NaNoWriMo 2021 May GOD Have Mercy On My Soul

 I'm doing it. I swear to GOD I'm gonna finish a novel for once. I SWEAR TO THE ALMIGHTY KOALA OF STAR TREK THAT...

You Know The Drill: 2021 Writing Projects

Above all, GET SOMETHING PUBLISHED!

Write

Write

Write!

Get a story submitted to the Florida Writers Association's annual anthology!

Get that damn NaNo novel finished!

Clean up your bookshelves!

Wait that's not writing, that's deflection.

Still, it's seven years of dust on that thing, GET IT CLEAN!

Sigh.

The Thing That Motivates Me During NaNo Writing

It's a very simple reason I keep writing.

The characters I'm writing will present an interesting tidbit about themselves I didn't realize until halfway through the story I'm writing.

Granted, sometimes the secret they reveal stops me, because I can't keep writing them into a plot if they no longer fit it. But sometimes like what my two main characters I'm writing in my alien invasion plot just told me, it gives me a reason to add a chapter to flesh out that new development.

I might actually get this one done, unlike the four other novels languishing in the first draft stage.

NaNoWriMo 2016: Getting to 50000 Words And More to Go

Getting to the 50,000 word marker is relatively easy if you've gotten things plotted out, you've gotten the characters lined up, and you avoid the pitfalls of painting yourself into corners that you didn't expect.

I'm hitting the 50,000 finish line a lot earlier than usual as well. Got a full week left of the NaNo campaign to get more of the bits and pieces I've got floating around here.

Next thing up is actually finishing the NOVEL ITSELF - something I haven't done in any previous effort. If I can focus on THAT...

Then I can worry about hiring somebody for the cover art. ;-)

NaNoWriMo 2015: Day 30

This is the last day to reach the 50,000 word count to earn all the prizes and discounts at the end of this month-long train ride.

So, just to note that last night I hit 50,000 words - 51,000 words actually, as the damn word validator can't translate OpenOffice documents cleanly so I over-wrote to make sure I cleared the hurdle - for about the fourth time attempting NaNo since 2006.

Yay.

The trick, of course, is to keep working on the novel past all this. After all, this has been a rough-draft stage of writing, and not everything fits well or is even finished.

The novel project - Subway Night - has a few gaps in the early parts and is really only finished up to the halfway point: one of the two major characters is running for her life and the other main character - the sexy vampire - has been taken off the stage by a major threat. I've still got to them back together to continue the story, and have them uncover the MacGuffin Artifact of Doom before it gets used by The Wrong People.

I also got to get a better book cover. Which means a trip up to New York... hiring models... getting permission from the New York Transit office to take photos in the station... money money money... I might have to start a fund-raiser page on Kickstarter or something.

But, again: novel first. Flirt with potential sexy vampire models later.

How did YOUR NaNo writing go?

Knuckling In, Keep Writing

I am going to use the month of March to focus hard on getting the rough draft of Ocean Dancers done.

I will finish this.

That means no distractions.

NaNoWriMo 2014: Winners

Just reached the 50,000 word count for NaNoWriMo:

As always, the novel itself is nowhere near finished - at this rate, it needs another 50,000 words just to get to a good closing spot - and will need serious revision and rewrite during the editing phase.

But I'm feeling good about this one.  I will keep writing.  I will get this published.

This is just a placeholder cover.  If I can scrounge up $300 or so, I might hire a professional illustrator to make something better... :)

One Week Before NaNoWriMo 2014

GET PUMPED UP, WRITERS.

You want motivation heading into next week?  Here you go:

I met Tim Dorsey at his presentation at the Bartow Public Library last week.  I mentioned to him the thing about NaNoWriMo, that it's writing a novel up to 50,000 words within 30 days.

Dorsey mentioned that his Serge A Storms book Orange Crush - his third - was 80,000 words and he finished it in 40 days.  That's roughly 2000 words a day, close to the amount needed to do NaNo (1667) in 30 days.  Heck, writing 2000 words is easy to do during a Write-In event, those events tend to last 2 hours.  That's 2 hours in a day.  And there's more than 2 hours in a day a writer can find the time to write.

Doing NaNo is an easy thing to do, as long as you prepare yourself to write.  Planning out the days you're going to be able to find the time.  Planning out the rough narrative / outline of your work.  Knowing your characters before you write them.  These are all the easy steps you can be doing right now before logging in to www.nanowrimo.org to get set... ready... WRITE!

NaNoWriMo 2014: Clearing Out the Leftovers

Tell me to get at least two of the six stories finished that I'd planned to make part of my superhero narrative from 2013 NaNo before Halloween.  Two.  That's all.  I got one, if I can get two I can post them in a combo mini-anthology of sorts on Smashwords or something.

TELL ME.  I need an editor with an egg timer and a 2x4 standing behind me right about now.

Winning NaNo... But the War on Writers Block Continues Ever On

Getting to 50,000 words is one thing.

For starters, you badge up. :)

 Just gotta figure how to add this to the blog template for permanent display... ;-)

But the novel itself is - even at 50,000+ words - halfway through.  I haven't even gotten to the breaking point for one of the main characters, and the climactic battle not yet in sight.  The month of December is gonna be both a continuing writing frenzy and a push to get the first draft (oh Lord is it rough) cleaned up for any half-decent publishing attempt.

The best thing is that there's a sense of accomplishment here.  Just gotta get past the next hurdle is all...