NaNoWriMo Reminisces

Well, it's been a wild and wooly month. On the NaNoWriMo site, there's a video about taking in this next weekend, sleeping and relaxing and reveling in your Post-NaNo afterglow. I, however, have no time to glow. I won, achieving a glorious total of 59,467 in the month of November, but I'm only halfway there.


As always, NaNo was a challenge, a joy, a misery, a time to push myself. I went forth with one of the most detailed outlines I've ever had (which has proven to be painfully bloated) and the goal of 3k a day or bust. I made it most of the time. Below are some points and thoughts I had along the way.


Omg! Pep talk by Brandon* Sanderson!! Yeah. TL;DR. Keep it short and to the point next time, Brian. I have a novel to write this month. Oh. And where the hell is the last Wheel of Time novel?


Thanksgiving: you suck. I mean, everything about you except the times with my family and my mom and sister's amazing cooking. But every year, you take me out of my novel (due to travel time). I come home bloated, swollen and suffering the lingering after-effects of altitude sickness. I also lose my steam and my word counts drop below half of what they were before. I move we change Thanksgiving to October.


3000 words takes longer to write than you think it does. I know that now.


Coffee is, always has been, and ever shall be, my friend and enabler.


The folks at the Office of Letters and Light make wonderful videos. I enjoyed them, looked forward to each new one, and found them inspiring. And amusing. And found myself wishing I worked there. But I don't. I work for a plumbing company.


Scrivener. Is. The. Bomb.


I! Love! Exclamation points!


The internet is not your friend. Yes, it's awesome and all my friends are in the tubes, amongst the cats and the memes, but the internet is not your friend. Or if it is, it's that douchebag that comes over to your house and eats all your chips, clogs the toilet and lets the cat out.


So. That's my take on it. I go forth into December hoping to finish this baby before Christmas. Because once again, the time with family, the wonderful cooking, the swelling, etc. How was your NaNo experience?


eta *Originally called Brandon Sanderson Brain, which I think I meant to put "Brian". But it is Brandon. So double fuckery there. Sorry, Brandon. Now wtf is the last Wheel of Time book?! *stern face*

I have been validated!

Well, for NaNoWriMo I have been Validated.

(the above thanks to Stacey Graham) 


I have validated at 56,132, even though I don't think that's even half of the novel. Yes, I am a little front heavy! And I've written shit since I had to clean my apartment and go away for Thanksgiving, not to mention the resulting altitude sickness. (It's a real thing. I can hardly move or do anything when I'm up in the mountains and even when I come home it takes a day or two to recover.) I had forsaken all housekeeping due to NaNo, and if on picking me up and dropping me off my relations had seen its state, I would have been put in a facility for those not capable of taking care of themselves. And then this novel would never get done. However, I now have a clean apartment in which to write!


There are four days left in November, and I hope to get 12k more added before November 30th. That means my target will be 68,116 if I make my daily word count. Only 21,884 off my goal of 90k. I'm not ready to sum up my NaNo experience yet, but I do think I would have kil't it if not for turkey day. 


How about you? Are you validated?

50K in 19 Days - NaNo Win!

It would seem that I am a winner.

Yay me. :) Looks like I've won NaNo! I had a great day yesterday. Well, I did, my characters, not so much. I almost feel bad for my poor lovers. They haven't even started down the primrose path yet, and I've thrown a big ol' bugaboo in the way! But that's the way of it, I'm afraid. I got over the 50k. I guess I'm around halfway there. If that. I'm afraid I'm looking at a lot more than 100k, here but I know my beginning is a little overstuffed.

This week poses a challenge. Namely, Thanksgiving. I'm only going to be gone a couple of days, but it has been a killer for me in previous years. I spend more than a day or two away from the words, and they sort of shrivel up. I feel bad about bailing on my sister by getting a ride home with my folks on Friday, but actually it keeps her from having to make the long drive for no reason other than to drive me home.

How are you planning to approach the holiday?

Friday Followup: NaNo Checkin

Hello from Friday! I'm up to 48,858 on the NaNo! So very very close to the win, I can taste it.

Was it Elmore Leonard who said he didn't write the boring parts? I really need to take that advice. Or is it "leave out the parts readers tend to skip." I'm afraid I'm writing a lot of boring parts. It's the transitions that are the trouble. You know, skipping over the areas where everyone arrives at the party before the good stuff starts to happen. I'm drawing out that boring arrival part.

The fun part, however, is all the secrets I don't know. I get this feeling as I write in some of the characters that they have secrets of their own, secrets that are going to come flying out of the closet later. That's a great feeling, but I've also gone a little overboard on that before. I tend to start these dangling threads that way only to have to go back and take them out. Hopefully all the character's secrets are along the same line so more plot points don't start jumping out at me!

I think I'm going to win tomorrow! Whoo hoo! Where are you at in your novel?

Day 15: Halfway Point

So, it was easy coming up with a blog post idea on day 15 of NaNoWriMo. It's Halfway Day! I have achieved a startling 42,572 words in that short period of time. I don't mean to sound like a bragasaurus, but I am really proud of myself. Considering the shit work ethic I've had over the last year and a half or so, I feel like I'm pretty much on top of the world right now. I hope you will realize this is just my natural enthusiasm and childlike delight. It will soon slough away and leave me in a trench of despair, so I tend to ride these "I'm awesome" highs for as long as I can.

I'm getting worried about length. I'm not anywhere near half-way through my ponderous outline. It didn't seem ponderous at the time, but now I think... this is getting ponderous. There's only been one moment between my girl and her eventual love interest. Things do get romantical later on, but it begins as a straight up gothic tale.

I'm not exactly where I want to be on word count. I hoped to be at 45k by now and I'm a little short. Also, getting 3k a day is taking a really long time. About 3 to 3-1/2 hours. I know I can write faster than that, but for some reason, I'm not. At least it doesn't feel like a chore. I have to admit that my writing sessions have usually been short - maybe 2 hours, 1 hr 45 minutes sometimes and I strive for 2k. I tend to have a short attention span, I guess.

Well - NaNo Onward! How are you doing? Where are you at in your own NaNo journey?

Day 13 of NaNoWriMo

How are you doin', WriMo's?! I'm super, thanks for asking!

I'm way past the halfway point to winning NaNo, and more than 1/3 of the way through where I plan to be for the month. I'm at 37,406 words, aiming for 90k for the month. But... this baby is getting wordy. We may be at more of 100k or even 120k. I've read too many of the real gothic romances of the 18th and 19th century, I'm afraid. I won't be getting away with Wilkie Collins or Mrs. Radcliffe type word counts!

I'm finding my outline to be a lifesaver. I think that's why I'm going along so well. I've added quite a bit as I've gone along and the Scrivener "note card" system is really helping. Adding my notes as I go along is a breeze. I've also added all my character cards from real life into the ones in the computer. There's a handy function where you can do a split screen and view your cards above or beside your word processing page. It's a great little refresher, as the plot is about to open up and I'm going to need all those imaginary people. So far, it's just been my girl in the spooky ol' house with the spooky ol' guardian and the crackpot team of servants.

Where are you at? How is it going? We're not even at the halfway point - if you're lagging, I hope you give yourself a little room to get caught up as we go along. Best of luck, WriMo's!

Met My Male Main Character!

Finally! Vampire Baron is in the house! Literally. He just showed up. He wasn't supposed to be here for a day or so, at dinner. Instead, he decided he would stand in my female main character's open doorway as she read off some prose ... dramatically. She might even have said something about bosoms. They had a laugh. Sparks flew. Witticisms were bouncing off the stone walls. It was great. He just appeared like that, and he was fully formed. I didn't know he would be so funny.

This feels like a break, in a way, because I was sweating my heroine. I wasn't sure if I had a fully fledged character or something in a dress that just reacted to what happened. Then I looked at one line on her character card and I knew where to go with her. It said "She's the girl who goes to find the source of a noise!" That says a lot about her. You must understand. To quote Scream, she's not "some big-breasted girl ... running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door." The reason that big breasted girl goes up the stairs is because if she doesn't, you don't have a horror movie. I mean, are those big breasted girls ever very brave? No. Not until they get half their clothes off and hear a noise. All of a sudden, they're Lara Croft.

The reason my girl goes to find that noise is because she's not superstitious. She doesn't believe in the ghost. She knows that darn maid has it in for her. In other words, she has many reasons to inspect that sound or that white cloth that flipped around the corner, or to approach the window that sounds like it's being scratched. That white thing out there could be many things besides a ghost and she wants to know, she wants to stop the superstitious tittle tattle. It makes her smart and brave. And smart, brave people are always interesting.