Victory!

Today, at approximately 11:00 P.M. CST, I crossed the 50,000 word finish line for the fourth year in a row, thus completing another successful year of National Novel Writing Month and proving to myself that I can do anything if I set my mind to it. Even with the pressure of my freshman fall semester, I managed to set a goal and see it through, and the feeling never gets old. Despite all my planning before November this year, I still had quite a rough time of it in the middle, but I think if I had not done the preparation I had, I might not have made it this year. Still, I managed to pull ahead from behind and even finish a day early.

Some people will never understand why we sign up for this crazy, month-long endeavor we affectionately call "NaNo," and as my dad said just this morning "writing 50,000 words just sounds like torture to me." And it can be! Even to me at times. But the thing that keeps me coming back is the feeling of satisfaction knowing that I made the decision to allow myself to dream and set a challenging goal, and not only to set that goal, but to put in the effort of achieving it, no matter what. It's my goal to actually publish a novel one day, and even though my four NaNo manuscripts are piles of rubbish right now, I can say that I have written four books, and having completed the latest one has inspired me to pursue editing and completing the others.

Right now, I'm content with the 50,048 words I have written, and my poor mind and hands are begging for a respite. I may let my Muse have a little bit of a vacation, but it's going back to work soon to get started on revising. For now, though, I'm going to put off writing about my great Thanksgiving break and simply bask in the glow of my glorious purple winner bar.

Victory - Bond

Slightly Behind, but Hanging in There

I can't believe it's been five days since I last updated here. Lately, everything has been about catching up.

I spent a great weekend at home, where I got to see my brother do an astounding job at playing the part of Gaston in our high school's production of Beauty and the Beast, and it was just wonderful talking to a lot of my old friends from school who were involved in the production. I especially enjoyed seeing our former drama teacher, who flew in from Amarillo just to see the play. As much as I'm enjoying college and I was ready to move on in life just a few months ago this spring, I realize now how much I want to savor everything about life; being back home really makes me wistful for the good times there, and seeing the play this weekend brought back good memories from when I was in Annie, Get Your Gun two years ago.

On Saturday, I slept in, having stayed up until almost 3:00 the night before. I only had just enough time to cobble together my little presentation on writing before scrambling out the door for my afternoon at the Wells Branch Library where I used to work. I passed the whole afternoon there hosting a write-in in the meeting room. Only four other people came, and we barely socialized, but even without talking, I still fought to eke out every word that afternoon. All in all, I felt kind of sad that I spent half the day somewhat alone in a small meeting room at my former place of work, but it wasn't a total waste because I did make progress, no matter how painstakingly.

Saturday night on my way home, I happened to see some familiar cars in the parking lot at church, so I poked my head into the youth group's office to see what was going on. It was a good thing I did since there was a retreat planning meeting going on, and I was able to see several people from my youth group that I missed on my last visit. I spent the next couple hours with my friend Patrick, talking about life and vocations and faith, and it was really good to be able to share my feelings in words with someone else at the same stage of life.

Sunday, I again slept late, trying to catch up on sleep lost at the end of last week, but it was just as well since I ended up going to the youth-served mass at 11:45. This time, I was able to see my former piano teacher and her adorable baby, as well as our pastor at my home parish. I couldn't believe that I had forgotten that November 15 was the feast day of St. Albert, the parish's patron.

I didn't do much the rest of the afternoon except go out to Half Price Books to use a 50% off coupon, netting me a Berlitz Intermediate Italian course for just about $7.00, plus two other workbooks, Russian and Arabic in 10 Minutes a Day. Since I was near SuperCuts, I also got a haircut, which feels much better, although with the cold front that came in last night, my head is cold now!

As for words, I managed to write about 2,000 today, although ideally, I should be about 1,000 further. I'm not sure what it is, but I have faced this problem almost every year where I just absolutely hate my story and want to trash it. Before November started, I made around fifty notecards with scene ideas on them, but the only thing that was really cemented in my head was the introduction to the story. When that was finished, the plot kind of fizzled out, and I have been making up absolute rubbish in the meantime to fill the gap. Still, I managed to cross over the halfway mark (whoop! ^_^) today, and if I can bang out at least 10,000 more words, it ought to be smoother sailing from there. Too bad these words don't count! ;)

Current wordcount: 25,392 and counting

2,000 words = Much Better Day

So, I'm definitely going to be trying to write as early in the day as I can; today, I got 2,000 words more written, and while it started off slowly at first, I ditched the scene that was going nowhere and jumped ahead to something I actually had planned on a plotcard. Sure, it was almost all infodump, but those words can be cut later. They all count now! Every, last, precious one of them ;)

So now, I'm just a tad shy of 20,000 words!

The Words Are Barely Flowing... But They Are Coming None the Less

I think I need to go back to writing in the morning and not late at night. These past two nights, I have struggled to put out even 1,000 words, which I can normally knock out in a good, productive 30 minutes. I think I have just been too tired mentally to be very creative, not to mention I am in the slogging grounds nearing the middle of the story. I also happen to realize that I'm currently in a doldrums area where my plotcards don't cover, very well, but fortunately, I have a lot of good scene ideas to use later.

I feel like I'm behind, even though I'm managing to hold my position at just barely beyond where I need to be. Hoping tomorrow goes better.

Current count: 17,169

A Hard 1k More

I don't know what it was, but I was so tired tonight, that I barely managed to eke out 1,000 more words. I had to adjust the time zone on my profile due to the time change at the beginning of the month, but I fortunately am right about where I need to be.

I'm too tired to write much more, so I'm off to bed. Hopefully, I can make use of my lack of both Anthropology AND Shakespeare lessons tomorrow to get some more inspiring words written.

Current wordcount: 16,150

No New Words Tonight, but A Midsummer Night's Dream for Inspiration

I spent most of the day doing chores and then working on homework/reading, so I didn't write at all today, which makes me very sad. But, I did get somethings done, and this is what the word cushion is for. Hopefully, tomorrow, even though I still have a lot to do, I will be able to add another 1,000 words on.

As a side note, I went to see the drama company's presentation of A Midsummer Night's Dream since I just recently studied that play in my Shakespeare class. It's a good thing I'd just read it since the director went in a quasi-futuristic direction with the costumes and set (which included flying robots playing some faeries, engineered by the computer science department). At first, I wasn't sure what to think of it all, but by the end, I really enjoyed it, and the space atmosphere actually made me look at the traditional faeries slightly differently. Who says they couldn't also be futuristic beings from another world or time?

Anyway, I'll get around to writing my extra credit review sometime, maybe as a warmup for a writing session tomorrow.

BIG Day and the Widgets Are Working!

Today was a good Friday. I was sad that I missed my French class, but it was because I won the "lunch lottery" with my Shakespeare professor by sending him an email of less than two sentences saying I wanted to talk about his dog, Roselyn with him, and I ended up being one of the four students chosen by his wife to go to lunch with him. He drove three of us in his nice BMW (with plates that read, SHKSPR, of course) to a very nice restaurant called La Riviera, where we had a great lunch there, and I got to know my teacher and a couple of my classmates better.

Then, on the writing front... I worked in the library after a fascinating Linguistics class today (we're finally getting into historical- and sociolinguistics (which involves finding common ancestors of language families). Anyway, I was feeling a little depressed because it was that time of day when the sun is going away, and I realized that almost all of my friends are gone for the weekend: My roommate, my next door neighbors, my high school friends, and my friend Anna is here, but her parents are visiting. I was thinking it was a little sad that I had nothing to do on a Friday night, but I was able to get out about 1,000 words before dinner, where I fortunately ran into my Sbisa friend Steven. Interestingly, he was going to the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream tonight, which I had planned on going to alone, but while I would have loved to join him and his friends, just prior to dinner, I learned that some wrimos from the area were having an impromptu writein at the local Barnes and Noble, so I ended up going there, and it was great.

It's funny how writers are often "strange" people, but isn't everyone a little strange if you think about it? They weren't anywhere near as "weird" as a lot of the Austinite bunch, but it was immense fun to write with four other wrimos and learn about similar interests. We had two "word wars" (in which everyone tries to write as much as possible within a set time limit-- in our case, 30 minutes-- before comparing totals), which helped me get another couple thousand words written. Then we had fun browsing the sci-fi and fantasy section of the bookstore and giving our input on various authors and series, after which we left because it was closing, only to stand outside for another half hour talking about video games and programming.

I know, it was kind of a nerd fest, but I haven't had people like that to talk to forever, and it was a lot of fun.

Anyway, as you can see my by nifty widget, which is *finally* working, I now have a grand total of 13,282 words, which puts me where I need to be by the end of Sunday! Good thing, too, since I have a lot of work to do this weekend.

Nearly 1/5 of the way there already?

I just ran out of time to cross the 10k mark tonight, but I got darn close at 9,741 words total. Today was a very good writing day: the protagonist can't leave the village, effectively subjecting him to my every whim and fancy; the villain has been introduced, though only vaguely, and he's even more repulsive than I made him in the outline; and the protagonist has met his fey protagonist counterpart, which I can tell you was quite the candybar scene to write!

How exciting! It's already been almost a week, and we're steaming along quite well. Here's to keeping the forward momentum and racking up the words this weekend!

Daily Quota for Tomorrow Reached Tonight

Today, I had no Anthropology video lecture, so I had a free hour in the library to write about a thousand words. Then, later, after much searching the internet for a suitable "controversial" article for my French class, I came back to the room and, hoping for at least 500 words, actually put out almost another 1,000, bringing my total up to 6,326 so far, and that's about how much I need to have by tomorrow night!

Good thing, too, since I have French club AND a history test to study for tomorrow...

But hooray for being ahead of schedule. If I can just keep this little buffer up, and increase it little by little, this just might be more doable than I thought this year.

Slightly Ahead of Schedule

I added almost 3,000 more words today, bringing me to just slightly over the brink of 4k at an exact count of 4,054, which puts me about 700 words ahead of schedule.

The protagonist has arrived in the village and inspected the mansion he inherited from his eccentric, late uncle. Oh, and some of the local boys made a gruesome discovery to kick things off (that would be ironic if you could read the draft-- they were playing soccer at the time).

Nothing like a murder mystery in a sleepy, countryside village to get the ball rolling (oh, I'm just full of these puns tonight!) ;)

And We're Off!

It's November 1, one of the best times of the year!

Not only is today the Feast of All Saints but it is also the start of National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short). For those who don't know, each November sine 2006, I have participated in NaNo and "won" by successfully writing 50,000 words of fiction on a new project within the 30 days of November. Why do I do this? Simply because I can (well, and I love creative writing, so it gives me a good excuse to sit down and bash out a book at least once a year).

Anyway, the good folks at the Office of Letters and Light have progressively improved the NaNoWriMo site over the years, and one of the coolest things about NaNo are the nifty wordcount widgets that track one's progress over the course of the month. Currently, they don't seem to be up and running, but soon, you will be able to see a brief summary of my wordcount progress each day, as I'll be trying to update my blog with a report of how the writing went each day. Hopefully, this will bring this blog back around to its original intent: namely, writing.

In other news, this weekend, I made my first visit back to Austin since moving to college. It was really nice to visit many of my friends and a couple teachers from back home, and of course, I got to spend some quality time with my much-missed dog. It all passed too quickly, though, but fortunately it won't be long before I can take another short break and come back to see my high school's production of Beauty and the Beast.

While I was in Austin, I was able to go to the midnight countdown for NaNoWriMo, which I've never been able to attend in the past because Halloween always fell on a school night. This time, the extra hour with the time change helped make up for the lack of sleep I got that night, and although most of the other Austin "Wrimos" are a bit... strange (hey, keep Austin weird, ya'll), it was still exciting to hear people roaring "10 minutes!" and "2 minutes!" before counting down the final moments of October to begin writing our novels at midnight on November 1. I managed to get in about 1,300 words in the first 50 minutes before feeling too tired to continue, so I headed home.

I didn't get any more words in on Sunday, even after I headed back to College Station, but it was a good start to my fourth NaNoWriMo, and I'm going to try to post here each night with the progress I made for each day of November.

Happy novelling!