NaNoWriMo Day#21

I thought I wouldn't get my words written today amidst Thanksgiving prepping, but I managed to get most of them typed. All I needed was a couple of hours sitting down at my desk and focusing to pump them out.

Lesson learned today: take what time you can to focus solely in writing and you can accomplish more than you think.

Happy writing.

NaNoWriMo Day #20

Two years in a row now, my November has been controlled by NaNoWriMo. I sleep, eat and dream of NaNo. The novel I choose to write holds the reins to my life for the entire month.

Well, I've come to the point of the month where I have conquered my demons. I've won.

Today, I passed the 50K mark. 

*insert cheer here*

It's a strangely anti-climactic feeling, knowing that the novel I'm working on is far from complete. 

What really happens at the 50K mark for me is that I have the urge to go back and edit what I've written. There are things I've changed, locations and specific details, which I need to go back and edit. But I know if I begin doing that, I'll stop writing new scenes and will instead focus on making all the scenes I've written up until now as good as I possibly can. The problem with that scenario is that I know as I write new scenes, more things will need to change, and more edits will need to occur. It's a sick cycle, really. A cycle I must postpone starting until at least December first.

So this is the point where I bite my lip and continue typing new material, willfully ignoring the almost unconquerable desire to edit. Instead, I make a note of what needs to be changed, lest I forget somewhere between the caffeine-induced, novel-writing frenzy of November. 

On December first, I'm certain I won't be taking a day off. I'll either be finishing my NaNo novel (word count and deadlines ignored), or I'll be diligently beginning my editing process. 

I guess we'll see which it is in ten short days.

NaNoWriMo Day #19: Backup Your Files

I think this is a good day to remind NaNo novel writers to back up their files if they haven't already done so.

Typically, I'm very punctual about backing up my computer. I'm paranoid about losing files, and schedule a backup at least once a week, more if I've put in a lot of work that week.


But as life gets busy, my fingers are busy typing my NaNo novel, and my mind dreaming up new conflicts for my MC, my computer backups have dwindled to almost zero. 

I own an external hard drive for the sole purpose of backing up my files. Over the years, I have lost too many files to risk losing them again. And when you lose a novel...it's like you've lost a part of your body, your soul. A part that there's no getting back again. Ever. 


I've been writing this novel for 19 days now. This is a novel I couldn't replicate if I tried. When you put a lot out on the page in a short amount of time, it all blurs together, and it's hard to remember the majority of it. Even if I could remember it verbatim, I've been typing this for 19 days. I'd like to not have to use another 19 days to re-accomplish what I've already done.

So don't learn the hard way. Get an external hard drive and back up your computer. It's well worth the investment (and they're affordable). And once you get the external hard drive, use it.

NaNoWriMo Days #17 & 18

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My fingers are sore, my brain is tired, and I constantly feel on the edge of writer's block.

We're past the halfway point now, and my word count is just over 47K. It's hard to believe that there are still twelve days left of NaNo. It seems like it's been going on forever. 

I look back at page one of my NaNo novel, and it already feels so distant. I wrote that page just over two weeks ago, and I cannot remember what's on it without rereading it.

As I get further into my novel, I remain grateful to have chosen to write it in Scrivener. There I can make notes, "outline" via my index cards, and link a selection of text to a prior scene or character card in order to keep key points straight. 

So eighteen days complete now, and I'm reminded of a certain looming Thursday arriving this week. But I'm revitalized by the fact that I'm on track, and I only have to write an average of 2325 words every day until December 1st, and then I'll have completed my 80K goal. 

......

...

Huh. It sounded like a lot less in my head.

NaNoWriMo Day #16: Tips for Accomplishing those Daily Goals

Day Sixteen of NaNoWriMo, and thousands of novelists are still going strong. Some have even finished their 50K word goal.

I've had my good days and bad days, and days in between.

There are a couple of things that help me in attaining my goals.

1. Overall word count goal
Scrivener has a nifty tool called "Project Targets" which allows you to set a word goal for your project. I do this, and set the writing deadline option for November 30th. This year, I've set my goal for 80K words. 

You can also declare some days of the week as non-writing days, which I've done for my Saturdays and Sundays (even though I've done some writing on those days, I treat them as vacation-days, so I don't have to write if I can't or just need a thinking day). 

By setting my overall goal and determining my writing days, I know exactly how many words I need to write per day, and I can watch my word count increase until it fills up the bar and I've reached my daily quota.

2. Mini outlines
I've said before that I don't outline, and I don't. But Scrivener has another great tool, which looks a lot like an index card. This is just a section where you summarize the scene you've created in Scrivener. You find the summary spot in the Inspector under the "Notes" section. You can also view all the "index cards" in order, and drag and rearrange them as you like. 

So instead of outlining, I do this, and then I have a rough idea of where I'm writing to, even if it takes me several scenes to get there. In Scrivener, it's easy to add scenes, so I just continue adding and keep the next "outline point" for a later scene.

3. Scene-by-scene word goals
I'm a goal-oriented person, which is probably why NaNo works so well for me.

In Scrivener, there's a way to set a word goal per scene. At the bottom of the screen, there's a round little target icon, and if you click it, you're given the ability to set the word count for the scene. Then there appears next to the target icon a bar which fills up as you write towards your word goal, going from red, to yellow, to green as you reach your goal. I do this for most scenes after I have an idea of what's going to happen in them, so it serves as a *very* rough estimate of wordage.

I like this because I find it nice to have a goal per scene as it helps me know if I'm being too wordy on a section or if it's too short. (If I can only come with 400 words for a scene, I know it's skimpy and I need to add conflict or another character, or consider deleting it.) I also find that when I pay attention to my scene's word count, I subconsciously acknowledge the flow of reading for the audience. This comes more into play later in subsequent drafts and as I'm editing, often trying to be more concise.

4. Sit down and write
There's really nothing else to say but sit down and write. You'll never be a novelist if you don't do this.

NaNo is great for getting my butt in the chair. It creates motivation where there otherwise might be none, and pressure to get it done in a set time period.


So while this may be the way I work, there are endless ways to write a novel out there.

NaNoWriMo Day #15

Yesterday was the halfway mark of NaNoWriMo 2012. 

And after some furious late-night, while-in-bed, typing-on-my-iPad NaNoing, I surpassed the 40K mark. 

*insert cheer here*

That means to "win" NaNo this year, I have only 10K words left to write in the next fifteen days. The highly competitive side of myself rejoices in this, as I will then have "won" both years I've participated. 

However, this 40K mark also means that I've met the halfway mark of my personal, larger goal. And, right on schedule, too. So in order to make my 80K words by November 30th, I must average 2667 words each day. I have scheduled myself a few days off though, so my writing days end up having a goal more like 3500-3600 words.

These are doable chunks for me. I'm accustomed to sitting down for at least an hour, if not two or three at a time and pumping out words or editing a block of what I've written in that time frame.

But for a lot of people, that sounds like a whole lot of words. Which is why my next post will be about the tools I use in Scrivener to get those words written.

NaNoWriMo Day #11 & 12

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It's happened. 

Life has, officially, gotten in the way of my writing. 

I'm surprised it took so long, really. But, all in all, I'm still on track for my goals, and I'm above the NaNo goal word count (WC) of 20,004. In fact, I've exceeded it by 10K right now (my current WC is 31,259). 

Still, I've set a higher goal for myself, and that would be writing 80K this month. 

Last year when I competed in NaNoWriMo 2011, it was my first year, and I "won" by completing an entire novel in 30 days, which ended up being around 75K. 

So, because I'm a goal-oriented person, and I like obliterating my personal bests, I decided to best last year's WC by 5,000 words. 

Thus, my unofficial goal this year is 80K. Which means I should be at 32,000 words today.

And I'm not. I'm 750 short. 

That's not bad, considering. It's an amount I could easily make up tomorrow, or the day after. But...if I were to fail on my goal because of a measly 750 words, I'd be awfully upset. 

Not to mention that I know this month is only going to get busier. With family having arrived in town yesterday and not leaving until Sunday, then more family and friends arriving on Tuesday next week, and then Thanksgiving... The next couple of weeks will be even more hectic than these past 12 days have been.

However, one good thing that has come from my not being at a computer is that I have been thinking an awful lot about where I want to go with this novel's plot, and what events I want to set up with this character.

What I've come away with are a couple of plot twists that I think will be good for the state of my NaNo novel.

I'm really not an outliner, but I always write better when I have a vague idea of what may happen in fifty pages. I definitely don't need to know what happens on the next page, or what my next sentence needs to say until I write it, but I do write better when I have a very general idea of where my novel is going. Is she going to meet a boy? Will she find a dead body? 

Really, all I need to know is a final destination, what I'm writing to, and then I can connect the dots. And I come up with these dots by thinking on my non-writing days like yesterday and today.

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I've realized those non-writing (or non-editing) days are vital to my writing (or editing) goals. But this a fact which I often lose sight of. I get tunnel vision when I get deeply into writing or editing a novel and work on the novel every single day--to the exclusion of all else. What I find happening is a lack of focus, getting too close to the plot and the characters and the twists I try to throw in, to even consider that they may not be working. 

Yet I struggle with my non-writing days because I feel guilty for not writing. I love to write, and I'm serious about it, so when there are days that I can't write or I don't get the time to write, I feel quite guilty. So I'm slowly starting to realize that non-writing days have value of their own. Those non-writing days can expedite what I accomplish on my writing days, because I get the opportunity to think about what I'll write the next day. 

So I'm going to try not to feel guilty on the days I cannot write--not to excuse myself--but to place greater value on my thoughts.