5 posts tagged “nanowrimo”

So, the NaNoWriMo project was officially a bust. I got off to a great start, had a solid week of writing roughly 1000 words a day and I was well on my merry way... and then I just sort of hit a wall. I skipped a few days because of the convention, and then I just never picked up the project again and the enthusiasm for it died. I cannot help but blame part of this on the fact that Wrath of the Lich King had to come out this month, which completely sucked me under for a while (though I hope now that I've hit 80 with my first character, the overwhelming desire to log on and level every single free moment will taper off some.)

I'm really not sure why somebody decided to have this writing month in November. It seems inconvenient. All of the year's best games are usually released in November, college students are finishing up the last month of the semester and finals and essays are usually raining down on us in droves. And then there's all the holiday stuff that normal people have to deal with. Why not have the national novel month in, say, June? Nothing happens in June.

I'm not sure whether to post what I did manage to write; it was a pretty sizeable chunk of story (I think around 10,000 words or so) but it is -extremely- messy, and because I was trying to write quickly, without stopping, there's a great chance that the story totally sucks. Maybe if somebody really tries to convince me, I'll unearth it. We'll see.

So, at this point, I'm trying to put together some short stories to send off to that publisher I met at the con, since his deadline is coming up and I don't want to blow this opportunity. I've got two ideas for horror stories so far... here's hoping I can find the juice to polish them off.

As you may have seen from my twittering (I refuse to admit that "tweet" is the verb for such actions), my work on my NaNoWriMo project is now seriously behind, with a deficit of five days and growing. At this point, I'm debating whether to just see exactly how far I can get, considering how good it felt when I was sticking to a strict schedule, or pull out now before I get too stressed with a project that is meant to be solely beneficial. After all, it's not as if I don't have other things on my plate; the essay on Into the Wild is due tomorrow, which I was hoping to have finished yesterday during my day off, except for the irritating fact that the more time I have, the less motivated I am to do work. And then there's the short story that I need to write and submit to the rep I met at TusCon, and there's the work on trying to get December published, and...

Busy, busy, busy.

We'll see how it goes. The essay is my first priority, since the grade matters and the thing is due tomorrow. After stalling on it all night, I was able to make some decent progress on it today, though I'm concerned that it isn't as tight as it could be due to how much I loved the subject matter, which, as you may note, is a rarity; usually, I am universally negative about the texts I have to write about, such as the whole Faulkner thing. Not sure what to make of that.

Well, off to work, and then finishing that essay, and THEN meeting up with The Brauer to prepare for Wrath of the Lich King night, which is completely inconvenient for me. Seriously, Wrath, couldn't you come out next week? I have a paper due tomorrow and you're making it impossible to concentrate.

Thank God I cannot buy it until midnight at the very earliest, grr.

If you've been following me on Twitter, you'll know that I've been doing constant updates on the status of my NaNoWriMo project. But if you haven't seen that and you were wondering how it's going, here's a little update. So far, it's been great! I've written every day since the first of November, and I'm up to about 8971 words. My goal is about 2000 words a day, which has been a little tough to do, but I'm still plugging away. Most of all, I'm just happy that I've been able to be consistent with this. Committing to a project and not getting distracted is something that's really difficult for me. I think that forcing myself to not stall and just dedicate myself to one task will really help.

I will keep you updated, maybe even post some details about the story here soon! If you're interested in more up-to-date progress, keep an eye on my twitter account; I log each session's progress when I finish.

Here's to 50,000 words in 30 days!

So, I just did my first writing session with this NaNoWriMo idea. So far, so good!

A few details: the working title for my story is "Reapers and Riders." It's based on a poem I wrote a few years ago. For the moment, I'm going to keep most of the details to myself, especially since it's still just starting to form in my head. But, assuming all goes well, I might start posting some things about the characters and the setting as I develop them. The way I look at it, if I do that, not only will it give me something to share with you, but it will also help me kick around new ideas and hopefully make things better.

Also, one other thing I'm going to be doing is ending each post about this story with a word count, so you can keep track of my progress (probably also going to do this on Twitter, now that I think about it.)

Current Word Count: 1730

That's sort of an annoying name to type in.

But, as most people know, November is the season for lazy writers to try to become dedicated ones and finish a 50,000 word novel in exactly one month. I skipped it last year, and the year before, but.... you know, I think I'm really going to give a shot this month. I've got a pretty good idea for a story and, well, maybe this is what I need to really get myself in gear and get back to the creative writing thing that my college education has worked so hard to smother.

Not sure if I'll post story bits as I go along, or just keep updates on my progress. We'll see how it goes.

Wish me luck! Actually, screw luck... there really isn't any luck in writing. Wish me inspiration and/or an abundance of free time and focus. That'd be better.