciting. Honestly I feel like I've been missing out for years and this is just the motivator I need to actually write and not just daydream and forget all of my story idea. Your book sounds so interesting and your videos have always put a smile on my face, you're always so funny and I love how you make videos that you like, not just what everyone else is doing. Your videos are always fresh and interesting. Since this is my first NaNoWriMo my goal isn't really to finish all 50,00 words but just to see how well I can do. I'm a senior in High school so I've been really stressed with college applications so I'm not sure I'll have much time, but your vids are a huge motivator. I also have the problem of not being able to describe literally anything and see them as scenes in my head, so for the longest time I would just daydream and never wrote a single word, which is why I turned to screenwriting! I absolutely love it but I have yet to complete an actual script. I've been watching a ton of movies and interviews and reading bunch of scripts but honestly I feel like I've been using that as an excuse to not write. I have a google doc with all my story ideas and I'm debating on which I should focus on this month. I'm debating between a zombie slice of life story and a Dead Poets Society meets Bottoms where it’s an all-girls Catholic school that is very controlling and demanding and a group of girls make a club where they basically read badly written smut for giggles and cause mayhem wherever they can. Can't wait to hear more from you!

4184 on day 3 👍My first NaNo, first NaNo and first Novel 😅

I'm at 2,300 words because I can't help going back to line edit. I'm really happy with what I have tho! ^^ I love struggling with imagery. ShaelinWrites has some great advice on writing description.

I love this! And I totally get what you mean about trying to describe a world that is practically indescribable. Also, I completely agree with what you said about being okay with scrapping words. I've been working on the same story for 10 years and so much of my process is writing and scrapping and writing and scrapping. Sometimes the best way to figure out what I want the story to look like is to put it to the page and find out if it works or if it doesn't

Caleb! Always great to see your face again!

Caleb, I am so sorry, maybe its because im in canada but ive never had an issue with the website 😬 maybe delete your cookies??

All I could think about seeing this is 'awww, go Caleb! So proud of you for taking on NaNo again! 🤗🤗🤗 Ruler of the Stars 2, perhaps? 😜

the return of the vlog channel omg

My Nano struggle bus is back on the road-tomorrow morning.🥳

Glad to see you making videos here again too, Caleb! The month really got on top of me very quickly, so my wc right now is fairly abysmal lmao. Today and yesterday ended up being the first times I had the time and energy to sit and write, so my NaNoWriMo just started 😅 I hope your’s goes better, though! Sorry the website is being a jerk!

Thank you for finally adding me as a buddy. I sent you a request like a year ago and had just been holding out on hope ever since. (ಥ﹏ಥ) glad to know it wasn't your fault you couldn't accept anyone. (The website is still a mess, though. I have all notifications turned off, yet I still see a little red "new achievement" notif every time I reach a milestone, even if it wont actually name that achievement when I click on the bell, and if I check a friend's writing progress, the site says things like " *you* wrote X amount of words!" Or " *you're* on your XX day streak!" Instead of "they" or "[username]" when it's not your own profile. Like seriously, how hard is it to make a code that uses correct referential pronouns/grammar when looking at your own stats versus someone else's?)

Heyo writer here , not participating in nano but good luck to you 🤞

Did you just whip AND nae nae to the oppenheimer soundtrack and carry on speaking like nothing happened

Nice to hear things are going well for you. I have to write 4k today to catch up so I’m already struggling and it’s only day 3 😅

I'm there with you. My first few chapters are pretty good, but dayum-- my recent chapter is BOOTY. I'm on the struggle bus too, I know a ton of these words will get scrapped. I'm also stressy depressy, just on the daily-- so its like dang, what am I doing. I do love my world and my characters and it's not high fantasy, it's a small town horror with like witches and weird stuff going on. I just hope by the end of this thing, I have a manuscript where I can fix and clean and scrub and like really just get it into shape. I hope the best for you!

Im consistently a day behind a on my word count and it’s very annoying

the Oppenheimer song 🙌 you have taste sir

Great video! I too had this issue when I began writing my series and I think your 'acceptance' of this draft will pay off in the long run. I wrote about 37k in my first draft before I DELETED all of it to start over. It definitely helped me understand what I needed to focus on while writing the second draft and let me feel freer to change my plot and structure as needed.

My struggle bus is on the side of the road, out of gas. No cell signal, miles from town, and without a pay phone in sight... But I'm going to be doing some dictation after the weekend to really knock it out of the park.

CALEB LITERALLY HOW ARE YOU AT 8,000! My procrastination skills are not it and so I’m only @ 4,000 rn and it’s day 4 (I’m not meeting my requirements at all but it’s fine). My story’s about an apocalyptic world where robots take over human bodies and have invaded the world and my main character has amnesia and teams up w/ 2 other survivors to try and gain his memories back. Def not the best thing but the ideas been in my head for like 2 years so I wanted to write it out for this years Nano so I could possibly make it into a comic later. Keep on writing ig! You go king

dude i am struggling so much you have no idea

Hello Caleb :D I think the problem might be your internet browser (safari). I was having so many problems with that browser that I had to switch over to a different one. And I personally haven't had any problems on the NaNo site this round. I really hope this helps.

2:20 I feel like an option to combat the “uhhh how do I describe this” problem would be to add to your outline. Make character profiles or species rules and make/find art or clips from movies that can give you the feel of what things look like. An example: dragons. Do they look like the ones from Harry Potter? Or from Spirited away? How to Train Your Dragon? Or maybe more like the ones from BBC Merlin or Game of Thrones? Your imagination is pulling imagery from a reference *somewhere* so if you can find what that is, then maybe you can use those original-ish images to help you describe things :)

How funny. I also wanted to write about a land of floating islands with dragons but when I started it a few days before nanowrimo I realized that it was too much Worldbuilding and planning which I wouldn't be able to do during nano so I dropped it for a rewrite of another story.

its the 6th day, and i have 5,332 words lol. but its actually fun! i try to remind myself that hey! you dont have to write those 50k words, i just have to write and have fun! i didnt actually start a new story, but continued on my WIP which i had 2.5k words for at the time. i hope i can have fun, and i hopw you do too! :D

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that my words are the worst word ever written lol but it’s my first time trying to write a book and I fully expected it to be horrible so I’m just having fun! Yay

I have a tough time scrapping words even when I know they add nothing to the plot because I'm such a slow writer 😭

I haven't had issues with the website on my desktop but remember last year the site was glitching on buddies on my mac. Maybe try a different browser?

i thought you were wearing a shirt with your name on it for a while 😂

With your website issues, it’s worth trying it on another browser!

If feels so gooood when we have you here and we're doing it together T_T

So far I am at 4,000 words. Been struggling between work and school but still feel good about my progress! :)

I'm not sure about this, but I think people with a lot of buddy requests have a hard time loading it. I say this not from experience, but because the the only people I know with problems are people with larger audiences, so it probably can't take more than 25 or 100 requests. I don't know the limit. Good luck with Nano. I only have 500 words. lol.

Struggle bus 😂 I made it to 8k last night! But the past two days have only been 500 word sprints, so I’m hoping to get a higher word count this evening.

I’m at 1600 words 😭😭😭 my goal isn’t 50k it’s 30k but this is my first time writing a book and i realized that i write VERY slowly so i might have to reduce my goal again

Day 8. First time writer. 2500 word count