NaNoWriMo

Word Count and Daily Goals

Lake Huron shore
Lake Huron shore

I read a great post by Elizabeth S. Craig yesterday about word count in which she says, “I set myself a daily goal, but for others a weekly goal might work better.  If you have a chaotic schedule, setting a weekly goal can give you a chance to make your goal by either spreading your goal out each day or having a marathon writing session all at once to catch up.”

Okay, my goal has simply been to write every day and make some progress on one of my writing projects. It seriously has never occurred to me to set a number for pages or words to be completed in a day or a week. The only time I’ve ever done this is when I did NaNoWriMo. My focus has mostly been on simply finding the time to write. I think I am definitely missing something here. I love seeing the word count go up, but I’ve never worried about whether it went up by 500 or 1500 words, as long as the number increased. I’ve decided that I want to get the draft of the sequel to The Dragon’s Pearl done before the middle of August, but when I think about it, I could get it done sooner if I changed my approach, and then have time to write other things, too.

I work to deadline and word count all the time in my freelancing life, but even then I don’t set myself a daily number of words to produce. I just get the work done.

This is going to take some thinking about. How do you work on large projects? Do you set daily word or page counts? I feel like I’ve been on another planet or something when it comes to this. Hmmm. Time for me to get in gear.

There are two links in Elizabeth’s blog post that I’m going to add below. They really are compelling reading, though Elizabeth added a justified caution about the strong language in Chuck Wendig’s post.

Have a great weekend!

India Drummond’s “How I Easily Doubled My Daily Word Count”

Classroom Visit and NaNo Thoughts

I had a great morning yesterday, visiting a class of Writer’s Craft students at a local high school. I talked with them for an hour about publishing: different ways to get your work published, some warnings, some resources and some facts about the money side of the business. The time flew and the class was attentive and asked good questions. I hadn’t visited the school before, but I was made very welcome. I was a bit early and while I waited for the teacher to meet me, without exception every teacher that passed me smiled and said good morning. That doesn’t happen everywhere.

In the conanowrimo_participant_06_100x100urse of talking about writing resources with the teacher after the class, I mentioned National Novel Writing Month. She teaches a course in the first semester that would overlap NaNoWriMo’s dates, and I thought it might be fun for her students to explore.  NaNoWriMo has a fantastic program for young writers with lots of excellent resources for the writers and for teachers who might want to get their classes involved.

So this got me to thinking about this coming November. Will I join NaNo and try to write a novel in 30 days? The first time I attempted NaNo, I stopped around 20,000 words. I was happily writing a suspense/romance and enjoying just letting the story go where it may, when I realized that if I could write 20,000+ words in a couple of weeks, why wasn’t I writing the book I had wanted to write for several years? Duh. So, I stopped the novel and finished Writing Fiction: A Hands-On Guide for Teens, instead. My 13-year-old son finished his NaNo novel with 50,000+ words and a lot of pride. The second time, just as we started NaNo, my much-loved mother-in-law began a swift and deadly decline due to pancreatic cancer.

There’s a unique quality about NaNo that seems to crack through something in me that just gets words on the page. Maybe it’s because the objective is so absurd that the writing can’t be overthought or second-guessed, and I don’t put up my usual procrastination roadblocks because I need to post a number every night.  Yup. Seeing that graph head upwards really motivates me.

Have you tried NaNoWriMo? What do you think about the experience? Are you thinking of signing up this year? If you’re a teacher, have you ever used the resources or used NaNoWriMo with your class?

November Writing Prompts

November 1st has arrived and with it my decision to skip NaNoWriMo this year.  Part of me would love to join that crazy writing world for a month. I enjoyed the process a lot and loved tracking my wordcount and watching others work toward their goals. But, I feel like I’m in survival mode with a lot of other work and things on my plate, so no NaNo. On the plus side,  I have a new writing gig to keep me busy and I’m planning more brainstorming sessions for another project I want to work on, so some creative work is ahead for me.

I did something totally different last weekend and put brush and paint to paper at an art workshop.  I’m always fascinated with things medieval and the project was based on a medieval herbal. A sample of my efforts is in the photo. I really enjoyed the day. I used to paint “a bit” many years ago and it was fun to get out the paints and play again. The nice thing was that the final products were very small–something you could finish in an hour or so and they didn’t occupy much work space either. I find it very calming, too. While I’m painting, my brain really can’t cope with anything else but deciding where I’m going to put the brush next. Time passes and the to-do lists and have-tos recede into the fog–and I get a pretty picture at the end. Gotta love that!

Instead of writing prompts this month, here are links to two writing prompt creators that provide endless combinations of ideas to spark your imagination. I challenge you to try each of them just once.

The Writer Igniter: http://diymfa.com/writer-igniter

The Brainstormer: http://andrewbosley.weebly.com/the-brainstormer.html

Have you found any great sources of writing prompts that you’d like to share? I’m always looking for more links to add to the blogroll at my book’s website. There are nearly 80 of my own writing prompts on that site, too. Hope you all have a creative month ahead!

Thinking of NaNoWriMo

Just for fun. My picture of “Nemo” from the Boston Aquarium.

I said in my last post that October was a busy month at my house, and that I was thinking of signing up for NaNoWriMo again. I’ve started twice.

The first time, I began a romantic suspense novel that was lots of fun to write—but I got about 23,000 words in and realized that, if I could make time to write for fun, I could write the book that matched my real passion, instead. The finished product didn’t have nearly the excitement or any exotic locations, but that’s when Writing Fiction: A Hands-On Guide for Teens was born. (My son carried on and finished his 50,000+ words on deadline. He was 13.) The next time we sat down to try NaNo, my mother-in-law became gravely ill, and creativity, and a lot of other things, went on hold for a long time as we coped with our loss.

So, it’s been a while since I thought about a 50,000-word November. And thinking about it has made me start looking for resources and NaNo tips that I can pass along, whether you’re thinking of a November marathon or just getting your writing on track.

1)      Here’s a link to Kristen Lamb’ Blog that I recommend you visit soon. For the past 5 Mondays, she’s been writing about structure, which in her words is “critical. Why? Because structure is for the reader. The farther an author deviates from structure, the less likely the story will connect to a reader.” Her weekly tips will keep your story on track and help you make that essential connection to your reader.

2)      Some writing starters might be handy. These are ones that I’ve created. There are some links to other writers with great writing tips and prompts in my blog roll, too.

3)      And to get you started a link to Lucienne Diver’s post on beginnings.

So have I made my decision about NaNo? Not yet. But the more I think about it … Well, I’ll keep you posted. What are your writing plans for November? Do you have a system that keeps you accountable for a daily word or page count? I’d love to know how you meet your writing goals.

Do What I Love Month Comes Undone

Life happens. Over the last week and a half, my mother-in-law has become very ill and the time to write has disappeared, replaced by worry, visits to hospital and home, and the kind of tired that comes when life hits you upside the head and you just want to escape into sleep. And, of course, the other life goes on, too. Music lessons, making meals, laundry, driving my son to school, and the day job, all done during the most beautiful fall days you could ask for. So NaNo is done for now, and the story will wait. My family and I will be living in the “now” of life, today and every day, until there are answers and verdicts from specialists and a road map, if possible, for what’s ahead. A stronger, bigger love sits at the core of this life. I’m blessed to have it, blessed to give it, and blessed to recognize the gift.

Sadly, we lost my mother-in-law on November 21st.  We will all miss her very much.

Characters and Enough of a Plot

Some characters dropped by two weeks ago with a bit of snappy dialogue and a dim idea for a story, and I thought, “Yes! I’m on my way!”  Then they took a hiatus while schoolwork and life got attended to. In that time, they lost a lot of their lustre and I wondered if they weren’t just a cute premise and not a real story.  Today, I invited them back for a visit and did my best to find out more about them and to see if I could find a way to brighten up that “dim idea.” I mean, in order to meet my NaNoWriMo goal, I need to complicate their lives sufficiently to sustain me and the story through 50,000 words of  beginning, middle and end.

I can honestly say now that these characters and their story have possibilities. I only have a name for one of them right now, and of course, that may change as I learn more about her and see her in action. But I have something to work with right now. My next step is to get names for all the other main characters, so I can listen to them talk and see what they have to tell me between now and November 1st. If people are going to be carrying on conversations in my brain for several weeks, they definitely need names. I’m going online to check out baby name sites and see what I can find.

And I’m going to practise typing the name a few dozen times, too, before I settle on it. I had a character named Philip in a romance novel, and I got extremely tired of typing that particular combination of letters. I guess because they mostly used only three fingers of my right hand and typing Philip seemed just plain awkward. He was the villain in the first novel I wrote, and I decided to reform him and make him a hero in a second book. I changed his name to Simon–still mostly a “right-hand” name, but my little finger was out of the action and I was much happier. Hence the typing practice.

Do your characters  just introduce themselves–first, middle, last name complete? Or are they X and Y until you find just the right name for them? Have you ever changed a character’s name part way through or after you’ve written a story or novel? Do you have a favourite name that you’re just waiting to find a story for? Have people left such strong negative impressions with you that you would never use their name in a story–unless, of course, they were perfectly horrible characters?  How do you find the names for your characters?

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo

 Yes, I have signed up for NaNoWriMo again this year and am looking forward to a whole month of writing and creating. Last year I managed around 23,000 words before another book took over and I abandoned my nightly creative free-for-all in favour of “purposeful” writing. Though I didn’t win NaNo, I did finish the book and had it published this spring. So, for me, a win.

This year, I have no books burning to be written, in fact, I don’t even have an idea for a story. I’m not an especially good “pantser,” so I’ll be spending the rest of October looking for characters, a setting, and 50,000-words-worth of conflict. When it comes to plotting, taking a look at the Hero’s Journey is definitely on my to-do list. I wrote a blog about it last year during the run-up to NaNo.

If you’re stuck for a story idea, too, I’ve been posting a series of writing prompts at http://wrightingwords.wordpress.com/writing-starters/  for other NaNo writers and anyone else who needs a creative boost.

What are you doing to get ready for NaNoWriMo? Are you a pantser or are you going to have a detailed plan for your novel before you begin? If you have any tips for success or sites to recommend to others taking on the challenge, please share.

If you sign up for NaNo and are looking for a writing buddy, I’m “wrightwriter” and I’d love the company.

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