NaNoWriMo?

NaNoWriMo?

FAIL!!

I must say, I enjoyed following others and I also very much enjoyed the guest star "pep talks."
Funniest thing? Now I'm itching to work on my story.
How'd you do?

Only a few hours to go!

Uploaded my book cover to my NaNoWriMo page today. My story will be new age fiction with a hint of mystery. Title: Lost & Found.

I don't have a set outline or my plotting done yet, but I have many ideas floating around in my head. I met with my friend Melly last evening and we went over some ideas. We plan on getting together a few times throughout the month (both virtually and physically).

A couple of NaNo articles / posts of interest:

How do you write 50,000 words in 30 days?

Some helpful links to writing tools.

2007 NaNoWriMo Pep Talks

Routines for Writers - lots of great articles and tips for Nanoers.

The 13-Step Method to reach 50,000 words

More great Nano articles

One writer's journey through NaNoWriMo 2008

Another writer's NaNo journey

Good luck all! And don't forget to friend me!

It ain't easy to be original...

I've decided I'm writing a fantasy story for my NaNo project. I haven't written fantasy before, but I enjoy reading it.

My hope is that a fantasy world will give me more room to be creative so I won't feel "stuck" as often. My goal for NaNo this year is to just get 50,000 words down in a somewhat understandable format. More specifically, learn how to apply myself to the act of writing.

I have a loose plot outline floating around in my mind but I haven't committed anything to paper (or computer) yet, other than some ideas.

I did come across this, tho. I realize I need to do a little soul searching not to be cliche. With a new genre, come new rules.

Here is The Fantasy Novelist's Exam by David J. Parker. It seems it's not easy to be original. I will take this exam tonight and see where I'm at with my floaters.

The Exam

1. Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages?
2. Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage?
3. Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn't know it?
4. Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme badguy?
5. Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world?
6. How about one that will destroy it?
7. Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about "The One" who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good?
8. Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information?
9. Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise?
10. Is the evil supreme badguy secretly the father of your main character?
11. Is the king of your world a kindly king duped by an evil magician?
12. Does "a forgetful wizard" describe any of the characters in your novel?
13. How about "a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior"?
14. How about "a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons"?
15. Do the female characters in your novel spend a lot of time worrying about how they look, especially when the male main character is around?
16. Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued?
17. Do any of your female characters exist solely to embody feminist ideals?
18. Would "a clumsy cooking wench more comfortable with a frying pan than a sword" aptly describe any of your female characters?
19. Would "a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan" aptly describe any of your female characters?
20. Is any character in your novel best described as "a dour dwarf"?
21. How about "a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage"?
22. Did you make the elves and the dwarves great friends, just to be different?
23. Does everybody under four feet tall exist solely for comic relief?
24. Do you think that the only two uses for ships are fishing and piracy?
25. Do you not know when the hay baler was invented?
26. Did you draw a map for your novel which includes places named things like "The Blasted Lands" or "The Forest of Fear" or "The Desert of Desolation" or absolutely anything "of Doom"?
27. Does your novel contain a prologue that is impossible to understand until you've read the entire book, if even then?
28. Is this the first book in a planned trilogy?
29. How about a quintet or a decalogue?
30. Is your novel thicker than a New York City phone book?
31. Did absolutely nothing happen in the previous book you wrote, yet you figure you're still many sequels away from finishing your "story"?
32. Are you writing prequels to your as-yet-unfinished series of books?
33. Is your name Robert Jordan and you lied like a dog to get this far?
34. Is your novel based on the adventures of your role-playing group?
35. Does your novel contain characters transported from the real world to a fantasy realm?
36. Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names?
37. Do any of your main characters have names longer than three syllables?
38. Do you see nothing wrong with having two characters from the same small isolated village being named "Tim Umber" and "Belthusalanthalus al'Grinsok"?
39. Does your novel contain orcs, elves, dwarves, or halflings?
40. How about "orken" or "dwerrows"?
41. Do you have a race prefixed by "half-"?
42. At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines?
43. Do you write your battle scenes by playing them out in your favorite RPG?
44. Have you done up game statistics for all of your main characters in your favorite RPG?
45. Are you writing a work-for-hire for Wizards of the Coast?
46. Do inns in your book exist solely so your main characters can have brawls?
47. Do you think you know how feudalism worked but really don't?
48. Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time journeying from place to place?
49. Could one of your main characters tell the other characters something that would really help them in their quest but refuses to do so just so it won't break the plot?
50. Do any of the magic users in your novel cast spells easily identifiable as "fireball" or "lightning bolt"?
51. Do you ever use the term "mana" in your novel?
52. Do you ever use the term "plate mail" in your novel?
53. Heaven help you, do you ever use the term "hit points" in your novel?
54. Do you not realize how much gold actually weighs?
55. Do you think horses can gallop all day long without rest?
56. Does anybody in your novel fight for two hours straight in full plate armor, then ride a horse for four hours, then delicately make love to a willing barmaid all in the same day?
57. Does your main character have a magic axe, hammer, spear, or other weapon that returns to him when he throws it?
58. Does anybody in your novel ever stab anybody with a scimitar?
59. Does anybody in your novel stab anybody straight through plate armor?
60. Do you think swords weigh ten pounds or more? [info]
61. Does your hero fall in love with an unattainable woman, whom he later attains?
62. Does a large portion of the humor in your novel consist of puns?
63. Is your hero able to withstand multiple blows from the fantasy equivalent of a ten pound sledge but is still threatened by a small woman with a dagger?
64. Do you really think it frequently takes more than one arrow in the chest to kill a man?
65. Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an "on the road" meal?
66. Do you have nomadic barbarians living on the tundra and consuming barrels and barrels of mead?
67. Do you think that "mead" is just a fancy name for "beer"?
68. Does your story involve a number of different races, each of which has exactly one country, one ruler, and one religion?
69. Is the best organized and most numerous group of people in your world the thieves' guild?
70. Does your main villain punish insignificant mistakes with death?
71. Is your story about a crack team of warriors that take along a bard who is useless in a fight, though he plays a mean lute?
72. Is "common" the official language of your world?
73. Is the countryside in your novel littered with tombs and gravesites filled with ancient magical loot that nobody thought to steal centuries before?
74. Is your book basically a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings?
75. Read that question again and answer truthfully.

Literary Abandon

Okay. I've decided. I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year. And I'm gonna succeed.

Anyone else taking the plunge?

My info page is here - friend me if you're partaking!

NaNoWriMo - what I've learned

CONGRATULATIONS to those who made 50k during November! You ROCK!

I didn't make the finish line for NaNoWriMo. However, it was very successful for me and I've learned much.

Here are some of the things I've learned:
1. Any writing is better than no writing.
2. I can find time to write.
3. I get gut rot from too much coffee.
4. Writing 50,000 words in one month is hard!
5. Once I get into the groove of my story, and I write regularly, the story stays with me and I think about it all the time.
6. First drafts can, and usually do, suck.
7. You can't rewrite or improve a blank page.
8. It's fun to watch word count go up.
9. (one I already knew) The online writing community is very supportive. Thank you - you know who you are.
10. Hey, maybe I CAN write a book!!

What have you learned?

Need laughter or motivation?

For those wrimos who need a laugh or a little bit of motivation, I encourage you to listen to the follow Writers on Writing interview with Chris Baty (author of No Plot? No Problem and founder of NaNoWriMo).

It's a double interview, with Baty following Literary agent Betsy Amster.

Blogging is important too

Spent some of today organizing my various snippets of writing, so now I have a chronological and cohesive piece of work to continue with. Does anyone else do this? Write in notebooks, home computer, laptop, Alphie, work computer (on lunch of course!) and then have bits and pieces everywhere? Takes more time than I allotted to put it all together and make it smoothe. But, I needed to do it. Guess I'm just a smoothe operator...

I've neglected my blog of late, tho I'm very fortunate to have many online friends who continue to support me through comments here and on my NaNo profile and via email and chat. Thank you all, it certainly helps! However, I've come to realize the importance of my blog by the readership base. We took in another (yes, another) abandoned kitty (10-week old Suki) and I discovered that he is an avid reader of my blog.

Click here to see.

Here's a close-up of Cairo with his new brother Suki:

Aren't they cute?

Soooooo behind

I am tempted to list excuses for why I'm behind, but there are no excuses. Writing is either a priority or it isn't.

However, all is not lost. According to my progress chart, if I write 2030 words per day, I can still do this.

In the end however, I'm not going to be too hard on myself. After all, every word written - whether it's 50,000 or not - is a word I didn't have before.

On that note, I've just viewed the progress of my Nano buddies and some of you guys are doing awesome! Way to go Wrimos!

How's everyone else doing? Feeling?

The two elements of writing

I was listening to an interview with Doug Lyle, author of Murder and Mayhem: A Doctor Answers Medical and Forensic Questions for Mystery Writers, on Writers on Writing and he had some interesting advice for writers.

He said there are two elements to writing a novel: the art and the craft. The art is the storytelling and the craft is the structure of the writing. It's important to get the story told, then go back and worry about the structure. To me, that's what NaNo is all about, getting the story told - because I get so caught up in the structure element I never finish the art part.

How's everyone doing so far for word count? I'm a little behind, but I've dedicated a 4 1/2 hour train trip to Montreal tomorrow to writing.

Are you ready?

The countdown has begun. Wrinos are wishing luck to fellow wrinos. I am shaking with anticipation. Can I do it? Will I do it? Is it within me? I suppose I shall find out.

Good luck to all of you participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I hope to see you at the finish line, with the certificate of completion in hand, if that is what you are aiming for. I doubt you'll see much of any blogger this month who is taking the challenge unless, of course, we are seeking a way to avoid writing.

Here's to words. 50,000 of 'em.

Here's to what we'll feel like by Nov. 15 (viewer discretion is advised):

NaNoWriMo Tools & Tips

For those of you participating in the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year, I’ve compiled a list of tools and tips to help you get started and keep you going along the way.

Nanowrimo Podcast 2006 – back by popular demand
Character Questionnaires - Get to Know Your Characters
Steve's Columns – lot’s of motivational stuff
Feaths Bookcase: Writers resources, random generators, progress bars – fun!
The Writer's Software Companion – just in case you get lonely
The Scriptorium - writer's toolbox – for the writer who has everything
Language Is A Virus – NaNoWriMo tools & toys – for the writer who has more than everything
How to "win" National Novel Writing Month in 5 (no, 6) easy steps – courtesy of Write Now Is Good
National Novel Finishing Month – what to do with your manuscript after November 30
NaNoFiMo Resources Page

What are you doing to prepare for NaNoWriMo 2006?

Snow & NaNoWriMo

Happy Friday all! My condolences to those of you living in the Buffalo area. But hey, maybe if you’re home for a snow day you’ll be able to get some writing done! Although I suppose it will have to be with pen and paper with no power!

Eric has a great pre-NaNoWriMo post over at Quantum Storytelling: “Cooking Up Some Creative Constraints.”

Angela Booth also has some NaNoWriMo QuickStart posts to help participants get ready. Check ‘em out here.

I have entered NaNoWriMo this year – my first time. My user name is Nienke. Who else is going for it this year?