The novel isn't done yet. I'll still be working on it in December. Today I wrote 5231 words.
I fixed my sleep schedule by sleeping from 10 to 3 last night... then had to go back to sleep late this morning for a nap. I'm looking forward to returning to a more normal kind of life post-NaNo.
I did it! Double NaNo this year.. and just earned another 3xNaNo pip at Forward Motion. On the descending word count page at NaNoWriMo I'm number 18 out of 22000 participants this evening. Shows what obsession with competition will get you.
I wrote some more!! Now its after 7 in the morning and I've been writing since 1:30 am when I woke up from my nap. I really must work on getting back to regular sleep hours after NaNoWriMo!
The reason I wrote more - I noticed that this is the time for the 'final push' marathon at Forward Motion so I added another 1718 words to qualify for that.
Tonight I slept after a great Thanksgiving dinner - and woke up at 1:30 am to write. It took four hours, but I wrote 3325 words. Two more days in November and then I'll be done with NaNoWriMo for the year.
Almost to 100K!! ...and there's still plenty of story left. I wrote 3393 words tonight on chapter 19. I notice I'm still moving up the list at Project Orca too... I'm now on page seven, at number 692.
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Yay, party time!
I just got to 90000 words (and slightly beyond) on A Curious Woman Wants To Know - but I'm not done for tonight yet... so excuse me as I write on...
I feel like I'm on an elevator, going up, up, up! Tonight I wrote 2544 words. I have four more nights to work on this before the first of December. Only 11594 more words to get to 100000 for the month. That means at least 2898 words per day, to get done on time.
I could do that - but there's an end-of-month NaNo competition this weekend at Forward Motion so I might want to write more then. It doesn't matter - I can always go over. I always felt this novel would take about 120000 words to write. When I revise I'll be adding a lot more, but also, there's lots I'll probably want to take out as well.
Tonight I introduced a new character I didn't know existed. A boyfriend for one of the teenage girls. When he kissed her I was as surprised as she was.
Tonight I wrote 2707 words. Nearly fell asleep during the last 700. I haven't been getting enough sleep lately.
I'm at an exciting turning point in the novel where Walker, the husband of the MC, moves away to look for work. They've been prosperous together for seventeen years but now economic hardship has set in.
I'm still plugging away at this novel. I've set my goal for 2500 words/day which is a comfortable working pace for me. If I keep at it I'll have 100K by the end of November. Today's word count was 2584.
I joined NaNoWriYe, a spin-off of NaNoWriMo, and made a schedule for my fiction writing this year. Here it is:
January - February: 150K words
March: pause for NaNoEdMo
April, May, June: 200K words
July: pause for editing
August - September: 150K words
October: pause for editing
November: 100K during NaNoWriMo
December: pause for editing
Total goal: 600,000 words of fiction. Now if I do 400,000 words of other projects like articles, news, letters, weblogs, journaling, etc... I'd have a million words. I'll be keeping track to see how I do with this. Every word counts!
I'm on the Forward Motion team at Project Orca. I checked to see if my stats have improved since I started NaNoWriMo this month, and they have, considerably. I was at about 2000 before. Now I'm number 735 on the list. I'm going to keep an eye on it this year to see if I can improve on that score.
Project Orca, in case you're not familiar with it - is a keystroke competition site.
Moving right along... I wrote 3893 words tonight. Its four in the morning now. NaNoWriMo has totally destroyed my good sleep pattern! Aaarghh.. I want to go back to being a morning person again, but I also NEED a quiet house to write in. That's hard to get during the daytime.
I told my boyfriend that if I ever sell a novel, I want to use the money to buy a travel trailer that I can set up a private office in. Then I can get my writing and webdesigning done in peace. Maybe.
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Vocabulary List, entry #5
I've started reading The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis out loud to my son. We couldn't wait for December. I've already found two words I had to look up:
loquacity: adj. Very talkative; garrulous.
"And now tell me at once what price you put on him, for I am wearied with your loquacity." - page 6
copse: n. A thicket of small trees or shrubs; a coppice.
"He looked around them and saw where they were. Behind them lay a little copse. Before them the turf, dotted with white flowers, sloped down to the brow of a cliff." - page 16
More proof I have a lot to learn.
I wondered what C.S. Lewis meant by putting a few difficult words into his manuscript, but guess he was one to think its okay for children to stretch their minds and look things up in the dictionary. But I know as a child I would have just skipped the words I didn't know, and kept on reading.
Meanwhile I worked on my client's website much of the evening and didn't get much writing done. Maybe 1000 words, if that. And now I need to clean the kitchen and sleep.
Today I tacked another 5163 words onto A Curious Woman Wants To Know ... haven't even got to the part where she gets especially curious! I noticed that if I follow my original plan of 25 chapters with four sections each (100 sections total) I've passed the midway point about four sections ago! Of course I don't know that it will actually come out that neat and planned. Time will tell... but I've got 54 sections written and am feeling very good about it!
I had a great writing weekend. I did the marathon at Forward Motion and *finally* made it all the way to 15K words in a 48-hour period. I'm so thrilled... and my NaNo novel is prospering. I'm back on page one of the descending word count of authors at the NaNoWriMo site.
I also joined the NaNoWriYe site. Though Forward Motion will be my primary writing community I decided the '-ye' site might do me good too. The focus is in continuing fast novel writing for the rest of the year with short breaks for breathing (or, in my case, editing). I joined this last year and then didn't participate, choosing to go with Forward Motion for a writing community instead. This coming year I think I can handle both. I'll post the link as soon as the site is ready for new members!
NaNoWriYe is a NaNoWriMo copycat site like NaNoEdMo... another one I'll be participating in again though I didn't make it through last March. Ah well, anything to give me a little more motivation to write, edit, and do it quickly!
I'm reading the Chronicles of Narnia out loud to my son during homeschool time this year. He's dyslexic and doesn't read well, but he loves being read to out loud so even though he's 13 I still read to him. It works well for us and gives us some close mother/son time where we're doing something we both enjoy a lot.
Anyhow, what can one say about such a classic of children's literature. It was awesome and exciting. So far we've read the first two books in the series and next we'll be getting The Horse and His Boy. I'm looking forward to the new movie, but want my son to learn about the Chronicles by knowing what's in the books first.
I'm getting the rest of the series from the library - I've made myself a commitment to use my library more this year, and buy books less. The only books I'm planning to buy in the near future are a good study Bible to give my boyfriend for Christmas, and a novel by Sheila Viehl.... probably one she wrote as Jessica Hall.
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Sunday, November 16, 2003 ( 12:26 AM )
54511 words
I'm trudging right along with the novel... but raced over the 50K NaNoWriMo finish line today at about 3:30pm.
My plan is to continue writing this novel throughout the month. I'm projecting a total word count of 100K to 120K. We'll see what happens with it. Without a doubt it is nowhere near done, and I'm happy about that.
My other two NaNoWriMo novels were written for children ages 9-12 (middle grade novels) and so ending at 50 to 60K was fine for them, but not for this one.
I'm about to cross the NaNoWriMo finish line in just 35 words... and what did I decide to do? Stop for lunch, update my blog... and show off a little. Here's the scene at the finish line today:
I'm not getting much done. Seems like I'd see the finish line and soar past it like I did last year, but I'm just not getting motivated to write, and I'm working a lot (webdesign) plus my kids have been keeping me busy. Hopefully this weekend with the marathon in progress I'll be doing better. My goal is to get to 62000 by Sunday night at 11:59pm.
This link came to me in email today from Click Schooling. I plan to read the site, then see about submitting a few things. There's a small payment. I'm mostly interested in it because I homeschool my children and the site has contests and ideas for young writers. My daughter does some great writing, and I'm always looking for ways to encourage that.
Tonight I completed 3684 words. The story is coming right along. Sometimes I think its going too quickly - at other times too slowly. One way or another it will tell itself. There's lots of surprises along the way though I know the general direction in which it will go.
I finally got through 3077 words tonight. Seemed like it took forever. I'm distracted these days. But look, I got past 40,000 tonight! I'm four-fifths of the way to the end of the nano-goal. But when I get there... I'll keep writing. I want to do 120,000 words on the first draft of this... my first mega-manuscript. I expect to milk it for all its got.
I also finished the new material / master level writing dare - as I finished the eighth chapter in the novel. I was excited to have done this because my chapters are 4800 words minimum. The dare calls for chapters of a minimum of 1000 words... so mine were more than required by a long shot.
I've got my manuscript divided into chapters (hopefully, at least 25 of them)... each chapter consisting of four sections that are more or less around 1200 words each. Each section has a different POV character... and they repeat, but not in any specific pattern. Three characters are well-meaning problem makers (the villains)... the others are family members. Its fun - as I've never done anything like it before. I like stretching my capacity and trying new things.
My brain is fried. I went to a little town on the other side of the county with my children... we all saw the dentist this afternoon. Afterwards we went to meet the newspaper editor - his building was right next to the dentist and I'd never before met him though I read his weekly news and have had an op-ed (which started as a letter) printed in his paper. He turned out to be very nice, not scary. I'm so shy I think everyone will frighten me. I would have stayed to talk to him longer but he was working past a deadline and I really couldn't stand around taking up his precious time.
Anyhow, I got home safely many hours later and forgot that I didn't need to write on nights when I go out of town... so I wrote 2239 new words. I'm too tired to continue!
I've got a new motivator. At the NaNoWriMo site I got a list of descending word count, with only authors with novel excerpts in their profiles. So now I'm reading the novel snippet of whoever's ahead of me and making up reasons I should get ahead of that person - or why that person deserves to be passed up. LOL... juvenile, yes, but fun. When I got too tired to read, I decided to give up for the night.
I'm now 3/5 of the way there! I didn't write at all yesterday after another trip to town. Too tired! They day before I wrote 5000 words and it looks like I forgot to mention it here. My word count before I started writing tonight was 29218 (my one week total).
I'm trying for another 5000 words tonight - am up to about 1500 now and have a ways to go.
Again, I'm very tired. I drove to the town 2 hours away today, and back. It was draining. Then I set my goal at 2000 words. I wrote 2041. I just finished Chapter Five at 4819 words. My total word count now is 24199. Almost half-way to the goal of 50,000 words!
That's how many words I wrote tonight. I'm at 22158 words now, and am tired beyond measure. I really pushed myself to get past 5000 today. I have to go to town tomorrow (2 hours each way) so my goal for tomorrow will be only 2000 words. The drive takes a lot out of me.
I'm up to a total of 17073 now, and am on page two of the NaNoWriMo descending word count. I'm feeling great about that. I'd love to make it to page one tomorrow, but probably when I wake up I'll be back at page six. We'll see.
I finished chapter three and am half-way through chapter four. The story is going good. I'm done introducing the family and now am getting more depth into their lives, and more action. I like that a lot better. This novel will say a lot about homeschooling. Well, it will say a lot about a lot of things! But homeschooling is the most prominent theme at this point.
That's my total word count so far. The good part is that I re-read part of chapter one and was favorably impressed!
I'm doing a double marathon weekend at Forward Motion. We have a nano-marathon weekend - and I need 10,002 words to get the highest honor, a triple-nano pip! (Don't ask - but it means something to us at Forward Motion.)
I'm also doing the regular monthly marathon, take 1. I've done them before but only wrote 10,000 words. For once, I'd love to get to 15,000 in one weekend.
We started NaNoWriMo at midnight. I was working with a group of writer-friends in the NaNo chat room on the Forward Motion website. My goal was 2500 words. When I got there I decided to go sleep. I left the chat, then couldn't restrain myself - I wrote another 300 words. My final word count for tonight was 2833 words. I'm looking forward to tomorrow though I can honestly say, right now I'm thinking the O'Callaghan family needs a little excitement in their lives.
