I finished Camp NaNoWriMo! But what does that mean?
Continue Reading “Camp NaNoWriMo July 2020: the end of (this round of) editing”
I finished Camp NaNoWriMo! But what does that mean?
Continue Reading “Camp NaNoWriMo July 2020: the end of (this round of) editing”
So this is it. We’re four weeks in and I have no idea what happened to the time. I have two days to go and, looking at my outline, I’m in a good place.
Continue Reading “NaNoWriMo 2018: week 4 and I’m almost there!”
If there’s something I know about NaNoWriMo it’s that I can do this. 50K words in a month isn’t a huge deal for me. I’m a fast typer*. What I don’t know, and looking at my previous posts, I’ve never known, is how to tell a story. So why do I do this?
Continue Reading “NaNoWriMo 2018: week 3 sees my tricks for overcoming doubt used to good effect”
If the first week was all about loosing time and track, the second week is where I found I know how to do this and caught up. I’ve got a draft short story* and am working my way through the meat of my plot. I’m a little ahead of target (just as well, because I’ll lose Saturday to roller-derby).
Continue Reading “NaNoWriMo 2018: week two I’m back in the groove”
It’s that time of year again: National Novel Writing Month, affectionately called NaNoWriMo. Like last year, I’m writing something I’m plotted in the hope to get a glut of words around a story idea I can then edit into something like a novel. Last year it worked, kind of. (Final edits still pending but I’m hoping to start sending it out in January. Fingers crossed.)
Continue Reading “NaNoWriMo 2018: week one gets off to a bad start”
A close look at my stats show that I front-loaded the month of writing. This is a direct effect of having carefully reviewed only part of my outline before I started. The important thing is that I met the goal.
I’m still ahead but it’s getting a lot more difficult. It took a while but I’ve figured out why.
Continue Reading “NaNoWriMo 2017: Week three and it’s getting difficult”
The last time I did NaNoWriMo I was panicking at this point (and enjoying myself hugely). We’re halfway through the month, take a day, and I’m 30K words in. I’m ahead: if I continue like this, I’ll reach 50K on November 24th. I still feel chill.
Continue Reading “NaNoWriMo 2017: Week two and I’m still not panicking”
I was going to focus on writing a new project in November anyway so when a friend challenged me to do NaNoWriMo I signed up immediately.
OK. This is it. It is June and that was when I was going to start writing.
Plotting started in April and took a frantic turn in May. There’s still some research I need to do and a couple of character studies that need a bit more of a polish (What really drives Anna’s mum? I need to know!) but I’m in a position to start.
The starting line is an oddly scary place to be.
I’ve only just put fingertip to keyboard but I can already tell you something about the difference between NaNoWriMo and doing it for real. When you do it for real, the pressure is on. I can feel myself reining myself in even before I’ve started. The writing of this novel isn’t just about having fun but rather about creating something that I can share with the world. This is not high literature, that’s not where I’m going – not with this one – but at the end I want something that I’m not embarrassed to ask people to read. After all, the point is to share it, as widely as possible.
Here goes.