NaNo Recap

There’s one week left in November, and it’s not looking good for this year’s NaNo. I started this month with high hopes, and even though I only wrote 500 words on day one, I figured I had plenty of time to catch up. It takes 1667 words per day to reach 50,000, so I’d just have to write a little extra.

Well… I’ve averaged 52 words per day.

Between finding a new job and launching my freelance business, I just haven’t been able to make time for writing. I’m happy with my five-page start, and I do plan to continue—just not at the pace I’d hoped. And I’m okay with that.

In the meantime, I plan to enjoy my Thanksgiving with my family (my gramma’s coming to see us for the first time since her surgery last year!) and celebrate my BFF’s upcoming baby.

There may also be some of this:

What do you have planned this weekend?

Like Slipping on an Old Pair of Jeans…

…that have been dried on high for five hours with a little too much starch.

I haven’t written anything (aside from blog posts and the random lengthy tweet) since this time last year, and it’s been harder to get back in the swing of things than I expected. I’m using NaNo as a way to get back into writing every day—or as close to every day as I can manage—but I didn’t begin until nearly 11pm last night.

The hardest part for me is always getting started, so I know once I open that vein the words will being to flow, but I always have an excuse: one more email to reply to, one more facebook notification to check, one more scrabble move to play. Maybe if one of you could come over and quit the internet for me every evening, say around 7pm? That’d be great.

I know I’m not the only one who faces this, so what are your tricks for forcing your butt in the chair and fingers on the keyboard? I think once I remember how much I enjoy writing this won’t be a problem.

At least that’s my plan.

The good news is once I DID start I quickly remembered how much I love these characters. Welcome back Biz and Cameron!

DeceFiniMo

I know it goes against the purpose of NaNo, but I hereby declare December DeceFiniMo: December is the Month I’m Gonna Finish My Novel. Yes, I realize that acronym is all kinds of wrong, but that’s how it was said to me (thanks Stacey!) and I like it.

As I said on Monday, I’m past the halfway mark (hovering at 36,000 words) and the goal for young adult is 60,000, I shouldn’t have a problem. Never mind that Christmas, New Year’s, and a bazillion of my friends’ and family members’ birthdays occur in the next 33 days, I’m determined to finish.

I’ve read in multiple places that for the most part, this is not the best time to query agents, so I plan to hold off on sending out more for After the Fall until after the new year. As of today, I’ve had two partial requests out of about twenty queries, one of which is still out. I don’t think those stats are fabulous so I also plan to take another look at my query. I’ve had a couple suggestions that have my wheels churning, so we’ll see what happens.

NaNoFailMo

Well… it looks like my prediction of not reaching 50K in 30 days was accurate. I have, however, surpassed my personal goal of 30,000 words, and that’s with only writing 1000 words in the past six days.

The good news? I have a solid start on my novel. Because it’s young adult I’m aiming for roughly double what I’ve currently written. The bad news is I’m smack dab in the middle of… the middle.

I think I’m just about past the rough spot and now that I know I can write 1000 words in an hour, I figure I should be able to finish this draft in another month.

For those of you who participated, how many word did you write this month?

Ahh, Plotting

One of the rules of NaNo is you cannot start writing the actual story until November 1st. I wrote eight or so pages last spring, and while I plan to use them, I’m no longer going to start the story in the same place so it’ll just be filler. I figure I’m going to need an extra 1000 words to pad here or there.

What you CAN do prior to November 1st is plot, outline, research, meet your characters, and whatever else you need to do to get ready to write the story. I also did a lot of research last spring so while I’m looking over those notes, my biggest task this week is outlining my plot.

I know how the story begins, I have a kick@ss ending (which can be turned into a series, but I’m not getting ahead of myself here) but the middle is a bit of a mystery to me. I have sticky notes all over my desk that say things like “betrayal” and “love interest” — things I need to weave in to keep the reader hooked.

Only a few days left to figure it out. Because I CAN’T start without knowing where I’m going!

Writers, how do you plot? I know quite a few of you are pantsers, so you’re excused from sharing your secrets. But you can still share a story if you’d like.

Stop! NaNo Time*

It’s that time of year! NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month for those of you not in the know — starts November 1st and I’ve already signed up. NaNo challenges writers to write a novel in a month. Simple, right?

Yeah, yeah. Stop laughing. It’s been done before. Even by me. After the Fall, which I’m querying now, was a nano novel (affectionately titled nanonovel08 until I got to the second draft).

The thing that most concerns me is I’ve yet to write a novel while working a full time job. I know there are gazillions of people who do this every day — some even have FAMILIES — but I’m trying to be realistic. I fully expect this to be a challenge for me and I’m okay with not hitting the 1667 words a day goal. I’m mostly excited to be a part of the delirium.

For those of you who don’t write, consider this your warning that the month of November may be heavy on the writerly talk. I hope you stick around to cheer on me and my conanoers (tee hee, I just made that up) and if you’re good maybe I’ll tell you what my novel’s about before the end of November.

Now.. roll call! Who’s in?

* The post title is for Lisa.