NaNoWriMo

All posts tagged NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo: Finished Hunting Snow

Posted by Aibird on November 30, 2013
Posted in: Writing. Tagged: , , . 4 Comments

It’s over. Today I validated my word count at the NaNoWriMo site itself and the final count is 50,123 words.  My book is finished, and I feel a sense of relief and exhaustion.  Writing an entire novel in one month is certainly doable, but this one served to be quite a pain.  All I had planned for the book itself, quickly transformed into something else entirely.  I found that I couldn’t stay true to Snow White’s original fairy tale ending, not with what had happened to her and not with all the pain and suffering she’d endured.  Her choice in the end was her choice, and it was the one choice that no one could force upon her or take from her.  That is the whole point of this book in the end.  It explores Snow’s lack of agency, and how she has no control over what happens to her.  Others exert control over her, and so, I gave her a chance at the end to make her own decision about the rest of her life.

Her decision surprised me, and I found that I had to just let that be.  I couldn’t rewrite it to force upon the ending I had originally planned.  So instead I will put this novel in the finished drawer, let it sit a bit, and then I’ll pull it out and see if it’s revisable and worth publishing.

Until then I can rest for the next few days, glad to have completed my goal.  Not only 50,000 words in one month, but also another completed novel.  It’s been awhile since I’ve finished the novels I set out to write — last one I finished was four years ago, but today serves as a reminder that yes, I can still finish what I start. Now that this one is completed, I will work on finishing two other projects that I shelved for this month’s frenzy of writing. Once those are completed, I can set them aside and focus on revising this one.  The more completed novels I have, the more I can edit and submit to agents and/or publishers, and maybe one day, someday soon, one of those novels will be published.  That’s the second half of my dream and life goal for my writing. In the meantime, as I recover from this writing stint, I can work on my world-building again and maybe cleanse my palate with some poetry and short stories.

All official looking and snazzy!

Before I die, I want to…..

Posted by Aibird on November 6, 2013
Posted in: Art, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , . 3 Comments

In June, my town held an Art Festival, where artists from all over the Midwest came to show their wares.  A friend of mine convinced me to join her and a mutual friend for a walk around the festival to see all the various mediums of art.  Over by the food vendors, and slightly offset from the main thoroughfare was a large cubical chalkboard with the words: “Before I die, I want to…..”  Chalk sat in trays near the middle or bottom of the chalkboard. By the time we discovered this, hundreds of other people had written their wishes in various hues of the rainbow.  I choose a bright blue and a purple and wrote my own wishes: ‘to publish my novels’  and ‘to take a space walk’ and a silly one from my childhood: ‘to be the first person on Mars.’

 

Today I discovered the artist who created this project:

 

The art installation reminded me that there’s a lot to life, and sometimes when we’re caught in the bustle and hustle that is our society, we are too busy rushing forward to do everything as soon as possible that we miss the little details that add great beauty to our lives. This installation reminded me of what it is I truly wish I could do with my life; even if right now, achieving those dreams may be hard.  Sometimes, when caught in the rush of societal expectations, our own criticism of our activities, and the expectations and criticisms of others can burn through our hopes and determination to try for our dreams. We may start to feel beaten down, like maybe we’re not capable or smart enough or worthy enough to achieve what we wish we could do or have.

Installations like this remind me that such thoughts and societal pressures are wrong. We are capable, and we just need to find the strength and the network of supportive people to help us find our way toward achieving a dream or at least making our life better, more bearable, and perhaps even carving a slice of happiness in our little corner of the world.  It’s possible to achieve that, but sometimes we just need a little reminder. 

 

And it’s why I try for National Novel Writing Month each year, even if some years I didn’t make it to fifty thousand words.  The point is trying and not letting societal pressures or our own criticism wear me down until I stop trying.  It’s worth the hard work, and by the end of this month, when I finish this novel, I’ll feel that elation of having completed it. The fact I finished that project gives me hope and ambition to keep trying and eventually I’ll finish more and more, until I have a huge pile of finished projects, where I can edit and polish and maybe even be published. I can become a published author, and the only way to do it is to just keep writing and trying my best to learn and improve as I go.

It’s possible to achieve my dream. All I really need to do is continue to write whenever I can, and continue to tell myself that no matter how hard and unreachable a dream may seem at times, I still have time and that time is the present.

 

As an update on my progress, I am currently at 15% of 50,000 words. A good start for the first week of November! If I keep at this rate, I may finish this story a few days before the deadline, which would be awesome! All I need to do is write at least two thousand words a day to keep at my current pace.  This way, if I start to lose momentum in later weeks, I’ll have a buffer and it won’t hurt my progress too much.  That’s the hope at least.

Also, when I attended my Regional meeting and kick-off events, I was given an awesome gift bag of items to provide inspiration (and Kleenex for those days where I just want to weep with frustration at having written myself into a corner), and a envelope full of writing prompts to help jerk me out of any writing blocks I may encounter.  I don’t know if I’ll attend any of the other meetings, mostly because circumstances in life have forced me to relocate temporarily, so now the meetings are an hour away, but if I am in town for one, I’ll probably stop by to provide some inspiration to fellow writers and hopefully receive some myself.

At the very least, I can attend some on-line ‘write-ins’ chat sessions with not only those in my region, but also fellow writers at LegendFire, the writing forum I help moderate.  So there’s lots of support for this project.  That helps a lot in the long run, I think. Having other writers tackle this challenge with you, so that way you can cheer each other on and remind one another that yes, this is possible.

So, for those of my readers who are tackling this challenge: Yes, this is possible and you can finish in time. Just keep writing. Just keep writing.

Or as Dory from Finding Nemo says:

justkeepswimmingImage credit: gifsoup.com

Writing, swimming, they’re all the same, right?  Just keep at it.

National Novel Writing Month: Begins Tomorrow at Midnight

Posted by Aibird on October 31, 2013
Posted in: Writing. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Pens ready to go fellow writers?

One would hope for tomorrow at midnight, NaNoWriMo begins.  I’ll be attending the regional kick-off to see if that helps inspire me to tackle as many words as possible for the first few hours of November.  I tend to write in sprints rather than daily word counts, but to win NaNoWriMo, I will have to start writing bits of my story daily — at the very least a thousand words a day.  My sprints where I take on several thousand words in a day will help cover the rest of the word count.  As long as I get past 50,000 words, then I’m happy.

I’ve been mapping out the plot points of my story on notebook cards.  It’ll give me some leverage with rearranging them to see if there’s a different way to put the scenes together.  It will also let me look at the tale as if it’s a puzzle.  I know the overall picture, but now with these notecards, I can write each individual piece, and then place them together with transitions to smooth out the tale.  It’s a new way of writing for me, and I’ll see if this experimental method helps me finish the story on time.

Another activity I’ve done is create the crew manifest for my Starliner, determine the type of ship engine, and how long it would take to traverse space from one point to the next.  I am mapping the ship now, so I can have a good idea of the different areas of the ship and where the characters will be during their scenes.  It’s quite a bit of fun, especially since I love to draw maps.

Is anyone else preparing for NaNoWriMo with some last minutes notes?

NaNoWriMo Notes: Characters

Posted by Aibird on October 26, 2013
Posted in: Author, Characters, Writing. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Characters are the core of the story. Without them, you really don’t have much of a story or really anything to write. It’s why I take a lot of care in my character building. I want to understand the character the best I can before I start the story itself. Once I know my characters, the story will unfold from there, and I don’t have to worry about knowing every possible detail about the plot itself. My characters will reveal all the details to me in time, and if I write myself into a corner, often it is character building exercises that help me pull myself out and toss me back into the flow of the tale. To be honest, when I write, this isn’t my story I’m telling, it’s the characters’ stories. When I’m cognizant of that, it makes it a lot easier to write the tale, and to avoid suffering from writer’s block.

To help myself along, here is the general template I use for character building. This template is years in the making, where I’ve received permission to borrow aspects of other writing friend’s templates and some I developed on my own:

Continue Reading

Preparing for NaNoWriMo

Posted by Aibird on October 6, 2013
Posted in: Writing. Tagged: , , , , , . 2 Comments

October tends to be the month of preparation for me when it comes to National Novel Writing Month. However, I never go into too much depth when I plot. Mostly because all I need is the main idea of the plot since the finer details of how the plot is implemented depends on the characters and where they are.

To prepare, I outline a summary of the basic plot ideas, then I go into the character building and setting building exercises. I consider those to be more important in the sense that if those are clear in my mind, the character motivations that may influence the plot will surface. It gives me a certain amount of freedom to manipulate the plot so that it serves the character motivations and reactions, thus avoiding me being in that uncomfortable position of writing myself into a corner, where I have to backtrack to avoid writing a duex machina or throwing a character to the death/dogs in order to save the plot from self-destructing. Both are very contrived ways of dealing with plot issues, so I’d rather just backtrack and go back to my character exercises, where I let the characters speak for themselves. Often the best solutions for times when I’m stuck comes from those exercises with my characters. Besides the story is about them and their issues. The finer details of the plot of their stories are very flexible to fit who these characters are, and the main core issue — usually summable in one sentence — never fully changes even though how it’s implemented in the tale may.

That’s how I approach NaNoWriMo. This way I can focus on just getting to the end no matter what. I can repair any major plot holes later, and if I do get stuck during November, I have a battle plan for how to pass through it and come out the victor. This is the basics of my planning.

It’s a great way for me to jump-start my daily writing again. Plus it’s just plain fun to try for fifty thousand words in a month.

National Novel Writing Month is next month!

Posted by Aibird on September 29, 2013
Posted in: Author, Blogging, Writing. Tagged: , , . 4 Comments

I’ve participated every year in NaNoWriMo, but I’ve only completed it twice.  Mostly I use it as a way to encourage me to write daily again. To force myself into a pattern. This will last for a few months afterward, until life disrupts my patterns and I have to start all over again. A never-ending cycle really, but either way, NaNoWriMo definitely helps me get my writing back on track.

October is a great month for the planning of that challenge, to really plot out my ideas and develop my character’s back stories, so it’s all fresh in my mind for when the writing starts on November 1st. So for all my friends and fellow writers out there, if you wish to join my endeavor, post a comment on this blogpost! Let’s talk about our ideas.

For me, writing is my career, and yes, it hasn’t given me much income yet, but that’s not the point.  Writing is the point, and even if my story for NaNoWriMo is a dud, the act of writing it has helped me improve. Helped me to see areas where I’m doing pretty good, and areas where I need some major improvements.  It’s not enough to envision your stories and think about how you’ll write it. You can only achieve your dreams by doing it, no matter how hard life gets.  So this is a post to remind myself that I need to jumpstart my creativity and shift into gear. November is coming, and I want to be prepared.