It's NaNo Time!

Normally I spend November entering a whole new world in the hopes that I’ll finally win (write 50,000 words in a month) NaNoWriMo. This year I spent most of October going back and forth about whether or not I should start yet another project. I have a ton of ideas, one of which I’ve been really wanting to dive into, but I also have two projects that are in progress that I want to finish. What I finally decided is that I’m going to participate in my very own NaNo that has slightly altered rules that fit what I need/want to do before the end of the year.

So my goal is to write 50,000 words by the end of the month. Those words can be while working on Genevieve’s first draft rewrite or on Caitlin’s zero draft. As long as I’m working on one (or both) of those that’s what matters. I’m going to try to only count new words when working on Genevieve, but I also don’t want to get discouraged which could lead to being sidetracked, which I definitely don’t need. My ultimate goal is to have a zero draft of Caitlin and a 1^st draft of Genevieve done by midnight on December 31^st. I think they are completely doable, especially with my handy new tiny laptop that is far more portable then my gaming 17” laptop.

While working this out part of me wanted to include blog posts as words towards my goal as well as any research/writing I do on other projects, because I really want to regulate my blog schedule and get the first layer of research done for Grayson’s project, but I wasn’t sure if I should. After a month and a half of no writing whatsoever I really want to get back in the swing of things which means I need to do it all, writing, researching and blogging. Having those words count towards my goal will not only help keep me motivated towards meeting my goal, but they will help motivate me to actually do what I want/need to do. It never ceases to annoy me that my last blog post was over a month (or sometimes even longer) ago, yet I constantly slack off instead of posting like I should.

Now that I’ve put my goals in writing I’m off to write…well work really, then write once I’m home. Good luck to anyone else participating in NaNo or their own version of it. I know we are all going to need it.

NaNo Goal Metric

Sunday, not Sunday....

So only the second week of my blog schedule and I failed miserably and of course I have excuses, but it doesn't really matter what they are cause I failed regardless. So today there will be two posts so I can make up for my Sunday failure.

This weekend I ended with a word count of 39k and an end in sight. I am loving the way things are working out in my WIP and I can't wait to get to the end of this zero draft (aka basically an extended outline). I should be there by the 1st of May and then I can move on to the first draft where I add in all the descriptions and stuff that I never seem to put in during my zero draft. One time I wrote a story where I never once mentioned that my protagonist was a blonde because I never described her. So glad that I learned that I did that so that I don't worry about the parts where I get stuck trying to describe something and end up staring at the computer with writers block. I know I can skip it this round because odds are I didn't describe something a chapter back or four chapters before that.

One thing that I'm super addicted to at the moment that I had never tried before are sprints. On Saturday, Carolyn Crane tweeted that she was going to do a 1k1h sprint and asked people if they wanted to join her. I couldn't at the time she was doing it but decided to do it later that day. I sat down, no distractions, with the new Linkin Park single on repeat and wrote for an hour. I hit 1k by the half hour mark and ended with 1,891. It was the best I had ever done in word count before in one day, let alone a single sitting. I will definitely be doing more of those in the future.

The only other thing with Genevieve's story that I'm struggling with is whether or not third person limited is going to cut it for the POV. Everything is in first person these days and I am struggling to find some well written third person novels that I can use as a guideline. The ones that I love have their own unique voice which makes them a little difficult to study, whereas I have a myriad of books to choose from to see first person POV done right. I guess eventually I'll figure it out or die trying.