Nanowrimo Day Twelve

It's been slow (shocking, I know), but it's moving again.  I'm having fun learning a little more about one of my side characters, who I hadn't really fleshed out before.  That's the part I enjoy the most about Nanowrimo - having to spill language out means that the characters get the chance to play without much supervision.  Of course, that's when things like my fluffy chick-lit book turning into psychological horror tales happen, so it's a mixed blessing.

How are things going for you all?  Anyone else having a slow spell, or are the words just flowing forth for you?  If so, I'd ask that you send me some of your good writerly vibes, but I'm not going to take away from another writer's groove.  Enjoy!

Nanowrimo Day Eleven

Remember how I said my word count was pathetic yesterday?  Today makes it look like GOLD.  I need to skip over the rest of this section and get into something where things are happening, because right now, it's not what I want to be writing.  I'm doing a lot of emotional set-up between characters, and discovering that my main character is a bit more of a bitch than I had intended (hate it when that happens), but nothing's really going on.  I need to fix that.  Bring on the magic and the espionage!

Nanowrimo Days Five through Ten

Hark, I have returned!  My word count is utterly pathetic, but I'm back from the hospital and appear to be on the road to recovery from the surgery.  Note to self:  don't neglect your abs so much, because they do far more for you than you realize.

I think I'm going to try going back to writing on the computer, rather than drafting by hand, at least for now.  I can type much faster than I can write, and I'm spending a lot more time in front of a computer for the rest of the week.  I'm working from home (because my office is made of awesome and lets me do things like that for cases like this), which means fighting with the cats for lap-space.  In general, the cats win.

I'm hoping the writing will pick up, as I'm getting into the plot and out of the set-up portion of things.  At least, that's what I have planned, and so far, my characters haven't been fighting me too much.  Of course, I've been giving them plenty of time to babble their way through introductions, so I think they're cutting me a little slack for now.

How go things for you all?

Nanowrimo Day Four and Hiatus

Unfortunately, today saw no new words added to the novel. Between trying to get things at the day job at a place where I can leave for three days and not check email and trying to remember what I need to bring with me, something had to give.

On a personal note, my friends, I am terrified. The only time I've ever even been to a hospital was when I sprained my hands when I was a kid. I visited my father when he had his heart attacks, but I've never been in a hospital bed myself. And now I'm going to be cut into and have part of myself removed and... I've the feeling I won't be sleeping well tonight.

I'll most likely be offline tomorrow, but will be back soon after. Keep the words flowing in my absence - I know you can.

Nanowrimo Day Three

Well, it's only day three, and I've already missed my word goal for today.  I'm still in the range where I can make it up easily, but it always makes me a little anxious.

Writing on the train was a little more difficult than I had anticipated - I'm going to need to figure out the best angle to hold the pen while balancing the notebook on my bag on my lap, otherwise my hand is going to feel like it's falling off.

I decided that one of the scenes I'd been getting stuck on wasn't strictly necessary, so I skipped the rest of it.  Of course, then I realized that I'd planned on building off of things that were set up in that scene, so I'm probably going to have to go back and do some clean up.  But for now, that's for December.  (And so the list of things to fix in post begins!)

Nanowrimo Day Two

Well, I've survived day two, and I'm still on target.  I've finished the first two scenes (which are predominately set-up), and started the third scene, which will finish out the intro chapter.  It's been moving pretty well, though today there was more real-life stuff going on that distracted from the writing.  Tomorrow, the commute to and from work should give me some solid time to sit with the notepad and some music and confuse the heck out of my seat-mates on the train.  Something about scribbling in a hardback journal with a fountain pen seems out of the ordinary for some folks.  Can't imagine why.

I'd read about this tip a couple of different places, and I thought I would pass it along here, as it's been working pretty well for me so far.  Every time I've stopped (either to type up what I've written, or to take a break), I'm stopping mid-sentence.  It means that, when I come back to it, I have a good idea of what the next few words will be.  Once I get the first few words down, it moves pretty quickly from there.

How go things for you guys who are participating?

Nanowrimo Day One

Hello, all!  For those of you who get bored with Nano-update posts, I'm going to try to keep this brief, but I'm also planning to use this space as a way to "take a break" without taking myself away from the keyboard.  If I start surfing the net, I may never go back.

So far the Church of Book and I are getting along pretty well.  Around 11pm last night, I realized that I wanted things to go in a different direction, but that was a whole hour before Nano started, so no problem, right?  (Incidentally, let me introduce you to Seshat, the Egyptian goddess of writing, wisdom, and knowledge, also known as the Mistress of the House of Books.)

This year's process is a little different from previous years.  Anyone who knew me in college knows that for big papers, I would draft them long-hand (so many trees died for the sake of my senior thesis), and then typed them up later.  This was in part because it forced me to edit when I retyped it, but primarily it was just easier for the words to flow if I were physically writing them.  I decided to give that a shot this year.  It seems to be working reasonably well - while I find myself wanting to edit a bit when I type it up, for the most part I end up adding in words that I had thought of when I was writing it, but apparently the message never made it down to my hands to write the words down.  I used Scrivner to outline what scenes I wanted to write, so I have a basic idea.  Then, out came the sticky notes:

And yes, one of my scenes is titled "Training Montage"

I've got enough notes on here to help me remember what's supposed to happen, so I won't have to go to my computer and look it up when I'm starting the next scene.  Also, this way I can flip in the notebook to the scene I want to work on easily.

I'm working on building up a cushion this weekend, as on Wednesday I'll be going in for surgery, and will be out of commission for a few days.  (Possibly - it's also possible that the pain medication is going to make this novel take a turn for the AWESOME!)  Either way, I may be quiet on the internets for a bit, but I'm going to try to make a post daily if I can.

Behold, the word count widget!  I'll be putting it on the home page, as well:

Happy writing, all!