NaNoWriMo « Journals of Journeys

2Dec/09Off

My 2009 NaNoWriMo FAQ

2009 National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is over, 65,229 words later. Yes, it wasn't the full out 90K words I intended on reaching (what the hell was I thinking), but at least it's a good start.

iRONicSuicides-sm What will come of iRON-ic Suicides, your 2009 novel? (It's pronounced Ironic Suicides for those of you stuttering with the name like my mother did; which, by the way, she became a character in it because she helped sponsor me through her charitable donation to the Office of Letters and Light.) It goes on the back burner for now. I've plotted and stayed fairly true to the plot, so it won't be so hard to pick back up and finish the first draft.

Did you finish the novel? No. A decent sized novel is roughly 250-300 pages (paperback). A trade paperback has an average of 300 words a page, therefore 75-90,000 words. I'm about 2/3rds done - with the first draft.

When will you finish iRON-ic Suicides? I'll go back to it after I take care of some other irons in the fire. Right now, I have another manuscript, MSD (sorry, that's all I'll reveal about the title right now for a number of reasons) which came from my first NaNo novel, then titled And Then There Was Sam . . .. Once I have that one done and sent out, I'll probably pick up last year's NaNo novel, The Haunting of Mira Beck, pound the putty out of it and ship that out.

msd-small AD-Summers-sm haunting-sm

MSD/First NaNo // Dani Summers (2007) // Haunting of Mira Beck (2008)

What about your other NaNo novels? In 2007 I wrote one that started out as a mainstream mystery but then came back, tweaked it and wrote it as a young adult novel. Yet will need a lot of work to get the voice right in it. Or possibly rework the main character and torque the plot a bit to turn it into a mainstream mystery. I'm not sure yet, but as it stands right now, that one doesn't seem to be working as I'd hoped. iRON-ic Suicides will probably be finished up long before the one about Dani Summers. Or was it Sommers? See? I don't even remember!

Did you give in and tell your husband you were participating in this year's NaNoWriMo? No. The good news is, this year I managed to fulfill my goal of NaNoing without telling my husband I was participating. Mom likes to think I'm keeping secrets. No. I'm surviving, Mother. It was merely a test. Had it been a real emergency, I would have thrown him a life preserver and told him to have it on stand-by, demanded he take off the entire month of November and sequestered myself in the back storage shed along with my handy espresso machine and bars of Trader Joe's dark chocolate. The kidlets knew and I had them promise me they wouldn't spill the beans. However, when my mother pointed out that if I got them to keep secrets from my husband, I couldn't complain in a vice versa situation. So the very next day I qualified that and said that they weren't to volunteer the news but if they were asked, they could certainly tell him.

Does your husband know, now? Yes. And that's all I'll say.

Why do you do the NaNoWriMo if it takes away from getting a manuscript out and published? I ask myself this all the time. Usually the time NaNo comes up, I'm already getting frustrated with the current manuscript and look forward to taking the month off to create an entirely different story. But this might change soon. I might participate in NaNoEditMo (February or March, I believe) and forego WriMo. I'm still undecided. February is a very busy month for me, odd as it seems.

Got a question about my participation in NaNoWriMo? Ask away!

Filed under: 2009, General, Information, Journals, Kathie, NaNoWriMo, Thoughts, Writing No Comments

3Dec/08Off

Done And Gone

nano_08_winner_100x100 Yep. Finished the 50K challenge if you haven't noticed the little banner down in the sidebar already. In fact, I've been done for a while. The longhand portion was done within the first 2 weeks, the transcribing, the little bear that it was, got completed last week Sunday.

But I haven't updated because I'm off and running. Much to do. Freelance, for instance. I'm working on copy and getting the site up and running to attract some jobs. Here's the low down if you haven't been by my "about the author" page lately:

Copy writer and fiction novelist is available for your freelance writing needs. Reasonable rates. Clips and references are available upon request (serious requests only, please).

Experience includes:

[ a] 10+ years marketing research and analysis
[ a] Fundraising company product brochure copywriter
[ a] Public safety and city fire department Web site content
and copywriter
[ a] Care package Web site copywriter
[ a] Columnist for specialized legislative advocacy newsletters
and bulletins with statewide and regional distribution
[ a] Guest columnist for state association
[ a] Online e-zine columnist
[ a] Charter school Web site copy writing including newsletters
(print and online) articles, special event flyers and related
writing activities
[ a] Former small business owner, entrepreneur

For more information, please email:

Filed under: 2008, NaNoWriMo, Writing No Comments

19Nov/08Off

Oh, Hello! Days 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 … Eep!

Whoa! Has it really been that long? Wow, how time flies! And that's what happens amidst the lovely month of November for writers participating in National Novel Writing Month - time flies. If you have been receiving Chris Baty's updates you'll even note that he, the founder and participant since its inception 10 years ago, has gotten a bit ahead of himself so it's safe to assume the time continuum thingamabob does go wonky for us writer-type folk.

It's hard for me to remember from one NaNoWriMo to the next, kind of like how childbirthing goes, the pain is just that great that you tend to push it away and relish the joy that came as a result of the pain. I do, however, vaguely recall this lull in the writing and the absence from daily life that occurs between the third and fourth weeks.

Now, I'm not going to advocate what Chris Baty, the fearless NaNoWriMo leader suggests to do at this stage, which is to recite favorite ads in the phone book or have a character sing the entire "America Pie" song. To me, that's cheating, even borderline plagiarism and to a writer, that's a might scary word! I will, however, dispense some sage advice that I have collected over the years that might make this a bit less daunting for my fellow writer-type folks.

Every writer experiences a moment of helplessness and shamefulness. We get to a point where we think we're all writing complete drivel that no one would be interested in reading. It's called the turning point. And the only way through it is to just. keep. writing.

This isn't NaNoPublishMo, you're not creating a final draft that you'll send out to your agent (if you're lucky enough to have one and if you happen to have one, please consider putting a good word in for me) or box up and ship out to a POD company. This is your rough draft. Write backstory, leave out whole "how I got from there to here" segments and come back to them during the spring NaNoEditMo or whenever you choose to edit your work. Write lengthy descriptions of your characters, put them in a time and place where they might be having a conversation with you, their creator, or the antagonist. Hell, even a nice little chat with one of the spear carriers!

And once you do all that writing, do not delete it. Do not cut it out of your manuscript! That's word count, baby!

Something that's motivated me this year is learning that a novel isn't anywhere near a mere 50K words. It's more like double that if not more. In reality, when you near the end of NaNoWriMo you should be about at the halfway point, maybe even a third of the way, towards the end of your story. Oh, it probably was said in one of the zillion motivational emails I get from the Letters of Light offices (the parent company of NaNoWriMo), but it didn't sink in until this year. There I sat, almost halfway to my NaNo goal and I started to freak out. "I'm nowhere near the end!" I screamed out much to the annoyance of my cat. "I'm not going to make it!" I cried out in my nightmares. And that's okay, because I don't have to be. That was a huge relief, my friend! So take solace, you don't have to be there. But also don't start freaking out if you feel you're almost to the end and you've just hit the 30K marker. Spend some time fattening up your character, give some wealthy descriptions of the setting (after all, you don't want just a bunch of talking heads, do you?), are you getting in at least 3 of the 5 senses in your writing (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling)? Adding those details into your tale will surely fluff up your word count and certainly make it a story you'll feel more proud to tell.

Hopefully I've made up for my five day absence with these words of advice. In the meantime, I have a page left to go of the longhand script that's calling for me. My current transcribed count is: 34,699 (what a very odd number!)

No lurkers allowed! Leave me some love! I'll even settle for your own word counts or words of advice you've got just begging to be shared.

Filed under: 2008, Day by Day, NaNoWriMo, Newbie, Pep Talks, Writing 2 Comments

13Nov/08Off

A Day Off And Day 12

Being well ahead of the game with three more write-ins scheduled for the remainder of the week and knowing that with the kids off from school, I wouldn't get much writing done anyway, I took yesterday "off." I even spent some time on the novel in progress that I had set aside to take part in this year's NaNoWriMo. No, I didn't write. The kids and I drove up into the mountains and took some snapshots of the colorful array of leaves (not as rich as I would have liked seeing that I apparently missed the window and the drought made it less than breathtaking.) I'm hoping to use some of the snapshots for the cover of "Olly, Olly Oxen Free" the working title of the book.

(c) 2008 All Rights Reserved My nature quest didn't stop there. I went spelunking today. Virtual spelunking, that is. Apparently not all caves are alike, or so Mira Beck, the protagonist of my current NaNo novel, has learned. And so she had to take me along to a few good sites where I could learn more about some caves. The Oregon Caves to be specific. It was definitely not something I could just make up, but it was well worth the trip and something I look forward to actually doing next summer when the caves open again.

Which brings me to a point for novice NaNo'ers. While it's helpful to know what you're talking about as you write your novel, be careful how much time you take doing such. Get down the points that are pertinent to the story, know that you are writing fiction so you can always make up a place, thing or person and fudge a little bit. You can flesh it out later (make it your mantra, there's always NaNoEditMo in the spring to work on editing your novel.) It's easy to get caught up in the more finite parts of the novel so you have to be firm with yourself and set limits. Say you have two hours to write and are getting stuck, spend 15 minutes max doing some surfing and then move on whether or not you have what you were looking for. You simply have to keep plugging away and moving toward the goal of 50K words (you might even find that you're not finished with your novel by 50K and that's okay, too!).

After tonight's write-in, I'm up to 28,326 transcribed words and estimate I have about 34,866 words written longhand. Not too shabby, although I know there have been others that have already reached the goal (what a shock that was to learn!)

Write on!

Filed under: 2008, Day by Day, Journals, Kathie, NaNoWriMo, Newbie, Notes, Writing No Comments

9Nov/08Off

Days 8 and 9 and No I Am Not Behind

Flair: Caution Novelists At Work Today is a catch-up blog, but I haven't been having to play catch-up with my NaNoWriMo challenge! I wizened up and took some earbuds with me today so I could plug into the iTunes music library loaded into my laptop and jammed to those while transcribing. It worked well although I later learned Ry-guy, who accompanied me to today's write-in, was "embarrassed" his mother was "rocking out." Meh. Between being out with fellow comrades, chatting about the craft, guzzling down a week's worth of lattes at each write-in session (I've been to about 4 already and have another to go to tomorrow) and logging onto the free wifi connections at the various coffee houses we've been meeting at, I've found I don't get as much transcribing done as I would like. Tomorrow I'm going to make sure I don't log onto the Internet, either, and see how much more progress I make. I'll update my word count at the end of that session and we'll see how I'm doing. Right now I've got an awful kink in my neck and am seriously considering scheduling our next write-in over at the mall where they have several massage chairs set up and actual people giving neck and shoulder rubs. Twelve bucks for twelve minutes or three lattes. Yeah, that's worth it!