Tuesday, November 27, 2012

No-No Na-No Progress Update

Three days left until the end of the National Novel Writing Month Challenge! I can't believe that a whole month has gone by already. I don't know if it was just me, but November has flown by. Where does the time go?

This last week has been very successful! On Thanksgiving day, I completed Project #1! (Let's call it Molly's story.) My contemporary romance is complete! Well, except for all the editing work that is ahead. I was not being smart when I started writing this one and, as I think I've said before, I needed to revise a lot. Now comes the process of rereading, editing, correcting flow, and oh yeah, splitting it into chapters might be a good idea too. Yeah, right now its one long (long, long, long) story, no chapters. Like I said, not smart writing and lots of work ahead. But I think I'm going to shelf this one for a month or two (depending on what happens with Circumstance) and give it a pair of fresh eyes then. I don't love the idea of shelving Molly's story, but if I do shelf it for a while it will be because I'll be working on something else very fun and exciting! More on that later!

Progress on Project #2, the Regency short story, is coming along very nice. Today's writing session led to a turn of events I wasn't totally planning on, but I like where it has taken my characters. It's always interesting when that happens. I'm really enjoying this little story. I look forward to sharing it with you. As of now I have 14,138 words written in that story.

My grand total: 45,625 words! With three days left to complete the goal of 50,000 words, I'm thinking I can make it! Hopefully even surpass it! Best of luck to all you Na-No Writers out there!

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

No-No Na-No Progress

So it's been two weeks since I updated. Sorry readers! But I have great news about my progress! I have been terribly inconsistent with my day to day writing. But I have had some great writing sessions and have cranked out 30,704 words! By the end of today I need to be at 34,000 words, so I'm a little behind, but not bad at all!

On my first project, the contemporary romance, I'm almost finished with it. I have less than one chapter left and I think i can wrap in up if I put in a good solid hour or two. I'm not going to lie, right now, it's not great, and needs a lot of work, but being finished with a first draft is a long way from where I was three weeks ago! The plot point that I changed has altered the story a lot from what I originally planed, but I like where's it gone, and it's made the book more believable for the modern setting. I'm so excited to finish it!

A few days ago, I got a little tired of that book though. I was a little stuck and needed a break, so I started on a new Regency Era romance. This one will just be a short story/novella kind of a thing, at least that's the plan for now. I'm hoping to release it before I publish Circumstance so that I can let you guys get a taste for my Regency writing style. We'll see how that goes. One thing I've learned is that in writing, plans change! But I'm enjoying this little story, it's a fun twist to your typical romance and has a flirtatious rake of a man in it! He's fun to write! Anyway, once I'm done with Project One, I'll be tackling Project Two full time and hopefully have it finished up by the end of the month too!

If you're participating in a Na-No of some kind, or have other writing goals, I hope you're accomplishing them and making good progress on your projects!
Let's get writing!

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

No-No Na-No and First Week's Progress

Hello world!
For those who don't know, the month of November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNo WriMo for short, or NaNo for shorter. To be an actual particiapant in NaNo WriMo, you have to write 50,000 words in the month of Noevember. The thing is, you can't have started the book before November 1st. You can do plot planning and outlining, but you can't have started your novel in order to be officially qualified. Also, your 50,000 words all have to be in one book.

Now, my main problem is that when I'm not actively working on getting a specific book finished, I write what I feel like writing. At any given time, I have at least 2 possible book ideas floating around in my head. So I just write out a scene or two to get my thoughts out and because I love to write! But unfortunately, that means that I have scenes written from many of the stories that I plan to write, which disqualifies each of those stories from NaNo. The book I wanted to finish now is about halfway done, and definitely does not have 50,000 words left to write, so that double disqualified me. But while I'm making some decisions about Circumstance, I wanted a goal to set, and wanted to try NaNo. Well, there are NaNo Rebel groups and such out there, but this year I decided to join with Tristi Pinkston in her No-No NaNo Challenge. (See the original post here.) Her rules are simple, write 50,000 words in the month of November, but they can be in a book you have already started and can be in up to three books. Perfect! I am really excited to accomplish this goal!

The first week has gone by, and it has been rough! The book I am working on is a contemporary romance novel, and its one I have had a lot of fun writing so far, and I've been enjoyig the modern setting. Well, the main plot point of my book didnt really fit with a contemporary setting, it actually felt pretty Regency. I have so many fun little moments written already though that dont fit into Regency times. So then I had a decision to make, try to find a plot point that works with my story and keep it contemporary, or rewrite the whole thing (43,000 + words as of November 1st) and make it Regency. After many hours of thoughts and discussions with my mom and husband, we came up with something that worked for the setting I had it in, but I would have to make several changes throughout the novel and delete several long passages. Needless to say, that took up the first few days, and it felt a lot more like editing than writting, which was not so fun. But last night, I hit several sections where I got to write lots and lots of new prose! It was so fun that I ended up staying up till 4 AM writing! I wont be doing that again tonight, but it felt great to get so much writing done. As of yesterday morning, I had only 3,000 words written, not a good start for being 5 days in. But after last night's writing extravaganza, I have 9,171 words! Yay! I'm only about one day behind now, and I feel much more on track.
If you are doing some form of NaNo, I wish you luck! Let's get writing!