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Posts Tagged ‘nanowrimo’

NaNo Update

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , on November 21, 2012| 2 Comments »

50,624 words.

That is all!

/crawls off to collapse in a corner somewhere, then remembers all the other work she has to do; feels pretty terrific anyway:)

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Good NaNo News: Finally Back at Par

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , on November 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

photo by Shayan (USA) on Flickr

I swear, I’ve felt like Tiger Woods* these last few days. I couldn’t get to par on my NanoWriMo word count to save my life. Too much going on, yes, but perhaps more importantly, my story engine hadn’t kicked in yet. You know what I mean, it’s that point when things really start happening. The bad guy comes out of the woodwork, the building collapses, the Galaxicon ice worm wriggles into the away team member’s pancreas and stows away on the ship. Like that.

Note to self: next time forget about setting up the story. Do that later, some time when you aren’t ridiculous numbers of words behind schedule. Instead, go straight to the meaty stuff.

Focusing on the action makes writing so much easier. My best day so far this month was 2,800 words before today, but this morning I managed almost 5,000. Because today I got to blow up a ship. A space ship. With my main characters on it.

Good times.

* For all I know Tiger is back on top again, but last time I stumbled on golf news he wasn’t doing particularly well. Still, Tiger is a global icon, and even if you (like me) are essentially uninterested in golf, you probably still get the golf tie. Feel free to tell me how out of touch I am in this department.

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Word Count Blues

Posted in Other, Writing, tagged on November 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

photo by phatman on Flickr

When I said that this was a bad month for NaNoWriMo, I meant it. What I didn’t know was that on top of the accounted-for holiday, family illness, and associated travel, November has decided to become the Month From Hell.

Wondering why my word count sucks? In addition to the previously mentioned issues I’ve got family members who are sick with normal stuff (two), another with a broken wrist (way to swan dive off the roof, big guy;), and one in the hospital for surgery after catching virulent New Zealand germs (hi Dad!). (I’m sure that the NZ germs were quite friendly though. And picturesque; lovely place.) And oh yes, I got sick too. So, for anyone out there wondering at my less-than-par word count, well.

The good news is our overall family health is improving and that’s what matters. As far as NaNo is concerned, of course, the important thing is to just keep writing:)

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It’s That Time Again

Posted in Writing, tagged , on November 1, 2012| 2 Comments »

NaNoWriMo Badge

It’s November 1st, and when I woke up this morning I realized that it is also Day One of National Novel Writing Month. Oh yeah, I thought, it’s time to write a novel. Right.

It’s a crap month for it. Forget Thanksgiving and international travel and all the usual work and life-related distractions, we’ve got a lot going on right now and some of it is challenging. So I’m busy, distracted, tired, and in no way ready to write a book in a month on top of everything else.

I’ve “won” NaNo before so it’s not like I have much to prove. I could skip a year and the world wouldn’t end.

…

And that’s exactly why I’m going to do it. It may not be the best work I’ve ever done or the longest, but I will do it. One of the most important requirements of being a writer is to, well, write. The discipline required to consistently put words down on the page is what trips up a lot of people, what sometimes trips me up, and this is a perfect opportunity to use an external constraint (a month-long deadline) to support internal goals. It’s said that “performance is a function of expectations” and NaNoWriMo is a terrific example of that in action.

So here goes. And hey, what she said:

“You can fix anything but a blank page.”

– Nora Roberts

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