November Goals

I might have been on haitus from blogging, but I’ve been very busy writing. Part of my problem with blogging right now is that I’m writing things for my pen name, which is so completely different than anything I’ve written here. I wonder now what I should blog about, or even if I should keep blogging because I don’t feel comfortable talking about that stuff here. It’s weird and kinda stinks. Still, I’m going to figure it out. So, let’s talk November and goals.

• Write 65,000 words
• Get my novella to submission ready
• Figure out what to do about blogging

Last year I wrote over 200,000 during NaNoWriMo. That was an accomplishment, but not a good one. Yes, I wrote some great stuff, but it was kind of all over the place. This year I want to slow it down and really enjoy NaNo.  I want to go have fun and not feel guilty if I don’t write between 7,000 and 10,000 words a day. If I only write the minimum, that’s okay!

The novella is almost at submission ready quality, so that’s not a huge goal, but I don’t want to lose sight of that goal.

Like I said above, figuring out what to blog about and where to go from here needs to be decided. I used to blog in detail about my projects but I don’t want to do that anymore. I’ll need to figure out another focal point. I think I’ve learned a lot while I’ve been away from blogging, and I could very well blog about that. However, I don’t think I’ll be blogging every day again. That takes something out of a girl.

So that’s me for the month of November.

How about you?

Hello NaNoWriMo!

So today is November 1st, which means my blog is out of hiatus and NaNoWriMo has begun. I’m nervous about both. For one, things are hectic as I get ready to move this weekend, and my project is something I’m writing for my pen name. So how do I talk about it without talking about it? I don’t know!

Sunday we had our regional kick off party at a great little used book store. There was a huge turn out and we had a lot of fun touching on all the major points of NaNo.

Unlike last year, I’m not trying to rack up a huge wordcount. I’m going for fun and easy this year. Yes, I’ll more than likely write more than 50K, but I’m okay with that. The point is that I’m not stressing myself to churn out more words than is smart.

And that’s me right now.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo? How prepared are you?

Weekly Check-In

Despite this being the last few days of the Savvy Boot Camp, it was a lazy week.  I read Kiss of Snow instead of sleeping, and slept instead of writing, and as soon as the clock rolled over to June 1st all responsibility to write like the wind was gone.  We still don’t know the results for who won the boot camp, but it was a close race to the end.  June is the month that I want to do revisions rather than writing, but I’m still writing.  I got off to a good start, but I’ll talk about that below.

I haven’t been talking about A Round of Words at all, and for that I fail.  I haven’t forgotten that I’m working on that challenge, but I haven’t been as mindful of updating my progress on it.  I solved that yesterday.

Blogging.

Judging by the twitter conversations and the comments left on Suzan’s blog and here I would say that the Let’s Talk About Sex series is off to a good start.  We discussed underwear and what that says about your characters.  Suzan took the girly side and I discussed all things buff and hunky.  This week we’re talking about heat levels and language particular to the romance genre.  While a lot of people already know this stuff, not everyone does and it’s good to talk about it.  We’re also having a blast while we’re at it, so that’s all that really matters.

Revising.

I started revisions on Rescue Me – again.  These were pretty light, going over what one of my critique partners suggested.  A lot of it was grammar, and of that commas.  I have comma issues.  I conquer the apostrophe and now the comma and I are at odds!

I’m really happy with Rescue Me.  I have it up over at Book Country for review if anyone is a member there and feels like giving me some feedback.  I plan to submit it next month after I take my submission package class and hammer out the submission details.  I’m less confident about those, but that’s the reson behind taking the classes!

This weekend I broke open Decoy.  I’m almost halfway through it and hoping to be done with this first pass in a few days.  It’s kind of ugly at this point and there’s a lot of red, but I’m hoping that in the end it will pay off and it will rock.  I’m crossing my fingers that I finish this draft Tuesday or Wednesday and then the super picky stuff starts.

Plotting.

Um, I’m kind of stalled out on plotting.  I’m worried that letting an idea stew this much is a bad idea.  I get bored of the shiny and move on to something else.  I still like the idea and I want to write it but it’s not a driving desire of want any more.  I’m afraid that this is bad.  Very bad.

I replotted my superhero story I was supposed to write during Boot Camp.  It’s a whole new idea and more naughty than the original, but again I waited too long to write it.  So I’m going to write the naughty one and just go for it.  If it flops in the draft process it flops and I’ll move on.

I plan on doing more reading this month to get myself in a place to write certain things.  We’ll see how this goes!!!

Writing.

Yeah, so since it’s June I’ve slacked on writing….

Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: I had an idea for this while watching Deadliest Warrior, of all things.  The story is actually at a very interesting part, so it shouldn’t be hard to jump back in and hopefully hammer it out soon.  My problem is that I’ve been distracted by being lazy.  And revising.  I’m going to attempt to write 1-2K a day on this a day this week in tandem to doing revisions.  It’s not a lot, I know, but I want to keep the ball rolling and finish this sucker.

What I read.

• Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh

What I Learned…

I wanted to wait a week or so to let the whole NaNoWriMo experience sink in and age on me a bit. This is more than just what I learned doing NaNoWriMo this year, it’s what I learned being an ML. Mostly, I learned I need to be better prepared for things. I will only have half as much time as I think I do to work on my novel and word count after I do MLy things like poking at the forum, answering emails, scheduling write in’s, and making sure I know what’s going on in the world of NaNo. Even then I’m pretty sure I missed stuff, took off a few days and didn’t do my ML Duty.

The biggest lesson I learned this year was that if I’m going to ML – I need to keep my writing goals on the modest side. I exhausted myself this year trying to do it all in typical me fashion. Next year I need to focus on having fun and just getting the word count done. I’ll probably have one project and work on it until it’s done and then move onto something else – but above all I want to be flexible and focused on fun. I can spend the other 11 months of the year writing seriously, I’ll take on to write silly.

The biggest thing for next year that I want to do better? Planning. I want to plan things out, like write in’s, events and be more organized. There was a lot of scrambling here and there to get stuff done and it caused undue stress on myself and others. I’d like to avoid that next year if possible, ya know?

I’m not sure if I will do the buddy exchange next year. There were a lot of good things said about it, but also a lot of complaining and griping. I understand the frustration, but I couldn’t do anything about it and that only increased my stress level. Maybe if someone else wants to take over the whole ordeal next year that would work better.

Okay, I’m getting tired and I feel sickly so this post isn’t as inspiring as I’d wanted, but it’s here.

NaNoWriMo Wrap Up!

Average Daily Words Written: 6,847

Total Words Written: 205,402

Target Goal to Date: 200K

Words to Make Up: 0

Projects Worked On: 4; Gate Keepers, Derby Girls Are Dangerous, Space Particle, Hockey Hotel

Projects Completed: 2; Blood Bound & Gentleman Pirates and Lady Smugglers

Write-in’s Attended: 7

Write-in’s Hosted: 6

Total Write-in’s Hosted: 26

——-

Well, NaNoWriMo is over. It’s done. And I met my 200K goal! My brain is a pile of mush, but that’s to be expected at this point I think. My daily word average really needed to be more stable on the day-to-day basis for me to come through the month not feeling so raw, so I really can’t blame anyone but myself for that mishap. Skipping days and slacking on others was a really bad choice since my target goal was 50K higher than last year – and last year I was pushing myself to make it at the end. Today was hell.

I had a lot of success this last week though, maybe because I really buckled down at times and got stuff done. Write in’s I attended were:

• Monday: impromptu Pajama Write-in & Mondayers
• Tuesday: Pajama Write-in & Addison B&N
• Wednesday: Pajama Write-in
• Saturday: Thanksgiving Write-in
• Sunday: Thanksgiving Write-in II

Out of curiosity I added up the number of write-in’s I’ve hosted – 26. That’s almost one a day. That’s crazy! Granted there were a lot of days that I had a Lunch n’ Write and something else or a Pajama Write and something else – but that’s a heck of a lot of social writing! I like having people around to write, but I’m slowly making the transition to a solitary writer. It used to not bother me, but I’m becoming more temperamental, maybe. I want to write in a certain set of factors, so to speak, for my environment to optimize writing. For instance, the last two days I’ve been writing from the hospital. It’s been a trying experience and I’m glad to have finished today at home and writing. (My dad had a scheduled surgery. Everything is just fine!)

Anyways, that’s a topic for a later date.

I’m not going to be writing any this week for two reasons: a) burn-out, I need to avoid it and b) it’s my Birthday Week. I’m going to be doing as I please people!

This last week I’ve been working on two projects: Space Particle and Derby Girls Are Dangerous.

I started out doing a lot of work on Space Particle. It’s jumpstarted from a short story I did back in Story a Day in May. There was about 10K of the hilight scenes that gave the story it’s main climaxes without any of the set up or the real story. It had such a great responce I started writing what I think of as “the real story”. The problem I ran into was a lack of plot and no real handle on the characters themselves. Last I really looked at this was probably sometime in June. I had to grasp at forgotten characters and create them. What I discovered were two characters that are deeply flawed, hurting people who think they’re fooling each other to achieve separate ends. I think that when I finally figure the whole story out it will be good, but there are a lot of rough edges on this one.

Space Particle as it is right now sits at around 33,000 words. I’m firmly into the meat of the story and have plenty that’s coming up that’s exciting. An assassination attempt, defying the established alpha government and a mysterious universal threat to uncover. There’s a lot going on and I want to write this. But I’ll finish it later, like, next year.

The last few days I’ve had a lot of luck working on my Derby Girls Are Dangerous story. I’ve had a lot of fun writing typical pissed off roller girls and lots of great character development. The characters for this one are really strong and I think that the personal journies are really awesome. It’s the plot that sucks, but I knew that going in. I had a character and situation rich environment; the plot was what I went into it blind. There are a few places that I’ve jotted down to write in later once I really hammer out the plot. I’m sort of at a point that I think I should come back, figure out the plot and do a quick pass over what’s written right now.

Derby Girls Are Dangerous is around 48,000 words. It’s probably 2/3′s done and I foresee it being a shorter book when it’s done. That’s not a bad thing! It’s just fine with me, because easier to revise at the very end. Again, this is something I’ll pick up later after I’ve had some time to rebound from this whole November thing.

Okay! So that’s what I’ve been working on this last week.

During November, I’ve worked on a lot of things. I’m really excited about my completed projects:

• Blood Bound; cyberpunk novella
• Gentleman Pirates and Lady Smugglers; steampunk short story
• Gate Keepers; YA novel

It’s not the completed four projects I’d hoped for, but I have two very strong drafts I’m working on now, so I’m hopeful! I’m going to do a recap later on from an ML perspective, but I’m exhausted right now and actually have to work tomorrow so I’m cutting this short. Night people! It’s been real.

Goodbye NaNoWriMo 2010!

Gate Keepers: The End

I did it!

I finished Gate Keepers!

I know I’m several days behind where I wanted to be as far as word count and wrapping up this book, but I’m done and even better: I like the way everything ended. YES!

Right now I’m not thinking about the revisions, because I know this will need some fleshing out in the future, but I’m going to bask in the fact that I’m. Done.

Okay, basking is officially over – back to hammering out stuff so I can reach my 200K goal for NaNoWriMo this year. If I write between 7&10K a day I can do it. It’s a lot but I think I can do it.

NaNoWriMo Week Three Check In!

Average Daily Words Written: 6,073

Total Words Written: 127,516

Target Goal to Date: 150K

Words to Make Up: 22,484

Projects Worked On: 4; Gate Keepers, Derby Girls Are Dangerous, Space Particle, Hockey Hotel

Projects Completed: 2; Blood Bound & Gentleman Pirates and Lady Smugglers

Projects Not Started: Protector

Write-in’s Attended: 9

Write-in’s Hosted: 7

——-

I’m on my way to my goal of 200K, and I’m pretty sure I can still make it, but I’m going to have to make the most of the rest of November, which I have also taken off work. Readers n’ Ritas last weekend really knocked me off my already rocky game. All I’ve wanted to do all week – is read. Read. Read. Read. Read. Read. But I couldn’t, because I had words to write and things to do!

The write in’s this last week were sparsely attended, but that’s okay because that often means more work gets done!

• Monday: Lunch n’ Write & Mondayers
• Tuesday: Lunch n’ Write & Addison B&N
• Wednesday: Lunch n’ Write
• Thursday: Lunch n’ Write & #writersdatenight
• Friday: Pajama Write
• Saturday: Evening of Scribbling Wrecklessly

It was the last week for the Lunch n’ Writes since I’m going to be at home. People slowly tapered off attending until it was just Linda and I, but again – that provides for some nice, focused writing time. I didn’t go anywhere Wednesday, mostly because I was exhausted from RnR and needed to hit the sack early at least once this last week to just get some sleep!

Thursday night was really fun because we went to see the midnight showing of Harry Potter – and wrote while waiting to get in. It was fun and different and oddly productive.

This last weekend was the monthly all night writing event. I’m not sure how helpful it really is, but it’s a lot of fun. There were two rooms, one loud and one quieter – at least until the early morning hours when a few of us broke off and found another quiet corner – with couches! A good couch is apparently key to my writing success. Go figure!

So, this next week is Thanksgiving, but also a big push week for me – with no work. I’ve told people that my apartment is open for writing time during the day/evening depending on when and it looks like it’ll be a nice, busy week. I’m going to have to take a break sometime tomorrow and do some serious cleaning, but my schedule looks like this:

• Monday: Pajama Write & Mondayers
• Tuesday: Pajama Write & Addison B&N
• Wednesday: Pajama Write
• Saturday: Thanksgiving Write

Nice, huh?

I’m still working on Gate Keepers, which kinda has me bummed because I would like to have finished it already. However, writing it is slow going. I like the story, I like where it’s going, and I’m so close to the end! But I have to sit and think about what I’m writing so much that it’s semi aggravating at times. I’ve been doing really well with writing about 2K on it and then moving on to something else. It’s not the best way to complete a project, but it’s working. I’ve been watching episodes of The Walking Dead and those really help to get the gears going – granted there’s nothing similar between the tv show and my story, but still. It’s zombies! The weirdest thing about Gate Keepers? The “theme” song/album. The characters are kind of, I don’t know, I wouldn’t call them bubble-gum types, but they’re all of the more ‘normal’ variety of kids than anything gritty. I’ve been listening to Haste the Day’s Pressure the Hinges album. There’s one song, Chorus of Angels, that has become THE Gate Keepers song. Don’t ask! I don’t know. There’s something about the combination of growling and singing that lends its self well to my mental eye; I have some great scenes set to the music that are really cool to write.

The other thing I’ve been working on this week mostly is my new romance, Derby Girls Are Dangerous. It’s a mash-up of paranormal shifters, and roller derby. I didn’t really know where this was going when I started. I had this great image of a chick in street derby gear taking on a werewolf armed with a paintball gun, and I sort of ran with it. I know where most of the story is going, but not the whole thing, so I’m semi-flying by the seat of my pants, or I might be, once I write what I have planned. It’s a fun story so far, nothing overly magical. I’m playing with very rigid character profiles; meaning my female character is a sort of typical angry derby girl and the male character is a work obsessed shifter. They clash and I’m hoping that they come out on paper as making each other better. I’m not totally sure I love how I’ve worked it, but it has been a lot of fun to write and put the derby characters to use.

Like I said earlier, I’ve been doing a bit more reading than I was at the beginning of the month and part of that includes reading this contemporary hockey romance series. Once upon a time I had a contemporary romance that was set around a hockey player – it fizzled out and I shelved it – but I had an idea for at least a beginning and I took the time to write up that beginning. Not sure if I’ll actually use it or not, but we’ll see!

I did work on Space Particle a little; mostly going through the old text and adding bits and pieces here and there. I’m hooppiinngg to finish Gate Keepers and then pay this project some special attention.

So my concrete goal is to finish Gate Keepers this week. It’s do-able. I think I need about 10K more to wrap it up and there’s not that much plot left and it’s mostly action writing. I can do it! I’ll just keep teling myself that. I’ll jot more on the Derby Girls story, and then shift fully into Space Particle. But we’ll see how that goes!

Well, that’s been my third week of NaNo!

When new projects jump up and bite you in the – you know…

So I thought I had enough on my plate for NaNo, ya know? As if what I have planned out to write wasn’t enough, I decided to finally take myself up on this paranormal roller derby idea I’ve been kicking around for a while. I wasn’t all that positive of what I wanted to do with it, and I’m still not sure if it’s a novella or if it will be a longer installation, but I’ve started Derby Girls Are Dangerous, and it’s a riot. It’s not funny, but it’s a lot of fun for me to write. I’m channeling the pissed off roller girl stereotype and throwing in shifters (not just werewolves!) and it’s a lot of fun to write. Somehow it’s already over 10K.

This isn’t really jiving with my original idea of what I wanted to write, so I’m making a comprise with myself. I have to write through a major plot point on something I’ve planned to write, and when that’s done I can write whatever I want about my derby shifters. It’s crazy, and it’s inconvenient, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun.

Today is the last day of work I have this month; I’m taking the rest of to finish NaNo and be with my dad in the hospital while he has surgery. In store for the rest of the week is a Harry Potter write in, the Evening of Typing Hazardously, and other crazy fun stuff. Oh, and the Holidays are fast approaching which means NaNo is almost over. Oh no! Must go write – like NOW!

NaNoWriMo Week Two Check In!

Average Daily Words Written: 5,822

Total Words Written: 81,584

Target Goal to Date: 100K

Words to Make Up: 18,416

Projects Worked On: 3; Gate Keepers, Gentleman Pirates and Lady Smugglers, Roller derby & Paintball & Shifters

Projects Completed: 2; Blood Bound & Gentleman Pirates and Lady Smugglers

Projects Not Started: Space Particle & Protector

Write-in’s Attended: 10

Write-in’s Hosted: 8

——-

I could be irritated about my word counts, but I’m not going to be. My overall goal is to have written over 200,000 words during November, and finish with one full novel and my novella finished, and then whatever else I write I’m okay with it not reaching The End in November.

In order to do that, I really need to write about 50K a week. I did that last week, with a little cushion. Part of it was that I was switching projects and the different demands were difficult to manage.

This last week was also an unfortunate example in how write-in’s can hinder more than help, and this is to no one’s fault but my own! Because I was writing dialogue being around people and hearing them talk interfered a lot. This last week’s schedule went like this:

• Monday: Lunch n’ Write & Mondayers
• Tuesday: Lunch n’ Write & Addison B&N
• Wednesday: Lunch n’ Write & Arlington CB write-in
• Thursday: Lunch n’ Write & people came over to write
• Friday: Pajama Write-In
• Sunday: Pajama Write-In

The Pajama Write-In’s are possibly my favorite. Those are the days when people come over to my apartment and we curl up and just write. There’s little talking and much writing going on, or at least a lot of staring at the screen pondering what next to write. This coming week I’m not going to be attending as much, in part because the week doesn’t allow it and in part because I need to finish Gate Keepers this week.

• Monday: Lunch n’ Write & Mondayers
• Tuesday: Addison B&N
• Thursday: Harry Potter Write-In
• Friday: Pajama Write-In
• Saturday-Sunday: Evening of Scribbling Wrecklessly

So there’s plenty going on this week even with me cutting back on write-in’s.

Last week I admitted in having difficulty writing Gate Keepers, so I jumped ship and wrote Blood Bound which flowed so much easier than writing Gate Keepers. When I finished Blood Bound on Friday and started Gate Keepers on Saturday, I will admit, I was hesitant. I knew it wasn’t going to come as easily as Blood Bound and I was getting worried that it wasn’t going to be written at all.

As of today I’m officially over halfway through the story, I’m at the part where everything the characters are doing is possibly dangerous and it’s becoming easier to write it. The thing that I think I’ve been having issues with in Gate Keepers is dialogue; I’ve never written something that is so driven by character interaction so much. I start out with three teenagers, and then there are five, and suddenly there are seven crammed in an SUV and the world is standing blind in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. It’s crazy and it’s great and I’m so exhausted from writing dialogue.

During last week I took a break one day because I was running into a wall with Gate Keepers and I needed to jump tracks and just do something else. Just so happened the new Abey Park came out and I was feeling like writing a set of characters that have been in my head for a while to write so I wrote a nice short story that I have no clue what I’ll do with it. It’s called Gentleman Pirates and Lady Smugglers, which is a bit misleading because it’s not romance so the title will probably change in time. But! I really like the way the characters were done and I have a nice setup to write more about them and perhaps in time delve into a full length novel.

I think that I still need a small, fun side project to scribble on after meeting certain daily goals of working on Gate Keepers so I’m starting to “discovery write” another idea I had that’s all about roller derby and shape shifters. Yup. How exciting is that? I’m going to see what I can make happen, but the primary goal for now is to have fun. Heck, naming the roller derby characters alone provides great amusement!

So, goals for the next week!

First up is to finish Gate Keepers. I want about 30,000 more words to finish it off to a nice first draft, YA length. I’d like to establish the roller derby story but I’m less concerned about it at the moment since it can’t decide if it wants to be urban fantasy or paranormal romance. The jury is still out, but I’m sure I’ll know in time.

Well, that’s been my second week of NaNo!

This intermission to NaNoWrimo brought to you by pirates and smugglers

So yesterday I was supposed to be working on Gate Keepers. That novel I’m writing for NaNoWrimo, ya know? Well, then I had this great scene in my head for a steampunk moment on an airship. There’s a misplaced pirate captain on a merchant vessel and they’re under attack from another bunch of pirates. In the midst of a gun fight the only woman on board throws up her skirts and pulls out a set of pistols and starts shooting!

And that’s how Gentleman Pirates and Lady Smugglers was conceived. I really wanted to write a quick piece about airships and gun fights.

I didn’t just abandon Gate Keepers; I worked on the plot some during lunch and figured out the holes I had, so my ‘road map’ is much more clear, albeit much more detailed. Here’s hoping that today I can get a lot done!

(do you have any idea how hard it is to write a blog the day before it goes up? you have to make sure instead of saying ‘today’ you have ‘yesterday’ and stuff like that. it’s too much to worry about during nano!!)