NaNoWriMo 2014 Week 4

    So this week was not as successful as last week.  My NaNoWriMo so far look like this:

    Week 1- 6,255 words - 20,372 words total
    Week 2- 9,273 words - 15,528 words so far - 29,645 words total
    Week 3- 4,435 words - 19,963 words so far - 34,080 words total

    I am 37 words away from hitting my goal.  Now most of you will look at that and think how easy that is and how I'll definitely reach my goal.
    I get to spend my week cleaning, organizing, and prepping for my family to come for Thanksgiving.  They come on Thursday and leave on Monday.  That means if I don't want to spend all my time with my family writing, then I have two days to get it done.  I just have one chapter to write.  That one chapter (chapter 17) is the official halfway point of Rose.  

    I'm starting to feel a lot of panic and pressure, and with panic and pressure comes writer's block.

Pep Talk #4

    Again, this post isn't actually a pep talk, but I figured it would be easier to group all the NaNoWriMo inspiration together.  This post is actually based off of Stephanie Perkins' 5 Tips for NaNoWriMo survival.  It's focused on being stuck.  

    At this point in NaNoWriMo, you're about 3/4th of the way through the novel, which basically means you're at the boring part. Think about it.  When you read a novel, the most exciting parts are the beginning and the ending.  The middle is really important.  It's where EVERYTHING happens.  But compared to the rest of the novel, it's not as exciting to read or write.  It's not like an oreo.

    You get stuck in a rut.  Your writing becomes routine.  Every chapter has its exposition, its rising action, its climax, and its falling action.  Each chapter is its own story, yet you have to end on a note that will push the reader to move on to the next chapter. And when the action isn't the climax of the overall story, it gets to be rather boring.

Pep Talk #3

    Okay, so I'm not going to go crazy with this blog post since I'm feeling under the weather and I'm probably going to ramble a lot more than I want to.  I've had the remains of a sore throat for weeks, but then it settled into a full on cold, complete with a headache.  But that's not what I'm here to talk about.
    Thing 1- check out my word count!  I figured out today that I'm two chapters away from being halfway done.  Hopefully I can hit that point this week! Whoo-hoo!

    Thing 2- I was going to share another NaNoWriMo pep talk, but then I found this other article on Pinterest.  Yay Pinterest!  Speaking of Pinterest, you can follow Hypergraphia on Pinterest for more inspiration.  I know, shameless advertising.
    Anyway, the article I'm sharing is called How to Write Better Fiction.  There are a few different parts to the article, but I wanted to focus on the suggestions on how to write better fiction.  It was interesting because it's primarily focused on the reader, and not the actual writing.

NaNoWriMo 2014 Week 3

    It has been 14 days since I set a goal for myself to write 5,000 words a week (20,000 words by the end of the month).  If you take a look at the word counter off to the right, you'll see that I'm now at 29,645 words for Rose.  14 days ago I had only 14,117 words written.  Sticking exactly to my goal, that would mean I should be at 24,117 words today.  Well, I'm a little past that.
    I've officially written 15,528 words in 14 days.  At the end of week 1, I had 6,255 words written.  That means I wrote 9,273 words during week 2.  I can't believe how much I've written.
    I've got 14 days left to write 5,000 more words and to reach my goal.  Remember how I thought I could never write this much in a month?  It's amazing how much harder I've worked with goals in mind.

    Now, for another announcement about Rose-  I posted what I thought would be the halfway point of Rose on August 12 (3 months and 4 days ago).  Since then, I used Scrivener to plan out the entire novel (which will be 34 chapters, so it wasn't exactly halfway), and I used the super awesome dual screen mode to rewrite the first 14 chapters in first person.  That's right, I've finished all my rewrites (as of yesterday!) and now I'm back to the pen and notebook to write chapter 15 (and the other 19 chapters that remain).

Pep Talk #2

    I've written another chapter since my last post.  That means I'm  at 22,238 words total and 8,121 words since November started.  I'm almost halfway to my goal.  I really hope that I can stay motivated for the rest of the month.
    After looking at the rest of my week, I've got high hopes of what I can accomplish this week.  I have tomorrow and Wednesday off of work, so I'm really hoping I can a write a chapter each of those days.  My average chapter is 1,600 words.  That'll get me up to my 5,000 word weekly goal on top of the 6,255 words I wrote last week. Now, one of those chapters should be more than 2,000 words, and I'm hoping that I can write an extra chapter or two this week.  I'm planning to take a trip to Barnes & Noble tomorrow afternoon and just sit with my computer to write.
    When I set my NaNoWriMo goal, I was pretty skeptical of how much I could write, but planning it out day by day is much easier.  I've got to get ahead this week because I'm going to lose a few days around Thanksgiving, and I don't want that to put me behind.  
    Anyway, that's not the reason I'm writing this post.  I found another NaNoWriMo pep talk that I liked and wanted to share.

NaNoWriMo 2014 Week 2

    Since my last post, I've been doing some major writing.  In case you didn't see the new word counter I added a few days ago (it's underneath the Subscribe and Share buttons on the right), I'm here to give a brief update on my work with Rose.  

    When I did my first NaNoWriMo post, seven days ago, I noted my goals.  By 11:59 pm on November 30th, I wanted to have written 20,000 words of Rose.  Dividing that up into the four weeks I had left, that meant I had to write 5,000 words a week.
    I started at 14,117 words.  And yes, the counter on the right is accurate.  I updated it last night after I wrote my third (yes THIRD) chapter for the week.  I'm now at 20,372 words.  And for those of you playing at home, that means I wrote 6,255 words this week!  Whoo-hoo!
    The last time I've written three chapters in one week has to be back when I was in middle school and I was writing a book for my friend.  I was actually really close to finishing that book.  The thing that stopped me was the fact that I went into high school and no longer had any free time to write.  And that is exactly why I love NaNoWriMo.  It's forcing me to make writing a high priority.

What Makes a Writer?

    I have a really fun announcement to make!
    I am currently being interviewed for a series of "up-and-coming" author interviews put on by Chanel Blake.  If you check out her website, you can see all of the interviews that have already been released.  
    I think it's very interesting to read about these authors and to see not only why people write, but why they write what they write.  She also gets into some finer details about how everyone writes, like which writing software you prefer.  You can learn a lot about individual authors from these interviews, but I also think you can learn a lot about writers in general.  

    What makes a writer?  That question can probably be asked about all artists.  There are some pretty basic things that drive us to our art, we just channel ourselves in different ways.  I write because I have Hypergraphia.  I can't not write.  But I do a lot of other artsy things too.  

Pep Talk

    As I promised in my last post, I'm going to post NaNoWriMo and other writing inspiration talks from the NaNoWriMo site.  I think the NaNoWriMo pep talks are really cool because they get so many different types of authors to write letters directly to the participants.  Famous authors are talking to people like me.  Brandon Sanderson has done this multiple times.  James Patterson, Kate DiCamillo, Scott Westerfeld, Lois Lowry, Ally Condie, John Green, Gail Carson Levine, and Lemony Snicket have all given pep talks.  Here's the collection of previous pep talks if you want to take a look and read through them.

NaNoWriMo

    In my last post, I talked a lot about Halloween and how that season inspires me.  The best part about Halloween is that the inspiration and creativity leads right into NaNoWriMo. 

    For those who don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month.  Anyone can do NaNoWriMo.  It starts at midnight after Halloween, and using the resources available on the NaNoWriMo website, write a 50,000 word novel by 11:59 pm on November 30.  You create an account on the website, and get to work writing.  You're allowed to plan out what you want to write beforehand, but you're not allowed to use something that you've already started writing.  Oh, and you get some cool prizes for participation and for completing the 50,000 words.