Winning NaNoWriMo and Where to go from there

That is what I did. I really wish I could tell you how I did it, but I can't. I write differently from others. It's very much a personal journey. I really just want to spend this post congratulating myself. To avid that, just scroll down to the bold to see my plans for the blog and my book from here with a word of advice for fellow winners and NaNo participants.

My final, documented, word count was a little over 51k. Only took a picture of when I hit 50k, but that was my goal. I was so proud of myself when I hit it that I called my partner and told him, texted my mom, and cried. 

This was a really stressful process for me. As you can see in the picture below, I'm really bad at keeping things going every day, or even most days. But in the end, I refused to lose and forced myself through the story to the finish.

Now that that's done...

I want to talk about where I'm going from here, but first I want to give a word of advice:

If you won NaNo this year, congrats! If that's all you wanted, then good job. If you want more, take more. Give it some time, then go back and edit. See if your second draft can be around 55-60k words (if your goal is publication with an agent or big publishing house.) 

If you didn't win, you still tried! And don't stop trying! Keep writing. Don't give up, especially if you're real goal is to write a book, not just win NaNo. Just keep writing for yourself and get your book finished!

Now that November is over, I have the semester winding down here at school. Today is the first day of Prep/Dead Week and next week are my final exams. I only really have two, so it's not too stressful, but I need to take them just as seriously as I normally would. 

For my book, I'm not abandoning it. My ultimate goal is an agent and a publisher. I'm taking a month or so off form this story, thought. I'm planning to wait and read through my book at either mid-January or early February. I'm going to read through it on my Nook like it was any other book and try to critique it as such. Then I'll rewrite it and I hope to have all this done by the time I (hopefully) leave for Ireland!

As for this blog, I hope to be so much more active! I know in the coming month I have at least 3 book reviews, hopefully more. I also hope to come up with, maybe, some tutorials and such. Sadly, with the distraction of writing and avoiding writing, I haven't planned out the month yet, so we'll see how this month goes. 

I'm sorry I disappeared and did horribly last month and please forgive any disorganization this month.  

I did notice a spike in pageviews and a few new followers and to you all I wanted to say welcome and thank you for visiting! Sorry you came in such a strange time. I hope you enjoy it as things get back to normal, and better, in January!

Did you participate in NaNoWriMo? Did you win? Did you have fun? What are you plans for your book in the future?

NaNoWriMo: How I Prepared

We're about half way through the month, which should mean half way through my novel, right? Haha... right. Anyway! Though this is my first year attempting NaNoWriMo I am in no way new to writing novels/stories. So in preparation (as per the suggestion from le internet), I did my planning at the end of October. I knew my story pretty well, it'd been developing for 6 years, but I wanted to make sure I knew everything about it before November came and I had to actually write it and make it sound good. Today, I thought I'd share with you some of the stuff I did to prepare.

First, I bought a journal. This lovely little journal you've seen on my other NaNoWriMo posts is, in fact, my NaNoWriMo planning book! I bought it specifically for this story and for NaNoWriMo. I don't usually buy spiral bound notebooks, but it seemed the most functional for this month. This little notebook was an ever present accessory for me for the last two weeks of October.

I'm one of those super paranoid egotistical people who thinks
everyone wants to steal my story, hence the burring.
Sorry, except I'm not.

Next, I mapped out the major plot points I wanted in my novel from beginning to end. I also tentatively assigned each a chapter. I've certainly changed a lot of the chapter assignments and added a lot from this list of 13! 

Like the fancy swirls I did there to hide the building names?

In my hours of procrastination from my school work, I drew up a map of the main setting of my novel, the school campus! I was really excited about this. I started with little sketches in my journal and suddenly decided I needed a good one as a constant reference point, so I drew it up, as basic as it is, and then got carried away with the watercolours and fancy labeling of each building. I really enjoyed making the map and I'm really glad to have it now, even if I don't describe the path a character takes to somewhere, I like to know what they'd pass in case anyone should ever ask.

Finally, I decided I needed a cast of characters. I wrote out each name of the main characters with a short bio, physical description, and relation to other characters. I've also been adding to this the minor characters I've used should I need to spell their name again or should they become strangely important.

I would say I'm one of those writers who likes to let the story take me, so sometimes I'm surprised by the importance of certain characters. Granted I've worked on and thought about this story for 6 years, every character has changed drastically since the first imagining and I have to say I'm fairly happy with this one finally.

If you're participating in NaNoWriMo, how did you prepare or did you? If you aren't how did/do you like to plan and organize projects/papers/etc. in school or at work?

NaNoWriMo: How I Intend to Keep it Going

As you know from this post, I am taking part in the NaNoWriMo challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. If you didn't realize, this is quite a challenge and to win/succeed is quite a feat. So I thought I'd share a few ideas I have on how I'm going to try to keep myself working hard enough to achieve my goal and win the challenge! 

• Write no less than 1,700 words a day. My daily goal this month is 2,000 but my bare minimum is 1,700 words. If I write 1,700 words a day for 30 days, I will reach 50,000 words on the very last day.
• Forget the formatting. I am obsessive about formatting. I love to make every chapter heading the same, every time jump match, and everything perfect. For this month, I'm not allowing myself to format a single page until I have completed the novel.
• Work every day from 2:30-3:45. I just had to drop a class from my schedule for various reasons, so the time I would have spent in class is my designated times to work every day. Weekend will be a bit difficult for me to keep this, but there is rarely anything going on at 2:30 in the afternoon on a Saturday.
• Keep a regular sleep schedule. If I can force myself to go to bed every week night by 10:30pm then I can get up in time to go to my classes and prepare for the day. Sometimes, when I stay up to late, I roll out of bed and into class then spend the rest of the day trying to prepare myself and making myself take on the day. This simply won't work for November.
• Take at least an hour each day away from writing to read. Every new book I read leaves me with new ideas about style and wording. reading enhances my writing and what could I need more to finish my novel?
• Water. I'm challenging myself to stay hydrated as best I can this (and every) month. I'm horrible about drinking water and it certainly shows in my fatigue.
• Enlist help. My life partner is absolutely wonderful at keeping me on track. He will ask every day if I've done my reading and if I've finished any goals I've set for myself. He really does keep me on track, which is good because I'll be spending about a week of this month at his house and I'm happy to know he'll be helpful rather than a distraction.
• Carry my computer everywhere. I write, as I feel most people now do, on my laptop, or really on a tiny off-brand notebook that barely runs chrome, but it works. It's small and so I intend to carry it everywhere with me this month. 5 minutes of quiet can be that much more towards my goal each day.
• No revision. I'm the worst at reading over my work and revising it before I write anything new. This month that ain't gonna fly. I'm, instead, going to write down in my NaNoWriMo notebook the changes I want to make with a page number and proceed writing as if I've made the changes.

I'm nervous but very excited to continue my work this month. I've had one productive day and am beginning another. Day 2 is on! I hope these ideas help you to keep up at whatever you're doing and if you're doing NaNoWriMo, good luck!

What are your best NaNoWriMo or anti-procrastination tips?

NaNoWriMo - It's on!

For those who do not know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! The Office of Letters and Light hosts a challenge every year during the month of November for aspiring and established writers of all ages and stages of writing to sit down and write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I, as an aspiring author, have never participated in this challenge, until now! This year is my first NaNoWriMo and I am so excited!

In preparation I have mapped my setting, I have outlined the major plot points of my novel, written a summary of the entire story, and joined my local NaNoWriMo group. I've chosen to write, rewrite, the book I attempted to write about 6 years ago. I don't consider this cheating because I'm doing a total rewrite and re-imagining. I really cannot wait to start!

Just 5 days 12 hours left!

Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo? Have you done it before? What are some of your pre-writing tips?