Get to Know Me: Words Words Words

Hey there, and welcome to another personal post where I talk about stuff that I do outside of blogging. Today is all about what I will be doing for the rest of November. I think the word 'November' is already a clue for many of you - I'm doing NaNoWriMo again. That's why I've been absent for the past half week - I've been preparing, and I wanted to start NaNo with 15k words already written on my project. I only managed 14,300-something because I spontaneously went to a Halloween event on Friday, but I caught up yesterday. It was a great first day - I wrote over 3,000 words even though I only started around 6pm.

I did my first NaNo in 2011 with a reduced goal of 30k instead of 50k. I thought I was writing a short story to warm up. Ahem. Yeah, turned out it was the first book in what I guess will at some point be a trilogy. I wrote 66k in November, and another 40k until the end of January, when I finished the novel plus a novella set in the same world. For all of that November, I felt like I was floating. Writing made me so ridiculously happy and I felt like I was part of something big and wonderful.

I was busy in 2012 though and never really got around to revising that novel. I know that there are a lot of things that need fixing. So when I wanted to write the sequel in NaNo 2012, it didn't work out. I wasn't fully committed and didn't have the time, so NaNo 2012 was a fail. Last year I was super busy with my MA thesis, so I didn't even try.

This year though. This year I am so motivated! I felt listless these past few months but lately I suddenly have so much energy and I feel stoked about writing and my project :D I feel like this year, I can do it again. I have a brand new story with me, with characters that I love and that surprise me. I'm so excited to go on this journey with them and figure out what happens! My goal is for this novel to be between 70 to 85k, and I'd like it to be a standalone. I don't know if I can wrap everything up that quickly though because that would mean I've got almost 25% written already and I feel like I'm nowhere yet. But we'll see. This time around, I'm not planning on abandoning the story once the fun part (the draft writing) is over. If in any way possible, I want it to have a beautiful cover and see the light of day.

Is anyone else doing NaNoWriMo this year or has attempted it in the past? What is your experience? Does it work for you? Is it too much pressure? Let me know in the comments :)

NaNoWriMo round-up... in which I confess my epic fail

In one and a half hours, NaNoWriMo finished in my time-zone. My wordcount? 16,563. Pathetic, I know. I knew this year would be way, way harder than last year. I'm taking about 3 times as many credit points' worth of university courses, and as always I work two jobs. Plus I'm teaching a Textual Analysis (Literature 101) tutorial, which I didn't do last year. Let's not even talk about the hours of work that go into blogging and reading. All of that leaves much less time to write.

However... if I'm perfectly honest with myself I know that I could have written more if I had simply made time. If I had felt the call of the story, if I had poured my heart and soul into the work. If I had caught fire as I did last year, when I finished at a proud 66k. I expected that. I was looking forward to the rush, the feeling of being part of something bigger, those little moments when story and characters reveal themselves to you and you feel the magic. Only very little of that happened. Part of that was second-book anxiety. The first book is still so unstable and draft-y. How do you build on somehting that might change shape significantly as you go back and revise/edit? I was scared. I already had so much material. But where did I go from there? Finding my way back into those characters after a year was surprisingly hard. I started questioning everything.

Nevertheless, there were times whenI felt I was getting at something, parts where I felt the writing and it flowed. But they were rare. I felt tired and worn-out and most of the time just not like writing at all. I didn't remember the drafting to be so HARD. Because of my newly discovered dislike for rewriting, I must have idealized the drafting part and forgot just how difficult it can be.

Also, I was a lot less social than last year. I didn't go to meet-ups, I didn't post on the forum, I didn't do twitter word sprints. Again, no time. No motivation. Boo. Then, about a week ago, I wanted to at least make it to 25 or 30k... but I had to discard that idea when my family got a piece of very sad (though not entirely unexpected) news.

At the moment, my brain is just not in a creative state. I feel blocked, scared of writing anything. Scared of writing reviews. Scared of writing the two papers I have to hand in in two weeks. I really need to pull myself together but at the moment I'm just paralyzed and have no confidence in my analytical and writing skills. I just want the semester to be over.

I just realized that this is an extremely whiney post. Sorry 'bout that. Anyhow, I'm not ready to throw the towel just yet. NaNo may have been a fail, but November is just one month out of twelve. I have a head-start on my second novel, and once I have to first one in a more secure state I will definitely get back to it. I also got ideas for some short stories this month so that's good.

For those others of you who did NaNoWriMo, I hope your experience was a more positive one! I hope you caught fire. I hope you felt like you were doing what you were made for. I hope characters and worlds unfolded under your fingertips as you typed or scribbled. Whether you finished your novel around 50k or have a longer project that you're pulling on into December, I hope you enjoy it! And even if you didn't finish, I hope you had fun with however many words you managed to write! I wish you the best of luck and tons of courage to carry on with your work and see your story through to the end :)


Did any of you participate on NaNo? How did it go for you? If you made a round-up post, feel free to leave your link in the comments too :)

NaNoWriMo update: week 2

For those of you wondering what NaNoWriMo is: it's the mad idea of writing (or at least starting) a novel by writing at least 50,000 words in the month of November. Find out more about it here.

Alright... first off, it's really a lot harder for me this year around. Unlike last year, my main problem is time. I have way more courses than last year and the work there will no longer be ignored.

Because of that, I haven't written a word since Friday afternoon. I'm currently at 13,723 words - around 5,000 words behind. I hate it. I had hoped that even if I can't exceed the goal like I did last year, I'd at least be able to keep up.

I haven't given up hope yet completely though. I hope that I'll find the time and the necessary pull to catch up, that I'll go into a writing frenzy and the words just tumble out. But last year's passion is slow in coming this time around, and that makes me sad. I'm having a hard time getting back in sync with the characters. I'm confused with my plot (or lack thereof). For once, I wish I was one of those people who write outlines. Having a written book in the back to go back to and link forward from seems to make things harder instead of easier, as I had thought it would.

So yeah, my motivation is a bit low at the moment. I feel like I should do a million things at once and am half-assing them all. All those things are important to me, and I don't like half-assing things. I don't know what else to do though. If one of you has one of those time-inverter thingies (don't know what they're called in English, read it in German) like Hermione in The Prisoner of Azkaban, I could need one.

On a more positive note, one of my main-but-not-THE-main characters is developing in an unexpected direction and sort of getting her own arc, and I really like what's happening with her. I mean it sucks for her because she's confused and hurting both physically and emotionally, but she's developing and something is going on with her and I feel she's gaining depth. So that's been my silver lining in the raincloud of what was my past week for the most part. I'll try to put in some words now. Half an hour till midnight...

How are you guys' projects coming along? Any tips or experiences to share? Similar problems, or other issues? Or are you lucky and everything is coming along amazing and you feel that buzz under your skin and constantly have a smile on our face and a spring in your step? Tell me about that too, maybe it will re-kindle last year's fire in me ;) Feel free to link me to your own NaNo post if you have one.

NaNoWriMo update

Hey guys! As I said in my post last Monday (I think), I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year to write the sequel to last year's novel. I'll be posting weekly updates on Sundays (yes, I'm aware that's it's been Monday for like 25 minutes as I write this).

Last year, I started off with low expectations. I was actually participating in the watered-down NaNo version an author I admire was hosting on her blog. The goal was  30,000 words and they could also take the form of short stories. That was my aim. I thought I was writing a cute little warm-up short story....
Yeah. Turns out it was more like a huge monster. I had 66k by the end of the month and finished at 95k at the end of January.

I only finished the first re-read this week. Starting off at the sequel was difficult. The first day, I didn't get around to writing a single word. It was past midnight on Nov 2 when I forced myself to at least jot down 1000 words. I wasn't sure where to attach the sequel to the previous story, how much to repeat. Hell, I didn't even remember all that had happened! I wasn't done re-reading yet. I felt that my writing was unfocused and all-over the place. Just... awkward.

That I got ill on Friday didn't help. My nose is clogged and my eyes hot and itchy from fever as I write this. But I caught up on Saturday, chucking out around 3000 words. After day 4, I'm at 6745 words now and kinda proud of myself for holding on despite how much of a germ heap I feel.

They're not all good words. I'll probably delete half of them in the re-write to speed up the flow of the story. But I needed to get them down, to find the voice of my main character again and write myself into his world, to see how it changed and how his choices at the end of book 1 affected him and his surroundings. I feel like things are getting moving now and hope that the words will start to flow a bit more easily.

And no, like 100,000 words into the story (if you look at it as a big whole) I still haven't outlined anything and only have like 5 pages of notes. I feel like an amateur, but well... it's working? I tried plotting and outlining. I really did. But my brain just dries up and nothing comes to mind. Either that or really clichéd, overdone plot strands that make me want to quit. I have to write the story for it to come to me.

Anyhow, I'd be curious to see how my fellow Wrimos are doing! So if you read this, feel free to leave a comment with a link to your own NaNo updates! You can also add me as a writing buddy. My username is ButterflyGhost.

I'm doing NaNo! What about you?

Yup, once more I have signed up for the mad dash that is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. This is my second year participating and I really hope that it'll be as much of a success for me as last year was! Don't worry, I won't be bothering you with daily updates but I think I'll write a round-up post every Sunday about how I'm doing with the story, where I'm struggling, other random things I realized while writing etc.

A year ago, I was completely unsure whether or not to do NaNo. I had heard about it before but never had time to enter. Last year, after finishing my BA in the summer, I decided to go easy on the MA courses for a semester. So I just had to tell myself: Carmen, you will never again have as much time in November as you do now, so stop being a coward and just try! It turned out to completely change the way I think of myself as a writer. I was electrified, on fire! Writing was the most amazing feeling in the world and I got to do it every day! I walked with a spring in my step. I probably grinned like a fool in love. I connected with other writers on the NaNo forum and also met them for real life writing sessions. Talking about our books and doing word wars was so much fun!

I started with a goal of 30,000 words. I told myself that I could do 1000 a day. Well... about a week in, there was this crazy moment when I wrote 10,000 words in 2 days. I was excited about my project, which, by the way, had fooled me into thinking it was just a short story. It took me a while to admit to myself that it was actually a novel. I think without the story fooling me, I would have panicked at the thought of writing it. I had virtually nothing when I started apart form a scrap of paper with an idea written down two years earlier. During the whole time, I never wrote an outline. I can't. I don't know what happens next unless I put my fingers on those computer keys. Things show up in my head, I 'see' them before my eyes, I write them down.
At the end of the month, I had 66,000 words. Two months later, I completed my draft at 95,000 and had written another 10,000 from a different character's POV as a Christmas present for a friend.

And now comes my moment of shame. I wrote a novel draft in 3 months. But 9 months later, I am still not done with the first re-read / round of revisions. I find it so much harder. It's actual work rather than just the fun of writing. It makes me question myself and my story constantly, and I feel lost. Nevertheless, I want to finish that first re-read so I'm on top of what's happening again, because this year I want to write the sequel to last year's project. Hopefully, that will motivate me again so I can take up that draft with new energy and motivation and rework it in December while simultaneously finishing book 2.
Ambitious goals, I know.

What about you guys? Have you participated in NaNo before? What was your experience? Are you up for the craziness this year? Do you prepare yourself or do you just start from scratch on November 1?

I'd really like to connect to those of you who do NaNo! My username is ButterflyGhost - feel free to add me as a buddy or leave your own alias in the comments :) Also, if you have a separate blog dedicated to your NaNo project, feel free to leave me a link!