NaNoWriMo 2014 (Week 4): Yeah, I'll take that winner's ribbon thanks.

NaNoWriMo 2014:

WEEK FOUR

THIS. IS. THE. END…

…of NaNo 2014, silly.

Can I say I’m both super glad AND kinda sad that I’m closing this chapter of my year (and no, no there are absolutely no plans for 2015—I’m not that masochistic).

Sure it’s pretty awesome to check off having actually pulled through NaNo. Even when I started 2 days late, but at the same time now that it’s done I’m kinda like “okay, now do I have the motivation to continue my NaNo project”…

Actually, I do.

I mean I’m sure it’s going to be way harder because there isn’t that whole “Darn it I have to write” cloud of doom hanging over me, but I’m also really interested in the plot I’ve got going. I want to see what happens next and I gotta write to do that.

So I found the secret formula. You hear it all the time—if you stalk writer blogs and interviews like I do—an author will credit their desire for a book that they couldn’t find. I wanted to write about teenage sadistic vampires to show my appreciation for the canon game fandom, so I went ahead and did...am, that is, currently in the middle of writing it.

Last week I mentioned some last few things I wanted to do:

Let’s start with the wackiest of those ideas…I don’t know why I do this to myself. I mean I wrote the last blog post for this series a week ago, so I totally just had a foot-in-my-mouth reaction to this: Try at least one 6000-word day...this one is a HUGE maybe. If I do this it will be probably on Thursday or Saturday. We'll see how crazy I'm feeling. (-original source)

WHAT?

What was I sipping (other than peppermint tea) when I typed this???

My goal today is at least 2600 which will be the most I would have written this month: right now the crown word count is 2573 back on the 10^th.

In other word count-related news, I hit my 30K goal!! That happened four days ago. Pretty happy about that because though I’ve done two unofficial novel writing months, the 30K mark was my original goal from CampNaNo April 2013 and I’ve been trying since then—minus NaNo 2013 cuz I didn’t even attempt last year; to busy with school—and failing until now. :)

Speaking of failing, umm, last week I also mentioned I would be attending my local write-in today. So yeah, going to get doing that even though I don’t really want to: as in I’m dreading the noise there, and potential unproductivity and procrastination waiting for me…

-sigh-

My review of the experience is TBA.

No Plot? No Problem! Week 4:

This whole month I’ve been slowly reading the second half of NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty’s how-to text, No Plot? No Problem! And I must say that it was really fascinating. And by that I mean there were some points he (or other NaNo participants) made that were the “hit-the-nail-on-the-head” type, some advice I disagreed with, and some that were new innovations I implemented…sorta.

So this last part sums up everything. There’s a lot of motivation spiel to get you over 50K. And although I enjoyed reading it, I really also kinda found myself shaking my head through the 13 or so pages of the chapter.

There was advice and pep talks in Chapter Four that I really disagreed with.

I mean stuff REALLY: write 50K in a week (or a day!)? Ugh. Yeah, no.

This chapter doesn’t really consider the “what if” you don’t hit 50K. I sure as heck don’t plan to write the 15K I would need to reach that goal all today…hahaha and—

Sorry. I’ve learned what makes me tick and this doesn’t work for me. 1) because I genuinely believe that if I attempted this and whatever actually managed the 15K I would probably take all of December off. And for me I’d rather get into the habit of writing daily at my own pace than working towards what Baty actually admits is an arbitrary word count of 50, 000 words.
And 2) do I really need a second reason? It's just plain loco-ness.

Still like the rest of the text there are some helpful tips:

Although Thanksgiving as come and gone, Christmas is right around the corner and that means, dundundundun, FAMILY TIME!

And family time doesn’t always equal caring and sharing time. For those of you who haven’t finished your NaNo project and are writing away in December, Baty suggests you pre-designate a quiet space in your house you can keep all to yourself. Or if you’re doing the visiting, opt in staying at a hotel. Or using the early morning hours to write when the rest of your host family is sleeping.

Stocking for groceries, and making sure you keep your health in check. NaNo can be pretty grueling for some. I haven’t been writing as much and I actually try to exercise a bit every day, y’know make use of my elliptical, but I also commute to work and take the stairs at school (pesky third floor classes)!

The point here is to take care of yourself! Remember, if you’re sick you’re probably not going to multitask vomiting and writing, cool?

And for those of you who already hit 50K and validated that word count, Baty advises you keep writing. Write through to the end of November at least, AND he adds, write past NaNoWriMo. Write every day until you’re done your started project.

And I know I've been offering motivational quotes, but I didn't like a lot of them in this chapter. So I'll take one I tolerate and add another writerly quote I really love; thus I refer to often:

"Write the ending, regardless of how far away you think you are." - Royce Roeswood, four-time NaNo winner from Denver, CO

[And the writerly quote:]

"I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true." - Jean M. Auel

All I can say is I hit the 75% mark of only the NaNo 50K goal. But I've only scratched the surface of a great (fanfic) story.  So I'm in it for a longer haul, but tbh, I wouldn't have it any other way. Part of writing is the experience--all of it. The really awesome days and the really crappy days.

Take it for the experience, even if you decide never to write again and especially if you're considering writing as a career.

And go ahead and make yourself a winner's ribbon! (Even if you didn't win.) xD

Here's mine:

Now if only I spent half my energy (and attention) on my writing.

Hehe.

EDIT (like 10 hours later): Just got back from the last of my local write-ins and the only one I attended. I went to the two plan-in events we had in October, and I found it really hard to concentrate around 10+ other people.

So I kinda walked in with dread. I came 30 minutes late cuz I didn't want to stand out in the cold (though it was fairly warm today--really nice weather actually considering it's the end of Nov and all). Anyways, got there and managed to grab a seat. It was fairly empty and people came and went.

In order to do this right I decide to leave my laptop charge wire at home and just work with a little less than 2 hrs of battery.

The plan was to actually stay for an hour--I figured this way I would be a bit more productive. Well, that almost doubled and after nearly 2 hours my battery signaled me at 7% and I shut up and left.

What was the result? So I wanted about 2600 for today--and as I said above 2573 was the number to beat.

I ended up with (and I did an extra 3 hrs at home)...drum roll, please!

6150!
I know, crazy right?
Yeah. What did I say about that 6000/day this month?
Well I did it--and I'm not going to be doing it again anytime soon.
'Nuff said.

And the majority of that was written during the write-in--the very write-in I thought I would sink in procrastination at!
AND AND there was a group who wouldn't stop talking in the back (my ML finally told them, and I paraphrase, "You guys have been talking for the last 20 minutes--are you planning to do any writing?") Of course he ended up validating his 50K like 5 minutes later. Go figure. --.--
Another guy was typing SUPER loud. Like I almost had a giggle fit because it reminded me of a joke between my sister and I: she commented on my loud typing breaking her concentration once and I didn't believe anything like that existed--but MAN oh man this guy typed like he was shooting a rifle or something (and I don't even know what a rifle sounds like IRL)! It was really loud and painfully annoying.

Thank goodness I had the forethought to bring headphones along.
Most of all of this was muted more or less and it helped that I was in full story mode.

So whether you "won" NaNo or not, take whatever you've got and run with it. Straight into December and the New Year if you have to.

Keep perspiring. Keep preserving. Keep writing.

So you're a failure? (Big Dreams Blog Update #14)

Phew!

Almost forgot about this month’s Update Day…

For those of you out of the loop—which shouldn’t include any of the 17 other bloggers signed up—Update Day is the end-of-the-month wrap-up for the Big Dreams/Do You Have a Goal? blog hop hosted by Misha Gericke and Beth Fred!

Consider joining if you have any big, wacky dreams you don’t have the guts to share IRL, y’know, with family and friends and coworkers. We fellow dreamers got your back! :)

So last month I talked BIG.

And BIG around this time of year for writers…well, some writers means National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo).

Like I said I talked big.

Maybe a little too big.

Or at least that’s what I was telling myself by week 2. I was so darn sure I was not only going to stop talking about NaNoWriMo (and go back and delete my last Update Post, or the parts where I talk NaNo) but I was really sososoSO close to stopping all my writing all together.

Like I didn’t see how I could back out of NaNo and continue to write this month. It would be like facing my failure every single day for all November.

…

All right. Hold up!

Who thinks like that anyways? (I mean, besides me two weeks ago.) If you’re thinking like this right now, stop. Just. Stop.

Do yourself a favour and stop thinking. Shut down for a bit. I mean think just enough to read this post…

FELLOW NANOERS: If by now you’re darn sure your word count meter isn’t broken and you’re officially looking at finishing your NaNo novel sometime AFTER November 30^th—don’t despair!

I mean, eat chocolate. Totally go crazy with the win and chocolate this weekend. Heck, heal those wounds with a little shopping therapy. (Black Friday? Cyber Monday? They were really created to fill in the whole of crappiness for shopaholic writers. ^^) And now that you’re in good company (if you consider company with me a good thing)!

Here’s what I’m taking away from my NaNoing experience:

One, I’m learning all about patience.

This whole year has been about patience, but every time I duck into a project I remember to give it a break. Cut myself some slack. Giving myself insane word counts after I miss one day of word counts might be okay. Until you miss like 3 days or a week or more…then you enter loopy land. Some of us can do it, some of us can’t. And it could just be the timing we don’t have control of. For instance we don’t have more than 24 hours in a day. Maybe work/school was REALLY crazy this month. Or maybe you just weren’t feeling it: I mentioned in one of my NaNoWriMo series posts that this time of the year (late fall/winter) sees a rise in depression and stress levels. So it’s okay if you were having more downs than ups, I know I was up until the end of the second week.

Forgiveness: also all about taking it easy on myself. It’s great to accept you might be selling yourself short. But killing yourself in the process of doing something is crazy…mostly because you won’t live to see ‘The End’. Stay sane, friends. I mean we talk to ourselves anyways as writers, and I get flake from my family about that so…yeah. Don’t add undue pressure where it isn’t needed. Write what you can and move on.

And though I thought this should have been obvious, it only recently clicked that it’s all about persistence from here on out. What you do between NaNos is just as important as what you do during NaNo season. Kind of like how you should be thankful between Thanksgiving, or how you should always be nice—especially if you don’t want to be cleaning coal out of your stocking—all year round and not the few weeks before December. Now think of it this way: it’s 11;59p.m. on November 30^th—and there’s no way you can hit 50K with one minute to go (forget about those Pacific timers with their extra 3 hours my fellow NYT peeps). You’ve got one minute, what are you going to do?

A. immediately delete the file with all your work/toss or burn your notebook.

B. close your file and tuck it away in your USB/stack a bunch of old magazines (i.e. pr0n) you will never read on top of your notebook

C. actually continue writing

I’m not going to say anything to your Rebel As and Bs, but pull up a chair Cs because you’re the kind of people I want to hang with.

I know NaNo seems to be pushing towards getting its participants across the 50K. I should know. I’m currently reading founder Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem! “Quantity first trumps quality” is the motto there. Particularly quantity geared towards getting a first draft complete. Once the first draft is complete, Baty stresses quality will be part of the revision process. (Anyways it’s a good book so go read it.)

Basically you have to keep going. Keep writing if you haven’t finished the novel even if you have hit the 50K mark. Write 200 words a day and you’ll finish one day, right? You know what won’t finish your manuscript: if you guessed 0 words then you’re correct! Ding, ding, ding!

Now I’m going to take my own advice and continue writing past this:

At the rate I’m going and a crazy slow plot unfolding I probably won’t be done in December either, but cheers to the New Year and completion one day! :D

Although I reached my 30 books for the GR 2014 challenge, I still have a couple books I want to read by next Update Day, too. Because even if another year is almost done it seems my TBR pile never ends. Which should be a cumulative post including New Years’ goal—because yes, it is soon-to-be that time of year again.
And maybe one new years' resolution will be to not be too much of a failure. Remember, a little failing leaves room for improvement.

Fun times are ahead.
All you have to do is get behind the wheel and keep driving…and if your car breaks down run. Run like heck. And keep writing running.

NaNoWriMo 2014 (Week 3): Kite-flying weather.

NaNoWriMo 2014:

WEEK THREE

3 weeks done, done, and DONE!

It’s strange how I can sit here now and wonder at how the last three weeks blurred by…but honestly I remember every day. I remember just being super happy to be writing that first week (I didn’t care I hadn’t broken the 10K mark like I should have). And I remember how the 2^nd week had me calculating like mad to see how much of a daily word count I would need to hit 50K on the 30^th.

And then I remember how all of this week I was like “Eff that! I am not going to rob myself of my accomplishments regardless of whether I hit the NaNo goal or not”.

Back when I hadn’t ever completed something, I remember trying to create what it would feel like if I finished a story for the first time.

2014 gave me that feeling 3 times…and despite the state of those MSs (well, one was a fanfic), I felt Great. Fantastic. Really the same….in a totally good way.

What I’m babbling about is I felt the same despite the different paths I took to get to The End. I kinda figure it doesn’t matter how much you’re writing, or where or in what context (i.e. maybe November is a super busy month for you?): writing consistently will get you to the end.

To close off, grad intern Emily S. from SwoonReads says* this WAY better:

As for this year, according to my stats page, at my current rate I will finish this book on January 18. Maybe it doesn’t say November 30, but you know what it also doesn’t say?

Never.

Okie-dokie. Enough of this memory lane stuff—my great excuse: all of these blogs are unscripted—and let’s get on with the rest!

No Plot? No Problem! Week 3:

So I’ve been doing a loose/sparse chapter-by-chapter review of the second half Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem! That’s the section of the book where readers/writers get a week-by-week breakdown of pep talks, advice, tips and motivational spiels.

Week 3 is the kite-sailing week, or the week after the previous Storm Week. At the NaNo HQ week two is to be feared. My week two didn’t have doubts…at this point I kinda know what my problem is in finishing stuff. I mean I still get stuck—hence why I jumped ship from my contemp romance idea to a fanfic. Ahh….

Still week two wasn’t full of doubting, or hating the story thus far, and/or self-loathing. I just had to make the decision to adjust my goals…or my viewpoint with my goals. It had me stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. If I want to finish this current project, shouldn’t the finishing be the important part? Chris Baty does say 50K is an arbitrary number—it started as a guesstimate for the length of a short novel…(of course that was a great guess because 50K is considered to be the cut-off for full-length material in the industry nowadays, or so I read).

I want to write everyday. And I want to write to finish this fanfic for me. And, although I hate to say this—and I would love to totally look back at this post on the 30^th having proved myself wrong—but I had to face a reality this week: I accepted I wouldn’t reach 50K. Like the only chance equals a lot of craziness I personally feel I can’t handle. It took about 2 weeks for me to really just embrace a more reasonable >50K word count.

But for those of you who want to hit the 50K, that’s cool too! I’m not writing this to harp on you. And chapter 3 in No Plot? No Problem offers more great tips to nudge you towards the winner’s circle.

1) Stay ahead, get ahead is the goal for Week 3, NaNo-ing friends and fiends. If you’re already got 2 50K novels, then keep writing—or share your word count with a friend! (Maybe as an innovative and early Christmas gift…?) But if you’re behind—like me!—make this week the catch-up week. How?

Make the 49,999^th and 50,000^th word “The End”—other areas of fair word count game are: the table of contents, chapter titles, HECK! Write a purple prosed ode to your love interest’s speedo for another 2000 words. At this point anything and everything goes.

2) Feeling adventurous? Want to try a semi-warrior weekend?

6000-word days are your answer. What Baty calls the 3/30/10 rule: slotting off a morning hour and a half, and another 1 ½ in the afternoon and evening, write in blocks of 3 30-minutes for every session reward yourself with a 10-min stretch/snack break.

Make this Sunday count—although if you’re living in Japan or something you’re already heading into Monday, but maybe you’ll block of company time for a little writing time? (Be super sneaky about it though! Or honest…you could just let your boss know, particularly if you’re having a slow day/week.)

Be kind to yourself—and don’t let that Internal Editor move back in!

I don’t entirely agree with Baty when he mentions the difficulty of writing beyond November. Remember, a 50,000 word novel could be written in a month, but it could also be written in 100 days at 500/day.

Crazy number-crunching, right?

Which brings me to the motivational quote of the week. This comes from a five-time NaNo winner Michelle Breckon from Stow, Ohio: "The best part of the middle stretch is realizing that you do have enough ideas to write an entire novel."
Even if some of those ideas should have you locked up...
:)

So last week I talked the talk, and now I’ll let you know whether I’ve been walking the walk…

I promised an excerpt, and I’m giving as good as my word. Scroll down** for the short snippet. (REMEMBER: this fanfic is based off a visual novel game, so it might not make sense. But if you’re going to read it, do it for the sake of humoring yourself at my expense.

I also set myself up for a 10K run this week…err, that didn’t happen. In fact, I wrote even less this week than last. I broke the 50% mark today, but tbh story-wise I’m no where near that 50%. It’s funny because NaNo is designed to get 50,000 words out, not to actually get you to finish the story—some people start and end up finishing at 40ishK. Sucks, right?

So it got super cold this week! Also it snowed. Yeah, right around my last posting last Sunday. I completely forgot about the peppermint tea, but I’m drinking it now. As I post this…so you’re getting the review as I’m experiencing it (the other way I could have done this was to vlog my drinking the peppermint—too lazy for that).

It's tastes peppermint-y. Lol. It's got that springy minty~ness to it. I can't say it's good for a cold, because thankfully I don't have one. But it feels like it's opening my chest cavity. Like I have so much more air to suck in.
I still prefer my black tea--Orange Pekoe thank you very much--but I'm glad I tried it. And it isn't like the other 19 bags will go to waste.

Of course I would rather try these forms of peppermint treats...

Yum!

Week Four Goals:

1) Go to my first, official local write-in. I actually didn’t really enjoy the plan-in sessions with the local WriMos, not because I hated my companions but that I hated the atmosphere. It was difficult to write around other people. All those fingers on keyboards, coughing and sneezing, etc. = Annoying. But I’m going to be a trooper and go for the experience.

2) Try at least one 6000-word day...this one is a HUGE maybe. If I do this it will be probably on Thursday or Saturday. We'll see how crazy I'm feeling.

3) Try to wrap up the NaNo event with 30K. So that I can at least say I wrote 1000 words on average. Haha. Yeah...

So here's to the final 7 days of crazy.
May we all come out of this in a kite-flying mood.

*

*NOTE: Here’s the rest of Emily S.’s blog on SwoonReads! Check out this inspirational post HERE.

**Excerpt from Addicted to Sunlight, a DBL fanfic:

Or four as Subaru scoffed and stood abruptly, and then as if he didn’t want the attention he made a face. “What? I have better things to do then stick around with vermin.” No sooner had he insulted them, he clutched the banister and vaulted over the side. His boots made no noise when they should have given the racket he was making before; more so, it defied the law of gravity and any other physics.

Yui was almost curious enough to see if he was still there.

Ayato wasn’t. “Good riddance! Man, that guy bugs me.”

“Subaru has a long way to go before he learns how to treat a woman. If only he’d let me show him just what to do. Ne, Bitch-chan, you’d help me demonstrate?”

This set Ayato off again on his threats. Yui was almost relieved, save for the occasional namedropping and possessive insinuations in their conversation concerning her.

Maybe their fighting wouldn’t be a bad thing after all. Shuu thought differently and he made it known. “Ah! So loud. I’m off to a quiet place better suited for music.”

(End.)

NaNoWriMo 2014 (Week 2): A hurricane called NOVEL.

NaNoWriMo 2014:

WEEK TWO

Week Two is officially gone, and we’re past that halfway mark! (And NO, I'm not talking about my word count. xD)

I say this all the time for the Update Day posts, but where has the time seriously gone?

All I have is the results of the few things I’d had wanted to do by this 2nd post of this series.

1) Fashion a summary for the fanfic (SCROLL DOWN*). Though a bit of background. The fanfic I’m writing is for Japanese visual novel game which stars sadistic, teenage male vampires. So think: the whips in FSoG—the game even has a torture chamber in lieu of Fifty’s Red Room of Pain—meets the teenage vampire drama in Twilight.

2) Hit 25K or w/e the word count is currently for Day 16: 26,672. Yeah, well this hasn’t happened. But I also mentioned how my goal for this month and beyond is to write daily. So I’m happy where I’m sitting so as long as I make progress every day. J

3) Also Week Two’s final promise was to keep sane. And I think I managed that pretty well. I never really went into the writing feeling like it was “do or die”. I would sit and aim to write at least 100 words. Maybe it’s also because I’m writing a fanfic…but truthfully I remember I felt the same with my other completed works. Low stress and more like a “wow, what’s going to happen next?” And at least with each successive writing task I’m approaching it more like the world is sitting on my shoulders in the writing session. Week Two was also supposed to be Storm Week in NaNo land.

No Plot? No Problem! Week 2:

Yes. In the words of author and NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty, Week Two is “a black howler of a tempest” (pg. 124).

All the advice packed in Chapter 6, or the Week 2 prep, tips and advice chapter focuses on gearing for the downhill part following the so-called sunny start of Week One.

I find that writing is more of uphill very quickly before it tapers off to a downhill roll once those first few thousand words are filling the pages.

But the book offers great tips and advice on how to weather out the storm that Week 2 could be. It talks keeping yourself healthy. Getting sleep and eating properly. There are tips to keep yourself afloat should your powerhouse of confidence from Week One should collapse in on itself from the winds of self-discovery…in particular the sort of self-discovery that blows your Internal Editor away from his/her island vacation back onto your front porch.

1) Picking away at your novel is hard at this point. And I agree. But for me it was on-and-off days that included Week One doubts.

2) Word count obsession is a big way to stifle your progress. Think of it this way, the more you start at the word count/page count bar on your word processor, the more you get little done.

For this I find using my phone’s Google Doc app is really great to avoid the word count bust, and get more “ka-boom!” when I surprise myself at how much I accomplished word-wise after copying my work over onto a word document to save.

Not a stickler for the sticky note idea?

Wordpad is great for this, too. And it saves you a sticky note!

Other tips include:

3) Involving family, friends and/or co-workers to brainstorm ideas for plot direction—of course you’d play host at your plotting party! Just make sure you don’t steal ideas by vaguely insinuating your plot. (Personally I think this idea works well with one-sentence pitch examples. Like “a literature student and a young entrepreneur enter into an erotic relationship”. This sentence blurb for FSoG is extremely vague and therefore perfect to work with!)

4) Tricks on padding your word count! Of the list of tricks, I liked the longer character names idea. For instance, rather than naming your heroine Jane, call her Jane Marie. Suddenly a find-and-replace feature will double from a couple hundred to four hundred instances of the name. Now rinse and repeat with all characters! Haha.

5) Unlike the unpleasantness associated with hot flashes, “plot flashes” are a great way to plot during down time. They can be planned or unexpected--though the idea here is to plan to use your time better. Eating, taking a shower, and lying in bed are times that could be used for plotting. Hash out what happens next during these times to bypass those brain farts during the actual writing. (i.e. “Well of course Character A should do this—even though that completely defies the rest of my set-up!”)

Also tons of motivational quotes. Here's some really sweet advice from five-time winner, Melanie Macek: "Week Two: chocolate."

Chocolate is good this whole month. (Unless it's expired. Then throw that crap out.)
Though on a serious note, leave the storm outside this year. Don't let winning bog you down. Write, write, write, but write what you can. 50K is a goal to aim for, but 5K and 500 words can be goals too.

Because weather-wise it has been getting colder and this time of year for those of us who actually are affected by winter and darker skies: SAD can be a problem. Seasonal affective disorder is a mild form of depression associated with change in season, and specifically winter.

I like to keep busy and distracted from pre-winter/end-of-semester blues. So Week Three will hold these goals, and by next post I’ll update just how busy I’ve been.

Week Three Goals:

1) An excerpt from the fanfic. Yeah. Not going to be as exciting as something “original”, but whatever. Deal. :P

2) I’m hoping to add another 10K to what I have, and hit 30K because I’ve never hit 30K for a NaNo comp. I attempted it first in April 2013 and my last attempt was this April’s Camp NaNo. More details on my ‘nanoing’ history next time.

3) Maybe a review of peppermint herbal tea? –shrugs-

I’ve heard it’s good for colds, and ‘tis the common cold season. So why not? I have a box of 20 bags to spare.

All this (and probably only this) next week! Until then, stay warm, healthy and happy.

EDIT (11/18/14): Forget to post up the summary. Doh! That was entirely intentional. Haha.
*Here it is now:

Retrieved from the desk of Karl Heinz--the Vampire King and a hunter's biggest game. What could these names mean...

SUBJECT: YUI KOMORI

Taken and dropped into this world of darkness, contine to watch this ningen carefully. It took a lot of time and money to find her. To bring her to this point. And already she's losing the battle against the vampires...she's losing her head and heart to them. I expect everything to come together soon.

SUBJECT: KIRIA HANASAKI

Unfortunately naive, despite all my efforts... She goes to school with vampires and continues to ignore the rumours of attacks. Nothing special about her despite what her lineage has to offer. The wolves have a purpose for her as well. Perhaps 18 years of monitoring and research have gone to waste. Details of project termination TBD.

Karl Heinz has left these documents behind in his hurry to evade us. Any clue as to where he might be headed must lie with these two young woman. Verify their statuses.

NaNoWriMo 2014 (Week 1): We Meet Again.

NaNoWriMo 2014:

WEEK ONE

So here we are.
Week One of NaNo down, and about 3 weeks left to go.

Let me re-cap my week first:

Despite actually having been awake past midnight, I didn't start writing until Nov 3rd. Why? I wasn't sure what to write, and I didn't know how to go about it.

This surprised me...only because I completed two unofficial nowrimos this year. I wrote both versions of Bad-Blooded Billionaire in two separate months. So I already proved that I could write a, as Stephenie Meyer put it, "book-length thing" and in a month.

So I kinda started NaNo a couple days late with the decision that word count-wise I'm aiming for anything past 0.

If anything I want the excuse to write every day. And if that means continuing past November until I'm done I'm cool with that.

No Plot? No Problem! Week 1:

Part of these weekly posts will include short reviews/summaries of Chris Baty's part how-to, part, IMHO, every writer's biography. 
No Plot? No Problem! gives advice and tips/tricks on how to survive each week of NaNo.

It isn't a foolproof plan to reach the intended 50K for this month, as in for instance I didn't agree that Week One is the easiest week. I've learned that once I got a book going and I'm well into the word count AND the story--it's harder to stop. But the start or the starting has always, and will probably always be, the most difficult part of the first draft journey.
Nevertheless I find that most of the contents in No Plot? No Problem! could be taken away from NaNo.

So as per Baty's warning at the start of the second part I waited until Week One commenced before searching through Chapter 5 of this text.

What I found was:
1) a button to ship Inner Editors to a kennel vacation (Bad Editor, Bad! Don't chew up my manuscript!)

2) a push past finding the perfect first sentence

3) Golden Hours: those pieces of time that are just meant for us to write--Sorta Fun Fact: my Golden Hours are from 4am-8am, and then at 5pm-9pm; I also find I write better in certain places...surprisingly the dining table surrounded by family works really well when I don't want to be alone...but I want to be in my head.

4)  peppermint and spices: tricks to work against the fatigue and push toward meeting writing goals

5) "name drifting": a verb for accidentally mixing up character names that sound alike during your monthly mad dash.

6) sharing might be caring, but it also cause scaring...so don't share parts of your MS with anyone! It opens the chance for that Inner Editor to saunter his/her way back into your writing life this month!

Motivational quotes I enjoyed from past NaNo winners were shared at the back...and I'll share one--picked at random! because I really enjoyed all of them--with you:

"One of the biggest thrills of Week One comes when you first start to see the words slowly piling up, and it hits you--this could really happen. You could actually write a book in a month!"
-Lauren Coffin, an eight-time winner

AND what to expect for Week Two's check-in:

1) I will whip up a summary.
2) And maybe...maybe--and tbh I'm not really aiming for the 50K anymore--have 25K by next Saturday.
3) I'll hopefully still be breathing and therefore will actually have a weekly post up.