I'm a Writer, Three Months a Year

I was in the middle of reading this post, My Journey As A (Non-) Writer by Jen Nixon ,when I stopped in the middle for a moment. It struck close to home you see, because I haven’t been writing.

My last blog post was for my New Years resolutions, which I've mostly failed. Oh I’ve done a bit of editing, I’ve written some here and there, and I did come up with some new ideas in the last few months. But for all of that I don’t feel like I’ve been doing much, in fact I know I haven’t been.

But yesterday that changed. Yesterday I started writing a new book. I’ve never done a story like this one and I don’t know that it, or I, am ready for this but I’m doing it anyway.

Why? Because Camp NaNoWriMo started yesterday.

Day 15: That's Halfway

NaNoWriMo 2012

Today’s the halfway point for NaNoWriMo. According to that that lovely little graph you should have 25,000 words at the end of this day, but you know, it doesn't always happen that way.

This time last year I was frantically writing up until the very last moment to get to that 25,000 mark. I had started out behind by about four days and I was desperate to make up that ground by the halfway point.

I didn’t make it. 

The Best Gift a NaNo Writer Could Ask For

So my birthday was last week but I didn't see one of my sisters until yesterday when she gave me this....

Pretty box :)

What's with that are you wondering? I mean its nice a nice box does it really have anything to do with writing? This is a writing blog after all. 

So why am I talking about it here? I'll show you....

Whats this? Lots of little presents?

November is (almost) upon us

Its October 31, some of us are exited, some are scared, and some won’t say.

It’s a night we have waited for, prepared for, a night we wish would end. 

We watch the clock and wait. Just a few hours left now we think. It’s almost time.

At midnight our journey begins. 

Are you ready to write? Is your story ready to be told? I hope for your sake that the answer is yes because you are almost out of time. 

NaNoWriMo is about to begin.

On a less dramatic note:

My desk is clean and all ready to acquire a lovely clutter in the next few weeks.

It's Clean! I'm definitely scared now.

I’ve got Scrivener all set up and mostly organized. I had hoped to do a little more prep work but I think I’ll make out alright.

My Pandora stations are ready; I go for instrumentals when I’m writing so it’ll be a lot of ‘Piano Guys’ and sound tracks for me.

And lastly I’ve got the first week’s worth of pep-talks and NaNo tips scheduled to post so I don’t have to worry about them. I’ve nearly got enough for the whole month and plan on writing the rest sometime soon.

In short I’m as ready as I can be for November, how about you?

~Rita

Rita, Meet NaNoWriMo

Its Sunday, November 4th, 2012 and there’s an email waiting for me. Its from my sister; dated November 2nd. The subject line reads: National Novel Writing Month. I don’t have a clue what that means and the enclosed link address, http://nanowrimo.org/  means even less. I click it and a few hours later I’m signed up for the craziest journey of my life.

The next day I started working on a Redwall fanfiction ‘novel’ that I’d brainstormed a few months before as an exercise. I wrote like crazy and made up for my late start just past the mid month mark. I finished out with 50,111 words: more then I’d ever written on one project before.

It was one of the best things I’ve ever done and I learned so much that month. The most important thing I learned was that I could write, even when I didn’t feel like it, and that even when I was uninspired my writing could still surprise me.

Even with winning NaNo I still didn’t get close to finishing my story and this year I’m picking it up again and hoping to make it through to the climax by the end of next month. I have a lot of original story ideas and I had thought of doing one of them but this story really needs to get told first. That makes me a NaNoRebel I guess. They say that continuing a story is harder then starting new for NaNo and but I’m going to go for it any way.

About my upcoming  November posts

No Dollar Sign

Are you planing on writing a novel next month? We’ve only got a few weeks left before the start of NaNoWriMo and if your like me you’ve been doing some research and reading up on writing advice to get ready. If you are writing your first novel, or one of your firsts, then this post is to you.

As I’ve been doing a bit of web surfing lately, for writing advise and such, I’ve found that quite a few of the posts and articles I’ve come across have been along these lines: ‘how to write a novel that sells’ ‘how to plot a best seller’ ‘know your audience, write what they want to read.’ Now I have nothing against writing for money, in fact I would love to do just that for the rest of my life, but I am a little concerned.