Chris Baty is the founder of National Novel Writing Month. He’s also an extremely funny person. This book is full of humorous tidbits and information designed to motivate you during the craziness that is NaNoWriMo.

What I like about this book is that it’s not actually meant to be a how-to. All this book is meant to be is a challenge. It urges you to approach your novel in a way that the typical author would never think of doing: start and finish it in 30 days. Mind you, it doesn’t say you need to start and finish a novel that’s ready to be published in 30 days. Just start and finish the first draft of your novel in 30 days. And that’s what makes it so smart. If a person sets a goal to just write a novel sometime in his or her lifetime, chances are that person won’t accomplish the goal. But if that person is given a deadline? That makes it a challenge, and a challenge makes you more accountable. (more…)

Drumroll, please! You’re reading the words of a NaNoWriMo 2006 winner! Woooooo!

… and a great big whew!

Well, the novel’s hit over 50K words, but it’s not finished yet. I think I’ll need another 20K to finish the story (and there’s definitely gonna be a sequel) but that’s okay. I thought about signing up for NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month), but at this exact moment… I’m ready to kick back and just read a few novels instead of writing them ;)

Wooo! 6,600 words written in a day and a half. I just wrote a little over 3,300 in two hours, and I could keep going because I’m at a fun part of my story, but I have to work early tomorrow and it’s late now. I’m currently at 47,511 words and I’m pretty sure that I can write the remaining 2,500 words tomorrow evening after work because I am sooooo psyched to finish the challenge as soon as possible now that I’m thiiiiiiiis close.

Well, I suppose I could just do without enough sleep and stay up to finish it tonight, but I’ve decided against it for a few reasons. A) I’ll be a zombie at work tomorrow if I don’t get enough sleep, B) if I finish it tonight, I’ll be on such a high that I won’t be able to sleep anyway, and C) I am SO gonna throw myself a little celebratory party when I hit 50K, and I’d rather do it at a time other than the middle of the night.

So the big question is: what shall I reward myself with for winning NaNoWriMo, especially since this is my first time participating in it? Or maybe more importantly, what will my husband reward me with? He said he’d get me something good if I actually did it. Time’s a tickin’, hubby! ;)

Didn’t get a lot of writing done over the last week for a combination of reasons, so I was starting to feel a little panicked about the word count. Plus, having taken a few days off, my interest in writing (almost) started to disappear. I was doubting the storyline and finding all kinds of stuff to do instead. Not a lot of writing done, but on the plus side, got a lot of Christmas baking done.

So a few days ago, I decided to just sit down to write a few words. An excruciating hour later, I had 877 words down before deciding to give up for the day. Not my best writing session, and I came away pretty sure that things weren’t going to look up anytime soon. Took a few days off and decided to give it a go today. Let me tell you, the idea of going shopping instead was really, REALLY strong. I procrastinated all morning and the majority of the afternoon, but I finally sat myself down and forced myself to just start and give it 15 minutes. And almost 3 hours and 4,044 words later… I was feeling a little better about the story and my writing ;)

So the lesson I learned: if I don’t feel like it, just sit down and give it 15 minutes. If I still don’t feel like writing, then at least I tried. But the experience has been that 15 minutes is usually enough to get me past that inital blah feeling. Mind, it also helps that I was in the middle of a story and had a place to take it — I don’t know how well it would work when starting from scratch without an idea to get me started.

Anyway, now that I’ve hit 40K, I feel like writing a lot more. 50K seems soooo close and having that word count bar nearly to the end is pretty good motivation. I may write some more after Desperate Housewives tonight.

Got another two sessions of writing down today for a total of 3 hours and around 4000 words. Yep… there’s no way this novel is going to be finished with only 14K left. Which sort of makes me anxious. When I signed up for NaNoWriMo, my only goal was to start a new novel, stick with it, and finish it within the 50K words and do it by November 29th at the latest. It was sort of like: Hello, start… meet the end. NaNoWriMo starts, November flies by in a panicked rush to finish novel by the time NaNoWriMo ends, NaNoWriMo ends, I get on with Christmas.

However, it now seems that I will reach 50K pretty soon, which is great because it’s only mid-November and yay me, first time NaNoWriMoEr, but not so great because… my novel’s ending is nowhere in sight and I didn’t expect that 50K words wouldn’t be enough. And worse yet, I’m not all that sure how I’m going to end it. Which makes me a teensy bit worried that when I hit 50K, I’ll be able to say, “I won NaNoWriMo!” and then I won’t be in so much of a rush to continue writing the rest of the story. I’m actually starting to think I may end up giving this novel an ending that isn’t really all that much of an ending so much as a “stay tuned” cliffhanger. I can just see it now — I’ll be writing the sequel for NaNoWriMo 2007. Gah!

Though I suppose it would help if I had a title for this one before I go thinking about the sequel. I have one in mind, but… I’m a little iffy on it. Anyway, current word count as of 1:30 AM, November 15th: 35,990. You think I should just fit 10 words in there somewhere and get it to a nice round 36,000? I’m so tempted. But I won’t. It is now bedtime.

My cold has loosened its super grip on me so that it’s decided to let me breathe through my nose again and sit upright for the majority of my day. Now it just likes to tickle my throat so I cough constantly, along with the added sniffle here and there.

So that means I was able to sit myself down for two writing sessions today. One for an hour and a half in the early afternoon when I wrote a little over 2500 words, and then my more productive 3 hour, late night writing session, when I wrote just over 3600. It was a good writing day, and I managed to pass the 30K mark today. Yay!

I’ve come to a real transition point in the novel. It seems that the first 30K will act as the first third of my story. Talk about taking the quantity over quality mantra to heart! At this rate, I don’t think I’ll be able to wrap up my novel in 50K words. Yikes.

The good news is that I’m really enjoying my story right now. I’m now truly into the thick of what I wanted the novel to be about in the first place, and the really exciting (to me) stuff is still ahead. And that makes me very happy, because I can see the next 10-20K flying by. Which is definitely a good thing. I took a look at my stats, and at average pace I’ve been writing, I’m expected to reach 50K in 10 days. But I think that if I’m able to keep up the writing pace I’ve been at for the last two days, I’ll be done well before then, provided I don’t take a day off.

I’m totally into this now. I’m actually sort of sorry that I only decided to do NaNoWriMo for the first time this year and not three years ago when I first heard about it. I never thought I had it in me to give up my need to edit continously as go, and to just write and stick with my story this far. I’m feeling pretty proud of myself. Every time I’ve tried to write a novel before, I’d write a chapter or two then stop to edit and revise over and over again until I’d lost interest in it and just given up. This novel is the farthest I’ve ever come in a novel, and I don’t mind saying that it’s clearly a “quantity over quality” kind of novel, but that it has the potential to clean up really nicely. Maybe it’ll clean up to be around 50K in the end, who knows?

But mentally, I’m feeling pretty good about it right now. I can only imagine how I’ll feel when I actually reach 50K, or, better yet, when I finish the story. I suppose if I needed to be brought back down to Earth, I’d just have to think about how I’ll feel when I come back to it months later with the intent to edit and revise…. Yup, there we go… that killed it.

Almost ;)

It’s 3:35 AM. I sat down with my cup of Chamomile tea and night-time cold medication at 11:30 PM with the idea to take just twenty minutes and try to write a few hundred words before bed. While the cold is nowhere near gone, the cold medication I took must have had some other super qualities in it apart from the standard decongestants and antihistamines, because I found myself in one of those rare zen-like writing states you only wish you could get into. And 5396 words and 4 hours later, I’ve passed the 25K/50% mark. Yay me!

Coincidentally, 4 hours is also the exact amount of time it took for the medication to wear off. Now I’m off to find something that will hopefully knock me out while drying up my nose so I can sleep without waking a half dozen or so times to grope for the Kleenex box.

Today was a lousy day. Didn’t get a bit of writing done on my NaNovel because I’ve been on the couch all day tending to the runny nose. I believe I’m also getting an ear infection in my right ear because it’s feeling plugged up and is starting to hurt. I literally spent the entire day minus the time I took for a shower and to make dinner (well, heat dinner) on the couch dozing and watching TV. Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow and can get some writing done. The new plan… hit 25K words by Sunday night.

I was hoping to get to the 25K midpoint tomorrow, but I’ve come down with one major ass-kicking cold. And when I’m sick, I don’t do much of anything but lay in bed or on the couch and sleep. I’ll still give it a try though… but not tonight. For now, I’m off to drink tea and pop the cold drugs.

I didn’t touch my novel until 10PM. So much for spending my day off working on my novel. I had good intentions, but I fell victim to that evil force known as procrastination. After my late night last night, I slept until nearly noon today (my sister tells me I have a charmed life). Then I got up and went straight out to shovel the huge pile of snow that fell last night off my sidewalks and driveway. My back was not appreciative. Played a little phone tag with my sister and invited her to come over later in the evening with my little 2.5 year old niece and 1 year old nephew. Phoned to set up appointment with eye doctor for husband. Did some e-mailing and reading of blogs. Went to the store. Got home around 4PM and started writing… my Christmas cards (yeah, yeah, yeah). Sister and kids came over around 6PM, played with the kids until they went home around 8PM. Spent some time chatting about the day with husband, watched The Office and Lost. Started working on my novel shortly after at around 10, wrote another 2165 words, and decided to stop at midnight.

And despite the procrastinating, I managed to write a lot, but overall I think I continued the string of kaka I wrote yesterday. I’m just not feeling all that inspired. I’ve got a few good scenes I’m working my way towards, but I’m not there yet. I suppose I could always jump ahead and then fill the rest in later, but I haven’t been feeling like I’m in that “I LOVE writing” zone to start working on those scenes. I’m afraid I’ll slaughter them unless I approach them with the right mindset :)

Anyway, I’m hoping to reach the halfway point by Friday. Off to bed now. Gotta work tomorrow… so much for that charmed life.

Yep, what I was afraid would happen, happened. I lost that inspired feeling. Probably didn’t help that I took a day off because I worked and then felt too tired to do much of anything. I tried writing yesterday evening, and came away with about 200 words before deciding that was just going to have to be enough. I managed to get to 17,993 words tonight, at a rate of about 1000 wph. Which is pretty much my average wph unless I’m really inspired.

What I wrote tonight was very dialogue-heavy. I’m not very good at writing dialogue. I’m not sure why I took that route. Probably because it was easier to write dialogue slowly and hope that the story would take better shape and a more definite direction by listening to what the characters have to say. We’ll see how I do tomorrow since I have the day off (yay!). That is, if I wake up in time to do anything productive. It’s just past 3AM now.

When I first got the idea for my novel, I had a scene pictured in my head that sparked it all. It was exciting (to me), and sort of the diving board for which the really cool, interesting aspects of my novel would take off. Tonight, I finally wrote enough of the intro and the backstory to reach that scene, and boy! Did those words just fly out now that I was able to write it! I got out a little over 2600 words in an hour. Yay, me! I’ve reached that point where I’m actually getting pretty excited about this novel now that I’m into the content I was setting it all up for.

Unfortunately, it’s late now (it’s always late when I’m on a writing roll… it’s peak creativity time for me, thus the split days of the post titles… I’m always starting before midnight and ending in the early hours of the morning), and I have to go to the job tomorrow. Which is too bad because I feel like I could easily write another 3000 words at the moment. So now, the thing that worries me is that the feeling will be gone tomorrow and I’ll be out of the groove.

When you’re writing, there is nothing more thrilling than those times when you’re in the groove and the words just come flying out of your fingers. Tonight was one of those times for me. I managed to write nearly 6,000 words in a little over 2 hours. Nice :) (more…)

I have hit the 10% mark. Just over 5000 words written in less than 24 hours.

Heck, only 10 more days like this and I’m set. Who said NaNoWriMo’s so hard? ;)

Maybe I should go grab No Plot? No Problem! and see if delirium is common in the first week.

Well, the madness has begun.

I decided not to start writing at midnight on the first day (I had to work a full day that day), and when I got home from work I was very tired, so after I made and ate dinner with the hubby, I took a two hour nap, then we watched Lost and hung out together until he went to bed around midnight. And then I could hold it off no longer… time to start my novel. (more…)