Tag: publish

1/5 Completion!

I’m titling today’s post in celebration of achieving my first NaNoWriMo victory. My Dad was teasing my excited facebook post about being 1/5 done with my book. The only reason I am celebrating by calling it 1/5 complete is because today achieved 10,000+ of 50,000 words required to “win” Nano. I don’t think I’ll be celebrating 2/5s and 3/5s, I probably won’t comment about my word count again until I reach the 1/2 way point.

Saturday is the write-a-thon… so basically I pledge to write for either 1 hour, 2 hours, or 8 hours. Don’t ask me why there is nothing in between 2 and 8 hours, I really don’t know. Honestly I think I’m going to pledge for 4 straight hours of writing. My computer and I have a love/hate relationship… especially with the keyboard tray which digs into my wrists as I type. So if you have any words of encouragement as I strive to kill myself with long hours of consistent writing, I would love to hear them. Fear not, I will let you know of my success and how much I was able to accomplish in said time.

I’m enjoying where my story is heading, though I fear that I may be repeating myself a lot… but that will be discovered during the editing phase. I am tired, and could really use a break, but I am committed to this journey with Nano. I read an inspiring post from a fellow Nano competitor who joined Nano in its 2nd year, she actually committed to the 50,000 word count in a 10 day period, and she achieved it! This I think is something I may try for in the future. I could accomplish so much more if I continued to push myself.

I’m looking forward to my next Nano celebration, but I’m sure I’ll be venting my frustrations before then.

 

Have a wonderful night!

The end and the beginning

I was so excited about everything going on yesterday that I didn’t realize I had forgotten to post until about 10 PM, so I thought I would save it for today.

October 31st: Halloween to everyone else, but for me, it was my deadline day. I had one chapter and and an epilogue to write and I still had pages from my notebook to type. I sat down at my desk and looked at wall of inspiration and as I prepared to type, I was nervous. Why? Was I channeling my main character’s fear or was it my own as I was preparing to conclude this story I have been working on for years? When I typed “The End” it didn’t feel like I had imagined. All week long I was excited as I prepared to tell the world that my story was complete, but as I looked at the final words on my screen I was actually a little sad. Bittersweet, I suppose. 

Still I would like to pat myself on the back. While I have known the story in its entirety for quite some time, I have never written it from start to finish. This is certainly a personal victory. I have not gone back and read through my book all the way yet because I know that once I do, I’ll immediately start making corrections.

So that was the end, now for the beginning.

November 1st: I saw many of my Facebook friends posting that it was time to begin the 30 days of giving thanks. For me, at mid-night, I was at a coffee shop with many other NaNoWriMo participants. We met around 11 PM as we talked to discuss any issues we were having with our stories before the midnight hour arrived. When midnight arrived, I went right to work on my new novel. 

For those of you who do not know what NaNoWriMo is, let my introduce you briefly. NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org). You sign up and pledge to write 50,000 in 30 days. You have from midnight on November 1st through 11:59PM on November 30th to submit your final word count. Everyone can win, there are no real prizes, but there are lots of opportunities. Nano is great for people that need help find publishers and literary agents, or authors that simply want to know other aspiring authors. I really recommend it if you enjoy writing. If you can commit a sporadic 2 hours or so per day, you can easily make your word count goal for Nano, it is only about 1700 words per day.

So, we have not reached the end of day 1 for Nano yet… but I have already finished my prologue and first chapter and submitted a word count of around 2300. I’m off to a great start. My goal is to write 1 chapter per day so that I have time to edit near the end. There are too many great publishing opportunities, and I would hate for my story to be a discombobulated mess if I can help it =)

Is anyone else out there participating in NaNoWriMo 2013? If you are, please add me. My username is ChristinaW87 and my story is “The 50 Deaths of Annabelle Joy”

I wish you all a fantastic weekend. Happy November!

Writing the unplanned

Writing the unplanned.

 

The other day as I was giving myself a mini celebration for almost reaching my goal and deadline for my book, I noticed an error in my chapter guideline. The portion I had slated for my final chapter, which keep in mind should be about 3000 words, was honestly about a paragraph’s worth of material. I was 3 chapters from the end when I realized this and had to figure out what to do. So I knew that had to combine the material chapters 39 and 40. What I was left with was an empty chapter.

 

Why am I so stuck on my book being 40 chapters? I don’t know I read somewhere once that a fantasy novel should be about 40 chapters and about 120,000 words, so I made that my goal. What am I doing about the empty chapter? Well that is what I wanted to talk about today. Writing what you never intended to write.

 

The way I had my story originally outlined, I did not feel there was anything that I had left unaddressed, however, I looked at where I could elaborate instead. For my story in particular, chapter 38 happened to be the ending of a war and chapter 39 was intended to be the coronation ceremony of the Queen. I decided to fill that space, since the coronation became chapter 40, by elaborating on the emotions following the war.

 

Now that I have completed that portion, I see a lot of content that many would say should be cut from the final product, but I also value in some of what is there. I believe that when I go back and edit/re-write other chapters will grow and split and the missing chapter will be something else all together, but at least I have more material to work with.

 

I think it is best to avoid large gaps in writing if at all possible. I would say the best way to prevent this is pay attention to your chapter guideline, storyboard, or whatever you use as an outline for your writing. My error could have been spotted early on, but I was only looking at my outline chapter by chapter. So go back every few chapters and look at your guideline as a whole. Your story will likely change as you write it so you may need to revisit your layout and shift things.

 

Tomorrow is D-Day, deadline day, celebration day, more importantly my day of victory. I’ll be finishing up my novel tomorrow morning and I look forward to sharing my victory with you.

 

 

Just catching up…

I normally refrain from writing on the weekends, this is simply because I think we all need time to relax. I once read a book on how to write a book within 30 days and one thing that I read has stuck with me ever since. “Don’t force your writing.” Often times I think people have a goal in mind and they don’t want to stop until they achieve that goal, which is fine… Sometimes though you can tell that you’re just writing non-sense and you know when it comes time to edit, most of it is going to get cut or re-written. So I try now not to force the words, the only exception to this is when I’m at a bit of a roadblock. I have a lot of signposts for my book, the chapter titles and also little things that I’d like to happen within the chapter, sometimes though, I don’t give a section enough detail or the scene doesn’t take as long as I thought it might. I can’t just start a new chapter so I have to continue that scene and sometimes I have to force that a little bit. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up scrapping it later, but the point is that I still got to my next chapter or main point and didn’t just sit there stuck in the current chapter.

I suppose you could call me old-fashioned when it comes to writing. I actually prefer writing with pen and paper vice typing on the computer. I hate typing, honestly. I bought some dictation software to assist me in moving my story from my notebooks to my laptop, but right now, after wiping my computer, the program won’t reinstall. So today I will be hand typing the last few entries from my notebook. This was how I started writing. I wrote all kinds of stories beginning in middle school. I would write every chance I had like lunch break, 3 mins before class began, 10 mins before class ended. Just whenever I could. I don’t have those same habits now, but I do still prefer writing in my 70 page, college ruled, spiral notebooks.

Tomorrow begins my final 4 days to write my final 3 chapters. It’s a tight deadline, but I know that I will make it! After that though, I have to start my prep for my NaNoWriMo story. I have no idea what the layout for the story even will be, its only a concept at this point, and my 30 day 50,000 word journey for that book begins on Friday!

For those of you who read this, I hope you’re having a wonderful day! 

More for tomorrow now…