I've been slack on updating this blog lately due to Nano and the intense strain its putting on my brain. I didn't realize it at first, but this is mentally exhausting! Combined with all that I usually do it has been putting me in bed earlier than I've gone to bed in a very long time.
So to recap where I am, what has happened and what continues to happen. We have now reached the half way point of NaNoWriMo, We have reached the peak and are on our way back down the metaphorical mountain. Yes! As much as I'm loving NaNo, I couldn't be happier that it's halfway over.
One of the things I've decided is to shoot passed the 50k goal, and instead aim for 70k! Its not much of an over achievement but to me, a first time NaNo participant, it was a very difficult decision, and yesterday I hit my halfway mark at 35k! I'm right on track. What I have noticed, however, is that I have a lot more words to write, and not much novel left! I've nearly completed the second arc and am at least two/thirds of the way to the finish line!
I have a feeling first edit will come sooner than expected, and scenes will be beefed up in places so that I can meet my mark. I've become much more detailed over the past few chapters than I was when I first began, and I think it shows my growth as a writer, and the ever increasing strain on meeting word count while still inching forward in my plot.
That's it for now! I'll post more updates periodically during Nano, and I should be updating much more as soon as it is over.
Showing posts with label NaNoWriMo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NaNoWriMo. Show all posts
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Word Count Milestole
I've reached 20k which I feel is a mile stone. I have never even imagined writing this much, and I'm so proud of myself right now I can't believe it. I know I'm only 40% done; but 40% is a lot. 20,000 words is a lot. I've never gone over twenty pages typed, and this is well over that.
Thats all I have to say about it today, My next milestone isn't too far away, at 25k, then I will be halfway there and I feel like that is a HUGE one.
Thats all I have to say about it today, My next milestone isn't too far away, at 25k, then I will be halfway there and I feel like that is a HUGE one.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Word count, End of Day 7
I made it my goal to reach 15,000 words today and I met that. I'm more than pleased with myself at reaching 15,126 today.
That means I'm 3460 words ahead of schedule, which is right around two days of writing. I've been trying to do a little more than par every day so that should something happen and I'm not able to write at all for one or even two days this month, then I'll still meet my goal without having to play catch up. I figure playing catch up now when I'm still fresh and just starting the race is better than trying to drag my feet through it in week 4.
I feel like if I made 15,000 this week, and do it again next week I'll be at 30,000. Then week 3 it will be 45,000 and I'll only need 5,000 words on week four.
Aside from word count I'm in the middle of chapter 6!
I feel the need to put my percentage completed as a sign off for this post.
It is exactly 30% completed. Woo! (5% ahead of schedule)
That means I'm 3460 words ahead of schedule, which is right around two days of writing. I've been trying to do a little more than par every day so that should something happen and I'm not able to write at all for one or even two days this month, then I'll still meet my goal without having to play catch up. I figure playing catch up now when I'm still fresh and just starting the race is better than trying to drag my feet through it in week 4.
I feel like if I made 15,000 this week, and do it again next week I'll be at 30,000. Then week 3 it will be 45,000 and I'll only need 5,000 words on week four.
Aside from word count I'm in the middle of chapter 6!
I feel the need to put my percentage completed as a sign off for this post.
It is exactly 30% completed. Woo! (5% ahead of schedule)
Four Things NaNoWriMo Taught Me In Week One
I thought I'd make a post about what the first week of NaNoWriMo has taught me. I feel I've learned a lot already and if I didn't want to win so badly, have my novel written, I could walk away now and feel like I've achieved something important.
- Outline's are Priceless: Outlining my story made me realize I didn't have a substantial plot, at least not one that would carry me across 50,000 words. I will always write an outline from this point forward, the more detail I can put in (without turning it into wordy paragraph's which I have been guilty of before) the more I can write on that bullet point when the time comes to churn those words out. The end result becomes longer and more well thought out.
- No Look Back: I cannot stress how hard this part is for me, or was for me before this week. I'm dyslexic and have real trouble spelling words and forming sentences in ways that other people can understand them. Even this post I'll likely have to edit a few times to get the word usage just right. With Nano there is no time to second guess sentence structure. No time to worry about whether that is the correct way to spell a word. No time to worry about semicolons. No time to worry about whether it makes sense! Just write and keep pushing forward. It's hard, really hard, but once you get it, you really fly through the words; suddenly able to write hundreds in the span of time it took you to write fifty before.
- What's Inspiration?: I hear people going on about " I don't have the inspiration to write today." "I need to be inspired to write." and I used to be one of those people! I would get hit with a sudden dose of inspiration and write a few pages in a frenzy of "I have to put this idea down right now.", put my work down, and never look at it again. What I should have been doing is using that inspiration to create entire outlines for novels. Don't waste your inspiration on your word count! Put it into your outline and you can push through the tedium of the pages that follow. I didn't think I could do it at first, but now that I've begun to just push through and force myself to write the slow points where I'm not sure how to transition. What's final editing for anyway, right?
- Deadlines Are Awesome: The deadline is what is keeping me sprinting! I want to finish! I want to have the pleasure of knowing I've won NaNoWriMo. Me, the dyslexic girl that everyone said would never write anything of value. Having that deadline keeps me from saying "I'll just write it later its cool.". I'll never write it later, I have good intentions but lets face it, that "write it later" thing never works out for me.
A short (not really) update on what's been going on.
I haven't been posting much the past week due to the start of NaNoWriMo. I'm doing really well so far, but it doesn't leave much time for blogging I'm afraid. I've finished five chapters so far, totaling at a little over 12k words in the draft. This is by far the longest I have ever written and keeping on track every day is difficult. Thankfully with the push of friends, and small pushes from family to get my writing done every day I think I should be able to finish this marathon.
After a small bit of math I'm 24% finished with the word count, and by that means I'm on track for the end of week one, needing only 360 words to make 25%. I of course won't stop with only 360 words today, I feel that if I want to finish this thing I should do my best to get ahead while I can and plan on meeting, if not exceeding the 1,667 daily word goal.
As far as outlined chapters go I'm 33% there, meaning I may need to back track sometime in the future and add more words as I go along, but being as some chapters are bound to be longer than others I'm not exceptionally worried.
I also have a plan for after I finish Nano this year. I don't want to fully commit to the plan just yet, because I need to actually win Nano for it to work.
Here's what I'm planning on doing. I want to finish Nano, take about a week off of writing completely, no revision, no looking at my novel, no thinking about the next one. None of that. Maybe read a book over the next week, or get caught up on projects I will have procrastinated on during this marathon of a writing event. (On that note I will most definitely work on the items people won in my giveaway that ended on Halloween. It would be a great chance to get that done, as well as list some items in my shop.)
After my week of rest and recuperation from writing, which I'm sure will be much needed, I will begin writing another novel, hopefully finishing it on the same timeline as I did my Nano novel. By this time I will have two unedited novels and will be in need of rest once more. After another week of rest I'll pick up my Nano novel and begin to edit it. It should be out of my mind as much as it could possibly be by then, with the new novel being in my head so thoroughly.
After my first edit of the Nano novel, I'll edit the second. And then begin the editing process again. I plan on personally editing both novels three times in total and then looking for people to go over them once (or even twice) more before sending them to several publishing houses.
By this time it will no longer be a Nano novel in my mind, as the Nano novel is an unedited word dump of a book, and this will be a fully edited creation, and in my mind a masterpiece (or at least as close to one as I can achieve right now.)
I have a dream of becoming traditionally published, but of course if all else fails and I'm rejected at every turn I'll self publish in the end. Just having the fully edited manuscripts bound and in book form would give me more pride, and sense of accomplishment than I believe I ever have felt before.
At this time I'll take the rest of the time off writing and merely brainstorm my next until Nano starts again. Hopefully a little more prepared this time, a little bit better of an outline, characters more fleshed out before beginning. A clear picture of plot more than three days before the beginning of writing.
I also hope to be a liaison next year. My home region is without any liaison at all and I find this troubling. We won't have any official goodies and that upsets me, and I fear it may throw people off from wanting to attempt this fun, yet exhausting, exercise.
I believe I'm finished rambling for now, Stay tuned for more ramblings in the future. Hopefully I'll update this blog more than once a week.
After a small bit of math I'm 24% finished with the word count, and by that means I'm on track for the end of week one, needing only 360 words to make 25%. I of course won't stop with only 360 words today, I feel that if I want to finish this thing I should do my best to get ahead while I can and plan on meeting, if not exceeding the 1,667 daily word goal.
As far as outlined chapters go I'm 33% there, meaning I may need to back track sometime in the future and add more words as I go along, but being as some chapters are bound to be longer than others I'm not exceptionally worried.
I also have a plan for after I finish Nano this year. I don't want to fully commit to the plan just yet, because I need to actually win Nano for it to work.
Here's what I'm planning on doing. I want to finish Nano, take about a week off of writing completely, no revision, no looking at my novel, no thinking about the next one. None of that. Maybe read a book over the next week, or get caught up on projects I will have procrastinated on during this marathon of a writing event. (On that note I will most definitely work on the items people won in my giveaway that ended on Halloween. It would be a great chance to get that done, as well as list some items in my shop.)
After my week of rest and recuperation from writing, which I'm sure will be much needed, I will begin writing another novel, hopefully finishing it on the same timeline as I did my Nano novel. By this time I will have two unedited novels and will be in need of rest once more. After another week of rest I'll pick up my Nano novel and begin to edit it. It should be out of my mind as much as it could possibly be by then, with the new novel being in my head so thoroughly.
After my first edit of the Nano novel, I'll edit the second. And then begin the editing process again. I plan on personally editing both novels three times in total and then looking for people to go over them once (or even twice) more before sending them to several publishing houses.
By this time it will no longer be a Nano novel in my mind, as the Nano novel is an unedited word dump of a book, and this will be a fully edited creation, and in my mind a masterpiece (or at least as close to one as I can achieve right now.)
I have a dream of becoming traditionally published, but of course if all else fails and I'm rejected at every turn I'll self publish in the end. Just having the fully edited manuscripts bound and in book form would give me more pride, and sense of accomplishment than I believe I ever have felt before.
At this time I'll take the rest of the time off writing and merely brainstorm my next until Nano starts again. Hopefully a little more prepared this time, a little bit better of an outline, characters more fleshed out before beginning. A clear picture of plot more than three days before the beginning of writing.
I also hope to be a liaison next year. My home region is without any liaison at all and I find this troubling. We won't have any official goodies and that upsets me, and I fear it may throw people off from wanting to attempt this fun, yet exhausting, exercise.
I believe I'm finished rambling for now, Stay tuned for more ramblings in the future. Hopefully I'll update this blog more than once a week.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
NaNoWriMo Stuff
I may end up posting a map of the world Seraphina's story will take place in, the working title of the book is going to be "Tome of the Fae" but I keep just going back to Seraphina's story for some reason haha...
Right so a map should be coming soon. I might type up a few character bio's and put them here as well, its better not to rely souly on a hard drive for all of your materials anyways yes?
So stuff I'll likely post that has to do with NaNoWriMo:
Right so a map should be coming soon. I might type up a few character bio's and put them here as well, its better not to rely souly on a hard drive for all of your materials anyways yes?
So stuff I'll likely post that has to do with NaNoWriMo:
- Detailed Map of at least the lands ruled by the Fae
- Character Bio for Seraphina
- Character Bio for Melia
- Character Bio for High Queen Rhiannon
- Character Bio for Fintan
- Any ideas that pop into my head, I'll try to keep them down to one or two sentences at a time.
I will be doing a bit more work on the Halloween set I've decided to make for Seraphina (My Dollzone Rosemary) So Far I have a crochet pumpkin purse and a orange and black scarf already completed.
I made a hat, but it will need to be made again, the original try ended up a bit too small. I plan on making some orange and black leggings to go with it; and I also plan on sewing a dress that will compliment everything, but so far that hasn't worked out very well at all.
On top of this I have to continue my planning for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo! I want to get as many ideas and spark of inspiration written down as I can before November begins so that, when the marathon begins, I won't have to struggle as much to pull words out of my mind. I'm very excited to start this because I have been wanting to write Seraphina's story for over two years, but it has always been a "one day I will sit down and write it" thing. Now that I'll be doing NaNoWriMo I'll have the motivation I need to actually get her story written. Once I have the meat of her story down from NaNoWriMo I plan on going through several edits, having a friend edit, and then a trusted member of my family who enjoys literature to edit as well. I then would like to send it to several publishing houses, if it is rejected I may self publish and sell it on Amazon for a few dollars a download (a bit more for actual paperback copies). Regardless of how it happens I would like to become a published author.
Then I also would like to put a few adverts on Tumblr and possibly here as well for Avon and my Etsy store, advertising is very important for getting sales, which of course I need to survive...
And of COURSE I need to play some more pokemon, because who doesn't? I have a goal of always having every pokemon in my team at full affection, so that takes a lot of my time in the game. Plus the drive to be fashionable is ever present in this game, and I enjoy that very much. This is the most I've enjoyed a pokemon game in several years (since I believe crystal version) I think it has to do with all of the new features, Pokemon Ami and the options to dress your trainer at the forefront of my mind. I'll likely write a full review when I finish the game.
I'd like to start writing game reviews as I play them, but I've always been a little stand offish to put my opinion out there. Games I have right now are Pokemon X, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, Animal Crossing: A New Leaf, Pokemon Black2, and Legend of Zelda: The Phanton Hourglass for the DS/3DS. I also have Dragon Age: Origins and Oblivion for Xbox but I doubt anyone would like reviews for such old games.
I may also put a donation button on this blog in the future so that, if you would like to see more reviews, or more stories/novels by me, You can help by funding me.
I plan on adding polls when I go to do more crochet projects so that, the people who read this blog, or followers from my tumblr who would like to come here to vote, can do so and you can help shape what my next project will be.
In conclusion these are my plans for the near future, some more long term than others.
I made a hat, but it will need to be made again, the original try ended up a bit too small. I plan on making some orange and black leggings to go with it; and I also plan on sewing a dress that will compliment everything, but so far that hasn't worked out very well at all.
On top of this I have to continue my planning for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo! I want to get as many ideas and spark of inspiration written down as I can before November begins so that, when the marathon begins, I won't have to struggle as much to pull words out of my mind. I'm very excited to start this because I have been wanting to write Seraphina's story for over two years, but it has always been a "one day I will sit down and write it" thing. Now that I'll be doing NaNoWriMo I'll have the motivation I need to actually get her story written. Once I have the meat of her story down from NaNoWriMo I plan on going through several edits, having a friend edit, and then a trusted member of my family who enjoys literature to edit as well. I then would like to send it to several publishing houses, if it is rejected I may self publish and sell it on Amazon for a few dollars a download (a bit more for actual paperback copies). Regardless of how it happens I would like to become a published author.
Then I also would like to put a few adverts on Tumblr and possibly here as well for Avon and my Etsy store, advertising is very important for getting sales, which of course I need to survive...
And of COURSE I need to play some more pokemon, because who doesn't? I have a goal of always having every pokemon in my team at full affection, so that takes a lot of my time in the game. Plus the drive to be fashionable is ever present in this game, and I enjoy that very much. This is the most I've enjoyed a pokemon game in several years (since I believe crystal version) I think it has to do with all of the new features, Pokemon Ami and the options to dress your trainer at the forefront of my mind. I'll likely write a full review when I finish the game.
I'd like to start writing game reviews as I play them, but I've always been a little stand offish to put my opinion out there. Games I have right now are Pokemon X, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, Animal Crossing: A New Leaf, Pokemon Black2, and Legend of Zelda: The Phanton Hourglass for the DS/3DS. I also have Dragon Age: Origins and Oblivion for Xbox but I doubt anyone would like reviews for such old games.
I may also put a donation button on this blog in the future so that, if you would like to see more reviews, or more stories/novels by me, You can help by funding me.
I plan on adding polls when I go to do more crochet projects so that, the people who read this blog, or followers from my tumblr who would like to come here to vote, can do so and you can help shape what my next project will be.
In conclusion these are my plans for the near future, some more long term than others.
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