Nanowrimo: Day 11

Yesterday, I finished some non-Nano work that had been hanging over my head, so that feels good. After a cumulative ~4 hours, I finally got Windows 10 installed on my computer, so that feels good. And today, I got some writing time in, so that feels really good. Still, getting nervous because I’ve lost some of my buffer. Hopefully, I can make up for lost words this weekend at… WRITE ALL NIGHT!

Total Word Count: 21,007

This is where things start to get turbo hard. KEEP GOING!

Nanowrimo: Day 10

Nanowrimo: Day 9

Ugh… It was one of those days where I was at the office from nine to five, and then came home and did more work from five to nine. I also made beet-apple-carrot-lime juice. Except I don’t have a juicer, so the whole process took forever. The juice-to-effort ratio was way off, but the juice was delicious. 7/10 would do it again. Also got some writing done, but I’m feeling so beat right now. It’s 12:26 a.m. 753 words written today.

Total Word Count: 18,062

Goodnight…

Nanowrimo: Day 8

^Nooooo… The weekend is over 🙁 But I did get a lot of writing done over the past two days, and I hope my fellow wrimos did too. Today was much less productive than yesterday due to work-related time sucks, but I packed in a total of 4,550 words since Friday. I’ll take it!

Total Word Count: 17,309

Onward into week two!

Nanowrimo: Day 7

Image from the hilarious webcomic Hyperbole and a Half

We’re one week in already. Oh, how the time flies, especially when you have 1,667 words hanging over your head every day. I opted to be antisocial tonight and stayed in. Gotta admit, I’m glad I did because I wrote 3,515 words today. And cleaned my apartment (a little)! And went for a run (a little…)! And only stress-ate a little (or kind of a lot…)! In any case, it feels good to get life things done and to be nearly 1/3 of the way to 50k.

For anyone struggling with motivation or inspiration, or if you just like good music, here is Spotify’s “official” Nanowrimo playlist. Chock full of songs all about writing.

Total Word Count: 16,274

Keep writing!!!

Nanowrimo: Day 6

This evening’s writing efforts were a little sad. All that sleep I hadn’t been sleeping throughout the week caught up with me and I fell asleep on the couch. It’s about 3 a.m. and I’ve woken up, but I think I’m going to catch up on my word count tomorrow. Wrote 445 words today, but I suppose it’s better than nothing. On the bright side, one week from now is WRITE ALL NIGHT!

Total Word Count: 12,759

Sweet dreams, writers.

Nanowrimo: Day 5

Turbo-quick update tonight. My car decided to stop working today and a technician is coming to check it out first thing in the morning, so I don’t want to stay up “too late.” I would say that I should get to bed early, but it’s already 1:10 a.m. so that ship has sailed.

On the plus side, I hit my word count for the day with 1,810 words.

Total Word Count: 12,314

Happy sleeping, wrimos.

Nanowrimo: Day 4

Once again, I’m posting at 1:17 a.m., but hey, I hit 10k today! Rather than go on about my process or blah blah blah, here are some nifty resources I found:

Character Hobbies and Skills Brainstorming List by Jill Williamson: This is a handy cheat sheet of activities for your characters to do when you’re not torturing them on the page (or for when you are, that’s up to you). If you’re like me, you might forget that, yeah, some people do obsess over cake decorating or stamp collecting or metal detecting or whatever. Lists like this can be helpful when you’re trying to add some variety to your cast and want to get out of your own bubble.

Describing People: A Person’s Physical Appearance: This resource is meant for people learning English, but it’s a fairly extensive list of descriptions if you’re in need of some brainstorming. Mixing it up will keep your characters from looking too same-y.

71 Simple British Slang Phrases: This is my favorite list of the day. I’m so glad I decided to make one of my characters English! These words remind me of my favorite Brit… I think he’s the dog’s bollocks. 😉

Wrote 1,724 words today.

Total Word Count: 10,504

Keep strong, wrimos.

Nanowrimo: Day 3

Which aisle are the extra-hours-in-the-day sold in? Oh, they’re all out? Can… can I backorder some?

For the past three nights I’ve found myself writing until midnight, and posting to this journal even later. ::Knock on wood:: but averaging at least 1,667 words per day seems quite doable so far, BUT then I went and signed on for some freelance work that will add an additional ~30k words of writing (non-fiction) to my month. There is a sharp pain in my stomach just thinking about it. Still, I’m not sacrificing Nano unless I absolutely have to! Life can pry it from my stiff, sleep-deprived hands. Word-vomited 2,422 strings of letters onto the page today.

Total Word Count: 8,780

Happy writing, all.

Nanowrimo: Day 2

I couldn’t keep my project off my mind today. While it was frustrating at the office when I had to force myself to focus on an Excel spreadsheet (Surprising, right? Spreadsheets are usually so riveting), it’s a good sign for my novel. I’m wickedly afraid of jinxing myself, but so far things are unfolding nicely. My characters are “talking to me,” and more importantly, to each other. I’m stretching out scenes further than I expected, which means I have more pre-planned plot ahead of me to still work with, and more material to draw from later during editing.

My most-used resource of the day is the MyNoise.net sound generator. This site is amazing and run by a single person, Dr. Ir. Stephane Pigeon. His sound generators are free to use (although he runs his site on donations) and they are so, so, so good for writing. My personal favorite noise machines are Distant Thunder, Anamnesis, Northern Lights, Fire Noise, Church, and Space Odyssey.

Between the plot bunnies being kind to me and an endless stream of inspiring background noise, I managed to write 1,726 words today.

Total Word Count: 6,358

Happy novel beginnings, everyone. 

Nanowrimo: Day 1

Image via One-quest.com

Nanowrimo 2015 has officially begun! Huzzah! I rolled home last night at around 1:30 a.m. after the Central New Jersey kickoff party (see my prep week diary for a description of that) with a 1,100-word start to my Nano project. For my novel this year, I’m going with young-adult sci-fi. It’s decided, it’s on paper, it’s for real. I’m trying my best to channel inspiration from the masters. If the spice must flow, I’m hoping the words must too.

With Day 1 coming to an end, it is so far, so good. I didn’t go to any write-ins today like I had originally planned, but rather put the Mass Effect soundtrack on repeat, hermitted myself in my apartment, and banged out 3,532 words. I have a strong feeling that my best bet at this point is to vomit out as many words as I can onto the page before “real life” catches up with me. Things like my job and the need for sleep and the possible doom of a mid-November head cold. Things that inevitably happen, but take up time that I’d rather spend writing. So that’s it for Day 1. I hope everyone else is feeling good so far. If you need a cheer buddy, add me on Nano. I will cheer you on with blind faith and raw enthusiasm, because you CAN do this. My username is TheDweadPiwate. I felt pretty good about that name until I had to say it out loud.

Even if you don’t feel like you’re off to a good start, remember we’re only 3.33% of the way through the month. There is still PLENTY of time to get your shit together and succeed.

Total Word Count: 4,632

Keep those fingers flying.