NaNo (and Personal) Update

November 20, 2012 by

NaNoWriMo is a curious thing, isn’t it?

Even when I don’t make my word counts, I seem to learn something about myself or my writing process. And yes, this is going to be one of those years when 50k is just too far out of reach for me.

Not that I want to make excuses, but life threw some curve balls at me — as she tend to do — and I lost too many days of production to make it up.

That doesn’t mean the experience was a waste. Not by any means.

What I learned:

1. Every word counts: The days that I added less than 1,000 words are not less valuable than the days I added 4,000. They all contribute to the completed manuscript and they are all important.

2. Making time is a mindset: It’s easy to say “I don’t have time” or “I will do this later.” The fact is, we make time for what is important to us. Time won’t magically appear. We have to set it aside.

3. Some things matter more than work. Yes, this one comes with a caveat. Of course, most of us have to work to pay the bills. For many of us, writing already comes behind a “first” job which fills that role of providing the money to live on. For me, it can be hard to push writing back further on the plate, but some things do take precedence. For one, family.

I’m not sorry I took on the challenge and even though I know 50k is out of reach, I will still be working hard this week and next to get the largest word count I can.

If you’re participating in NaNo, how’s it going?

Filed Under: Fiction, Writing Life Tagged With: ,

Lending an Ear to My Characters, Another NaNoWriMo Lesson

November 8, 2012 by

One of the motto’s of NaNoWriMo is “No Plot, No Problem.”

The idea being that one should turn off the internal editor, ignore the rules and guidelines and just create. Let the wheels turn and let the story grow organically.  November is for writing. December is for editing.

This isn’t too far off from my normal plan of action, as I usually right by the seat of my pants — though I usually know a few plot points along the way. What I’ve learned about this process — and was reminded of again yesterday — is that you need to listen to what your characters are telling you. Or that voice in your gut that says “Something is just not right here.”

I have been having a difficult time wrapping up my current work in progress. Over the last week and a half I’ve been writing and rewriting the last few scenes to this book, looking forward to being done with the rough draft and getting into the process of polishing.

But my hero wasn’t having any part of it.

In fact, he’s been quite vocal, via that voice in my gut, saying that it just wasn’t right. Today, I figured out why. I wasn’t staying true to his character.

Once I realized that and got back to his core, the words started flowing. Hopefully, I’m on the right track now and this rough draft will be finished this week.

Filed Under: Fairyproof, Fiction, NaNoWriMo Tagged With: , , ,

Another November, Another NaNoWriMo

November 5, 2012 by

It’s November again. For writers, that means it’s NaNoWriMo time (National Novel Writing Month.)

You always knew writers were a little bit crazy, right? What other segment of the population would take the month before the winter holidays — a month that contains an American, family holiday of its own — to write 50,000 words.

Only writers.

But if I can defend us for a moment, I don’t think we do this because we’re a little unstable.  I don’t think we do it because we’re a teeny bit into causing ourselves pain. I think the reason we — or at least the reason I’ve done it year after year — is that we love to challenge ourselves.

Even though writing is about creating new stories, the process is always the same — even though it might be different from writer to writer — for each individual it can become habitual, and it can be easy to fall into a rut.

Hitting a daily word count, and calling it a day. Editing or revising a certain number of pages and saying “that’s good.”

For me, NaNo is about pushing my limits.

It’s about throwing plans and routines aside and writing until I drop. Not because of the daily word count to his 50,000 words in thirty days is insurmountable, but because I know there will be days when I will be too busy with the day job to write. Some days I will be busy having family over for a big dinner. Other days will be spent planning for that dinner. By by month’s end I want to be able to say “I did it!”

So, where am I? At the end of day four, I was just 70 words shy of 8,000 words. This puts me just a hair above on track. Today I have the morning off — and hope to add another 3,000 – 4,000 words.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? How are you doing so far?

 

Filed Under: Fiction, NaNoWriMo, Writing Life Tagged With: , , ,

Is Falling Short the Same as Losing?

November 30, 2011 by

Do you ever have one of those days where you feel like you can’t do anything right? Or a day (or week, or month) when you feel like you break everything you touch?

A kind of day where it’s the first snow, you don’t have a winter coat or gloves available to wear, and your bulldogges lock you out of your car.

These are the days that make it very hard to stay positive and keep looking toward the stars, but they are the days we most need to do that.

After returning to work in April of this year, I’ve had a hard time balancing my writing time with the time I must devote to the family business. I knew if I was going to hold on to this piece of me I needed to get back into the writing-every-day habit. For that reason, I decided to take a stab at NaNoWriMo this year. Though I held the 50,000 word goal out in front of me like a carrot, I admitted to myself this was all about reestablishing good work habits. It was about putting words on the page everyday, even when I didn’t want to.

As promised, I am revealing my progress here today.  I ended up writing 30,551 words. I will most likely have the opportunity to write later today — after my work day — but do not anticipate adding more than 2,000 words to that total. So, I did fall short of the “big prize.” I also fell short of the mini-goal. While I wrote a lot more days this month than I have since March 1, I did not write every day.

I see on Twitter people announcing that they “Wwon” as they cross the 50K line, and I do applaud each and every one of them. It’s an amazing accomplishment. What I refuse to do is say “I lost.”

Losing is not even trying. Losing is giving up instead of pushing forward. Losing is not falling a little short.

How did all of you NaNo, writerly types end up doing?

Filed Under: Life, NaNoWriMo, Writing Life Tagged With: , , , , ,

Being Thankful / Nano Update

November 28, 2011 by

A couple of weeks ago I began planning a post for Thursday of last week. The not-so-original topic was to be “what I am thankful for.” Normally, I try not to stumble into the per-fabricated boxes, especially here on this blog, but I’d had an eye-opening conversation with someone who made me realize that my glass-half-empty attitude toward life wasn’t cool nor justified.I’ve spent a good percentage of this year worrying, mostly about money and the unpredictable future. On this particular day — a Friday — I was at my desk in the office going through my normal routine: paying bills for both my household and the business and working on the upcoming week’s budget. A conversation was struck up with someone who was doing the same thing, and a casual comment that was made about how much money he had left after paying his bills sent me reeling.

I thought things were tough for me, but they are so much worse for so many others.

It’s oh-so-easy to look at a half-empty glass and wish it were full. Being pessimistic can come natural, but it’s important, I believe, to take stock of what’s good.  We’ve been blessed. We may have hit some very large bumps in the past year, but we still have work. We’re still making an income that provides for my family.

We have our health.

And I have a wonderful network of friends and family that have been a rock of emotional support for me.

For all these things I’m not only thankful but very blessed.

So, why didn’t this post — or the one I began writing two weeks ago — get published last Thursday? Early Thursday morning I received some news that can only be compared to getting a swift kick in the stomach. The disappointment was made doubly worse by the timing. There was no reason it had to be delivered on Thanksgiving, but it was. The only way I felt I could move forward was to unplug myself from the internet, throw myself into cooking, and surround myself with family.

Friday evening a knock out punch came that laid me out flat. The lesson I’d been taught a couple of weeks ago had fluttered away and I was back in the depths of despair. The mere idea of publishing a post about being thankful seemed ludicrous and fake. If nothing else, I’m going to be true to myself on these pages.

Progress report: I have a two-day moping rule. Forty-eight hours in the maximum time I’m allowed to wallow in my own pain and self medicate with chocolate and coffee. After that, I’m required to pull up the big girl panties and go back to work. Yesterday, I took some positive steps that I hope will lead to some progress with my goals. Today, I’m moving forward. Today, I am thankful.

***

Nano Update: Last week I was consumed with the day job. The time to produce words was pretty thin and I fell woefully behind on the 50k goal. I was able to hit my smaller goal of working most days and played ‘catch up’ over the weekend, producing 4,500 words. I have to look over the whole picture a bit later today, but am pretty sure pushing myself to reach 50k would only add stress that I don’t need and encourage me to puke words instead of write them. I do  understand that a big part of Nano is about getting words on the page that can be edited later, I really don’t want to let myself sink to a words for the sake of words mentality.

The meter on the right, does not reflect last week’s production. I hope to have it updated by noon today. On Wednesday (month’s end) I will give a final report here.

Filed Under: Life, NaNoWriMo, Writing Life Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Crawling Toward Goals

November 16, 2011 by

A couple of weeks ago I posted here about starting NaNoWriMo. I talked a bit about how it worked for me in the past, why I chose to do it this year, and I set two goals: an ultimate goal, and an “I’ll settle for this” goal.

 I hesitated even making a secondary or “settle” goal. I feared that if I reached it, I would grow content and become stagnant. Let face it, sometimes settling is easy.

The good part of my lower goal was that it required me to be active all month. It didn’t give me permission to stop. I had to write every day.

So, now that we’ve passed the mid-month point, I thought I would share a progress report on those goals and my “NaNo Novel”

In total word count, I’m a little shy of the half-way mark, teetering around 24,000 words. (50,000 words by month’s end is the ultimate goal.) The good news: that end goal has not slipped past the achievable mark yet. It is still in reach and the missed words can (and will!) be made up before the end of the month. The (not so) bad news: it’s going to take commitment and a day or two of being chained to the laptop to make it happen.

In my write every day goal, I’ve only missed two days so far this month. For me, this is tremendous progress over where I was before November 1. Now, instead of letting my circumstances control me, I’m reminding myself that I’m the one in the driver’s seat and on most days I’ve been able to squeeze in at least a chuck of time to devote to my writing.

The novel process itself? I’m feeling good about it. It’s been a really long time since I’ve been in a “first draft” mode. At first, I had a really hard time remembering and honoring my process. Accepting the fact that when the story is developing, the words that are oozing from my head to the keyboard are not the prettiest. My characters will be spinning circles and doing some passive things. But that is because the story is developing. As soon as I remembered a first draft to a pantster is like an outline to a plotter, I was able to push through. I just keep reminding myself “We’ll make that pretty later.”

I’ve reached the point in the story where my hero and heroine have declared they’re going to face their mutual problem together, head-on. They’re falling for each other, but there is an even more powerful pull working to keep them apart. It’s like wading through a big pool of mud, and it’s the ‘fun part’ of the story for me.

So, like the picture up top, NaNoWriMo has been a process for me. My expectations are playing out like I hoped they would. As I learn to get up and run again, I’m accepting the fact that crawling is forward motion too.

Filed Under: Fiction, Life, NaNoWriMo, Writing Life Tagged With: , , ,

NaNoWriMo, Day Two

November 2, 2011 by

When most people think of November, I’m sure they focus on Thanksgiving, holiday shopping, colder weather and shorter days. Then there are those of us who write. We look at November with excitement and more than a little fear. For us, November is all about NaNoWriMo. (National Novel Writing Month).

If writing is not your thing, you’re probably asking yourself why would any normal person try to write a whole novel in one month.  I think for everyone who attempts the reason in different. I had a very personal reason for attempting it this year.

I’ve taken the challenge twice before. The first time I made the 50,000 words with a few to spare by month’s end. The second time I came very close but fell short by a few thousand words. (What would be a day’s worth of writing for me at the time.) So I knew it was do-able. Or at least, do-able then.

Up until April of this year I had a very firm handle on my writing life. I followed a schedule that had been fine tweaked to work for me.  I did a little freelance work over the morning coffee followed by social media. Around 10:00 am I would dig into my current manuscript, write until I took a lunch break. My writing day would end with either a second round of writing in the afternoon, or an editing session.

Then — like many people these days — I was forced back into the work force. The stress in my life grew massively. And I started going days and days without writing a word. Without that rigid, but working schedule, I felt like every other aspect of my life had started to crumble.

I grew unsure of the ground I stood on.

A few weeks ago, I knew something had to change and I saw the up-and-coming NaNo month as a chance to embrace old habits.  I may never have my dedicated schedule of last year, but I can build a new schedule that allows me to chase the dreams and pay the bills.  I delegated some house hold responsibilities, and I embraced the idea of NaNo.

I’m still holding the main goal of NaNo as my own: write 50k this month. If accomplished, it will take me past the 2/3 mark on my current WIP and help me to feel like a productive writer again. However, I do acknowledge a smaller goal. Write Every Day!

Because that’s what writer’s do.

 

Filed Under: Fiction, NaNoWriMo, Writing Life Tagged With: , , ,

NaNoWriMo – It’s a Draft

November 1, 2010 by

Today, November 1, marks the beginning of a challenge for those (who are up for it) in the writing community. If my twitter feed is any indication, it’s also a countdown to a dreaded apocalypse for the publishing community: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

For me, November is not about writing a novel in thirty days, but writing a first draft. It’s permission to turn of the internal editor and simply write. Remember this concept was born by Chris Baty author of No Plot? No Problem. It’s a celebration for those of us who write by the seat of our pants and a stark reminder that anything can be fixed…except for a blank page.

On December 1, thirty days from November now, if you complete the challenge (or if you put in an honest effort) you should be proud. You should feel accomplished. You should not submit your NaNo as a polished manuscript. No. At least dedicate December (maybe longer) to polishing that draft into a completed project.

If I hit 50,000 words by month’s end, it still won’t be a complete novel, the average length in the genre I write is 85-90k, but it will be a huge head-start to a draft I wanted completed by year’s end to a novel I want submission ready by mid-March.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo?

Filed Under: Life, NaNoWriMo, Writing Life Tagged With: , , , ,

Monday Musings – Dsitractions

March 1, 2010 by

At my local RWA chapter meeting this past weekend we revisited an idea that had come up before Christmas.  While many writers were jumping feet first into NaNoWriMo (The challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November) several of us lamented the hellish structure of our pre-holiday lives and joked that Spring was a much more convenient time. Of course, circumstance alters production. And in fact, this month I’m in a rewriting/revising phase that is more tedious than spinning a new story. So what we’ve decided to do is focus on putting out ‘butts in the chair’ and creating new, better habits.

My biggest roadblock to good habits: the many distractions of the internet: namely Facebook, Twitter, and my email accounts.

So, in an effort to increase my production, I am committing to spending 90 minutes on weekdays and 30 minutes on the weekend days in a chair, focused on my work with zero of those distractions.

Today was my first attempt and the fact that it was so hard for me to push through those ninety minutes without checking Facebook and/or twitter (I failed on the email front) is an indication of just how bad I need this.  They say the internet has shortened our attention spans, and I’m beginning to think that might be true! Or maybe I’m just addicted.

Either way, here’s to trying to be less distracted this spring.

Filed Under: Life, Uncategorized, Writing Life Tagged With: , , , ,