Category: rambling

NaNoWriMo, rambling

NaNoWriMo: Day ten update.

if only I could read faster

So the NaNo roller coaster continues! Today is day ten and I am still going. I just read my post that I wrote about day four and I was proudly telling you that I’d written 7515 words. That was not all that long ago and at the end of day ten I have written (drum roll here) 20036 words! Yep, I have done over twenty thousand words!

I actually cannot believe it. I was talking to a friend today who has been really supportive of me doing NaNo and has patiently listened to me vent and given her regular updates of my word count. She told me today that I need to stop saying that I can’t believe it and start believing in myself. I know that she is right, but it isn’t that simple.

I can tell you, though, that I do feel incredibly proud of myself. When I think of myself as a young child at school, battling with dyslexia, struggling to even learn to read let alone write, it is hard to believe that this is where I am now.

But it hasn’t been easy. Days 5-7 were ok, but on day 8 I felt tired, really really tired. Now it’s hard to know the cause of this, I do have dodgy blood and get very anaemic, so maybe it is that and I need an iron infusion (I had bloods taken this week so should know the answer to that soon), or is it because of the writing?

Writing is actually really tiring, well I think so anyway. Not only am I thinking and writing and concentrating, but I’m also using my imagination in ways that I am not used to. I felt like my brain hurt.

I posted about it on a brilliant writer’s Facebook page, there’s a few of us doing NaNo on there supporting each other, and I have to say that I expected a chorus of ‘me too’ when I asked if others felt tired. Instead, I got support and advice, I was told that maybe I needed to step back and take a bit of a break from it. Someone mentioned writer’s burnout, having had burnout from a job I did 15 years ago I certainly don’t want to be heading in that direction again. They told me that I was perhaps pushing myself too hard and to have a day off, then someone suggested that I just write 500 words the next day.

500 words? I have to admit that scared me, being a bit ahead takes pressure off me and to do 500 words in a day would mean that my buffer would be a lot smaller, but I saw their point and I couldn’t ignore their unanimous concern that I needed a break.

So, yesterday I had an easy day. I have to admit that the shock election results in America helped, it made it much easier to stop thinking about my book and characters and what was going to happen next. I felt for the first time since NaNo started that my brain had stopped whirring. I did no writing in the morning, and then after lunch I did an hour and wrote just over 1000 words.

It wasn’t much but it felt enough, doing that much didn’t stress me out but I knew that more would. So I stopped. It was my lowest word count so far, but I was ok with that.

So this morning, day ten, I have to say that I felt better and ready to get back to it. But the words didn’t flow so well and I was worried that my break the day before had broken something and that I was going to find it hard to get back into it. But as time went on I wrote more and more before I thought that I was done for the day. But I was just over a thousand words away from twenty thousand, maybe I could keep going?

And I did, and the words began to flow and soon enough I saw that I had written 3151 words today, that is my best day yet! And I cracked the 20k with a total of 20036.

So right now I’m feeling motivated and good. I desperately want to get to twenty-five thousand as then I will be half way through, and that isn’t too far away. I still have no idea whether I will actually finish NaNo, but I do know that whether I do or not I have given it my best shot. My main worry at the moment is that I don’t have enough story left to tell to give me another thirty thousand words, let alone the additional 30-50 thousand that I’d need to add to it to be left with a book-length book. But I remember on day two thinking that there was no way that I had enough words to get to ten thousand so I’m trying not to stress about that one too much.

So if you’re still here, thanks for reading my update! Words of advice and encouragement are much appreciated!!

NaNoWriMo, rambling

NaNoWriMo: Day four.

if only I could read faster

So today is the 4th November, meaning day four of NaNo. I’ve posted my word count on twitter and on my personal Facebook page each day, it helps to keep me motivated to reach my word count I find.

So, how has NaNo been so far? Well, day one started well, although I felt the reality of having done pretty much no prep and how aimlessly I was writing. I wondered whether the very vague book idea in my head would actually be enough to fill a book.

Day two was not so good. I had had very little sleep the night before, damn insomnia. This made writing difficult, and I didn’t meet the writing target of 1667 words a day. I have to admit that I felt deflated and somewhat defeated. I also felt incredibly stressed, there is a lot going on in my life and I couldn’t help but question whether I was expecting too much of myself by adding NaNo to the mix. But I talked about it to some friends and came to the conclusion that I had to put myself first and if it was too much then I would stop NaNo.

So, did I quit? Well no, of course not. I mean who quits NaNo on day two? So day three I started to write, and write and write. I enjoyed what I wrote, and I enjoyed pretty much everything about it, especially when I realised that I had just over two thousand words. It felt good, so good, and maybe just maybe, I was going to do this.

Today is day four and once again I have done just over two thousand words. Two thousand seems to be my limit though, it is like something switches off when I get to it that number and I can write no more. I would like to do more, of course, I want to be able to have days without writing and I cannot do that if I get stuck at two thousand words.

But I have written 7615 words of a book. A book that didn’t exist five days ago. I should add here for those that read my previous NaNo post that the 1000 words that I had done got deleted on day one!.

Today I got sent a survey to fill in, the survey was for readers and authors, and for the first time ever I ticked author (their criteria was that if you have written or are writing a book then you are considered an author), it felt strange. I never imagined that I would actually do this, but here I am, doing it. Will I make the NaNo target and finish it? Who knows. I certainly hope so but it is very early days yet. All I know is that I’m giving it my best shot.

NaNoWriMo, rambling

NaNoWriMo: What I’m going to be doing in November.

if only I could read faster

nanowrimo_2016_webbanner_participant

I don’t normally do rambling posts on here, meaning posts that aren’t about something specific, like a book review or blog tour. But today I am.

I wanted to share with you all what I will be doing in November, and why, all going well, this blog might be a bit quieter than normal.

Apparently, approximately 80% of people want to write a book. That’s an awful lot. Now generally I like the fact that I tend to be a bit different to the norm, I have rarely in my life conformed to be considered normal or common but in this instance I am. Yes, I want to write a book.

Now I have very little faith that this is something that I will actually manage to do, there are many reasons for this including a lack of time and my inability to see things through. I tend to get bored and lack motivation for anything that I don’t have to do. But I’m going to give it a go.

Normally this isn’t something that I would tell anyone about, then no one has to know about my failure. But I am doing something called NaNoWriMo in November, and author Elizabeth Haynes (who wrote the amazingly brilliant Into the Darkest Corner, among others) who is a pro at NaNo told me that I should tell everyone. Her reasoning being that when you ask me how my book is going that the shame of telling you that I haven’t written anything will spur me into keeping going and finishing NaNo. So no pressure folks, but I’m relying on you to shame me here!

So what is NaNo I hear you say? It is National Novel Writing Month, it happens every November and thousands around the world take part in it. The aim is to write 50,000 words in the month of November to be crowned a NaNo winner.

Now if that sounds easy to you then I’m afraid that you are wrong. Google ‘How hard is NaNoWriMo’ and you will get a lot of hits telling you just how hard it is, I quite like this article (apologies for linking to The Torygraph).

So far I have written an amazing (yes, that is sarcasm) 1000 words. Doing so has taken me approximately four hours. So if I need to write 1667 words every single day during November you can see that this might be a bit of a problem. My problem is that I keep going back and tweaking what I have written. I need to stop doing that. One of my favourite authors, Angela Marsons, told me that if I keep stopping and going back to tweak then the story can’t move forward cos I’m busy going backward (she explained it a lot better than I did!). That makes a lot of sense but I suspect will be a hard one for me to crack.

Another potential problem is that according to NaNo I am what is known as a ‘pantser’. A pantser is someone who doesn’t plan, have an outline, or much preparation at all before starting NaNo. I decided in September that I was going to do NaNo, and I started off planning. I then changed my mind on what book I was going to write, so all that go scrapped. And since then I have done pretty much nothing. I have a vague idea of how my book will end, I have a basic outline of the main character but I just cannot settle on her name, and that’s it. Not a jot else. I have a strong feeling that I’m going to regret that in a couple of weeks time!!

So that’s what I hope to be doing in November. As I said I have very little faith that I will finish NaNo, but even if I don’t and end up with say 10,000 words, that’s 9,000 more than I have now! So if you ask me how NaNo is going and I mumble a response about it going slowly then please gently encourage. If I proudly tell you that it’s going well then please celebrate with me and if I tell you that I’ve quit then please don’t judge me.