Tag: NaNoWriMo

Best (and most awesomely put) writing advice I’ve ever seen

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

From one of this year’s NaNoWriMo Pep Talks

Pep Talk from Chuck Wendig

Chuck Wendig

Imagine being allowed to do something you’re not supposed to do.

Imagine you’re given the keys to a mud-bogging Bronco, or a dune buggy, or a Lamborghini. And then, you’re pointed toward a field. A soccer field outside a high school, or maybe just a wide open grassland. Nobody there. No kids playing. No animals frolicking. In fact, right now, nobody is here to see you at all.

You have total freedom to rev the engine, slam the pedal to the floor, and gun it through that field. You can do donuts, spinning the car wildly about, flinging up mud, leaving tracks that look like the calligraphy of an old, mad god.

You can slop mud on the car. You can get out and dance in the grass.

You can do whatever you want.

This is not something we’re particularly used to, as adults. My toddler gets it. He isn’t fenced in by the boundaries of adulthood—which, okay, yes, that means he doesn’t necessarily know not to shove a ham sandwich into a whirring fan (instant ham salad!) or not to climb the tallest thing and leap off it like a puma.

But it also means he doesn’t know why he can’t just pick up a pen and start drawing. It means he has no problem grabbing a blob of Play-Doh and creating whatever his fumbling little hands can manage. It means that he’ll grab a Transformers toy and half-transform it into some lumbering robot-car monstrosity—and when an adult might say, “No, no, it’s like this or it’s like that; it’s a robot or it’s a car,” he’s like, “Uh, yeah, no. Go back to your tax forms and your HGTV, stupid adult, I’ve just created a Frankencarbot and you can go hide your head in the sand-swept banality of grown-up life, sucker.”

His entire creative life is the “Everything Is Awesome” song from The LEGO Movie. Because he doesn’t know what he can or can’t do. He doesn’t know about art or form or criticism or any of that. He can do whatever he wants. (Ham sandwiches and fan blades aside.)

And you can do whatever you want, too.

The blank page is yours. Cast aside worries over art and criticism. Imagine a land without rules. Imagine that nobody has ever told you that you cannot or should not do this thing. Those people were wrong. Forget those voices. Because, for real?

It’s an empty field and you’ve got the keys to a freaking Ferrari.

It’s a white tablecloth and you’ve got ketchup, mustard, and relish.

It’s a blank page and you’ve got all the letters and words you need.

Rev the engine and take the ride. Paint with all the colors the condiments at your table allow. Create whatever robot-human monstrosities your mind cares to conjure. Crack open your chest and plop your heart onto the page.

Right now: just write. Donuts in an empty field.

Leave your mark.

Chuck’s Website
Chuck’s Books

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How serious should I be?

Published on by Jaye6 Comments

Perusing NaNoWriMo’s forums I keep coming across variations of an interesting, and generally unanswerable question for all artists – but one I swear seems to come up more and be more vehemently … argued? among authors (writing advice books, other writing forums, etc.):  how seriously to take the writing?  What priority should it hold in your life?  And other similar veins of thought.

Now, really, as with all things – no one can tell you what works for you; they can only say what works for themselves and you may take it or leave it.  So I offer my advice, my ‘what works for me.’

Take the story seriously.  Not as in ‘the story should be serious’, just that you should care about staying true to your setting and characters.  A criticism I saw once of Twilight is that the personality and behaviour of the characters is what it must be to satisfy the whim of the moment – to visit the realm of hyperbole, for the sake of make a point, if you have someone a professional dancer in chapter 3, they ought not be unable to dance when asked in chapter 33, or in chapter 3 of the next book.

The work itself?  Writing is a labour of love.  Writing pays worse than waiting tables.  I’ve seen it argued that slavery is a higher paying job.  Unless one is the proper mix of prolific and lucky (mostly lucky) wealth will not be yours; you will want to keep that day job.  As such, treat it, maybe not so much as a hobby, but rather as … a joy.  Take pleasure in it.

Family, and life should take precedent.  If you truly love telling the story you have to tell, then you will tell it eventually.  Keep your promises, certainly.  If you have promised your fans a book a year, put out a book a year – or else apologise and give them a good reason for tardiness.  If you have made no such promise, then write as you may.  I tend to find myself in a point between these to places; I have made no specific promises to my readers regarding the frequency of Now & Forever’s releases, but I have made a promise to myself – that can be just as important.  So far I’m keeping that promise, but I fear sometimes I shan’t continue to do so.  We’ll see.

Even if you are so fortunate as to live on your writing – if you force yourself to write in such a manner as to impact your quality, what favour have you done your readers?  What favour have you done yourself in the name of word count, to sacrifice happiness, health, and time with those you love to stress over a chapter simply because you’ve decided that writing should be a 9-5 job the same as any other?  Or, as I’ve seen it suggested on a few of this year’s pep talks, a 365-day a year project – weekends, holidays, sickness and health; being married to your work, be it writing or banking, is not healthy.  Writers of that sort are infamous for dying young in suicide or drowning in a bottle of whiskey.

I am motivated by my own curiosity of what happens next.  I am motivated by my characters’ clamour that I tell their story.  I am motivated by a personal sense of perfectionism that hates to leave things unfinished unless it is absolutely indisputable that they cannot be finished.  Not everyone is.

I know a woman for whom NaNoWriMo is the biggest boon to her word count.  She writes throughout the year, but does far better during NaNo events.  This has to do with her own personality and the presence of the NaNoWriMo.com progress graphs – she has OCD, graphs make her very happy apparently.  Still, 50k words in a month – 1667 per day – is not really so much, an hour’s work or so when feeling inspired, a few hours if you sit down and put your mind to it … if your issue isn’t writer’s block so much as a need for an excuse to put aside the browser and stop wiki-surfing.

We’re all different.  A writer I adore rents an office, one she goes to for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, in order to write.  Why?  Because if she doesn’t, she forgets to write; she finds an hundred other things to do besides write.  She wants to tell her story, and she likely would tell it eventually, but it may take her decades to write a single novel – and she was writing for contract, this was not an option, nor was it personally one given that she had more stories afterward that she wished to tell.  Some writers have an office at home, a place to shut out distraction and find a little peace to work – understandable, it can be very difficult to produce quality work if you can’t keep a coherent thought for 30 seconds running.  Still, office, or a hammock in the backyard with pets and children running and screaming – write as you will, and as you may, but don’t forget to live; one who forgets to experience life, is one who will have a harder time expressing and illustrating life in her work.

There are those who will argue with me:  “But Ray Bradbury siad you must write every day” and such like.  Yes, he did.  He also said to read things, any random thing that strikes your fancy, pick up books on anything that interests you, and to live.  He may have been speaking hyperbolically.  Also, maybe that worked for him – he seemed to recognise that, sometimes, you spend a few hours staring at the page trying to write and getting nowhere, but at least you tried, and other times you write 200 words in 12 hours of endless struggle, and then the next day erase it all to replace it with 3000 words of the most fantastic prose you ever saw.  No one, no one, no one, can tell you how to write, when to write, how much to write, what to write … well, I suppose if you write for hire, then the person who drew up the contract can, but then there’s the argument that you can refuse to sign said contract … never mind that, though, only you can tell yourself that.  Just as it’s your story, it’s your life that you’ll be writing it around; what is important to you?  If the story is more important than your children, or your spouse, your health, or the state of your home – then, so be it, just be sure you are aware that such an attitude will have consequences.  Be sure that your novel, or poetry, or screenplay, or whatever, is worth it to you.

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Writing about writing

Published on by Jaye1 Comment

I’m going to take a tiny break from my poking around the NaNoWriMo forums, and unburden my mind on something.

I spend an awful lot of time writing about writing when I only have one book out, don’t I?

Seems strange, especially to me.

Thing is, Tolkien wrote a bit about writing and he only ever released two books (Lord of the Rings, for those who don’t know, was only a trilogy due to paper shortages).  I certainly don’t believe I’m half the author that Tolkien was, nor do I disregard his academic writing … but his fiction is only two works.  Silmirilion, and others are unfinished and posthumous publications.

Thing is, a person who writes can know a lot about writing without being published.  If this were not true there would not be writer discussions everywhere on the internet, and before that on Usenet, and before that on Fidonet, and before that on select BBSes, and before that in various paper newsletters or coffee shoppe/library based clubs.  No, a person can have an hundred titles published and not know anything about writing, and a person can have nothing published and know everything.  It’s like saying someone with a degree in something is more knowledgeable than someone without one — not always true, the difference is that one met certain criterion in a university, the other just spent a lot of time in careful study.

I don’t propose to know all about writing.  I certainly would never claim to, on purpose, write literary works — if for no other reason than my outright distaste for every single example of such that I’ve ever encountered.

The thing is, we all find something that works for us — we share that for those who it might save some grief and pain.  Somewhere out there is another writer wired a bit like myself who is staring, tears in her/his eyes, struggling to compose a tale upon the cold, lifeless screen of a computer.  Sweety, turn off the machine, grab some ink and paper, give that a try.  Hurray, another story rescued!

Also, one cannot write without reading.  This is stated time and again.  Someone had to be the first writer, someone had to be the first blacksmith, so I suppose it’s not quite true — someone can work it out from nothing but it’s going to be pretty unlikely.  Even our friend Mr First Blacksmith, he probably knew something about making bronze, and Mr First Bronzesmith learnt something from Granddaddy Copper or Tin-smith, both of whom learnt all they needed from Ugh Goldsmith who figured out the shiny yellow rocks look neat if you smash them with some dull gray rocks, and goes all runny if you get it near that neat fire thing his cousin Og No Eyebrows discovered last week.  So, I say, you must read.  The first novelists read poetry.  What did the first poets read?  I honestly don’t know, it’s not an area of history that ever much intrigued me, but I would guess that they listened to story tellers who recited a kind of epic poetry.  From this you learn techniques (a hotter fire makes these funny rocks sweat out grey shiny stuff), you learn methodology (no, no, hit the metal, son, not your thumb, works better — trust me).  Most importantly you learn what inspires you (what?  I can’t turn everything into a smithing analogy)!

If you read enough, and then write enough, you discover these details (oh!  hit the metal with a hammer!  Who knew!?) which some will call rules of writing and others rules of thumb.  I provide rules of thumb.  For certain kinds of fiction it’s important to follow strict structures, to only put that she wore green shoes if it’s vital to some later or immediate aspect of the story (at the very least it has to be symbolic).  For others, this isn’t so important.

This is why I tend to say, do it or not, it’s up to you and the necessities of your story.  Because that is the key:  It’s.  Your.  Story.

Believe me, I haven’t read all there is to read, but I’ve read enough to know that one thing is Truth:  in the course of human history, there is no truly new idea in how to write.  Someone will have tried something like it somewhere.  And in this age, someone will have published it at some point and in some place.

As I said:  Do the characters eat?  I don’t know, dear, do they?  Do the characters have sex?  Is it that kind of story?  Fade to black or graphic detail?  Is it that kind of story?  Do I describe their clothes?  Does the narrator notice the clothes, or care?

I cannot stress enough, that there are no literary police who will charge you with being in violation of code 43-b of the Rules of Writing if you don’t do what some literature professor or creative writing instructor told you to then confiscate your literary license.  TELLS, yes, sort of, it’s called marks and they tend to be bad if you don’t follow the instructor’s instructions — but that’s a whole other matter.  Believe me, Jo Rowling, Stephen King, J R R Tolkien, Robert Heinlein, Charles Dickens, A A Milne, Frank L Baum, Edgar Rice Burroughs, E E “Doc” Smith, Arthur C Clarke, William Shakespeare, Voltaire, Geoffrey Chaucer … and so many more, names we know, names we love, names we cherish, names that will live on or have already long endured … they broke The Rules, or at least some rules.  Other rules they followed, some rules weren’t rules yet, some rules aren’t rules any more.

And there’s another point.  It’s so hard to agree on these rules that it’s possible to have these discussions.  If Rules for writing truly existed, beyond those needed to codify how one communicates via the strange glyphs upon a page or screen, then there would be no question and no discussion:  one would become a writer the way one becomes a plumber, or an accountant.

Time and again:  Art has no rules, no boundaries.  Art is imagination, and creativity.  We say ‘think outside the box’ when we want someone to be creative — we tell them to step beyond the bounds of laws, rules, status quo, etc.  In our imaginations, men walk upon the moon, upon alien worlds; in our imaginations we explore the depths of the sea and soar among the clouds; in our imaginations we can send a picture around the world in the blink of an eye; in our imaginations we can converse with cats and have tea with dormice.  Some of these things have, since, become reality — but first they were imagined, and first they were the stuff of fiction, first they were novels or epic legends, dreams of eccentric geniuses.

It can never be stressed enough, and I am not alone, so many of the artists we all adore so often stress the same advice:  do not shackle your dreams.  Do not stifle your story with boundaries and Rules.  Reserve “should” only in name of advice, “Should Veronica wear high heels with that kind of dress, do you think?”  If you can dream it, write it, because if you can dream it you can inspire that dream in others — and that’s what it’s all about really, sharing our dreams and imaginings so that others can enjoy the same journey we did.

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Should my character …

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Should my characters get hungry?  Should they eat?  Should they become aroused?  Should they bark like a chicken, or crow like a pig?

Some of those are hyperbole, obviously, some are truly questions asked in writing forums.  Not just NaNoWriMo‘s, though the non-hyperbolic examples are taken from those very boards.

Again and again, when writing the only should is:  you should write — the story won’t write itself, and you should use proper and clear language — without it your story is unreadable, or not understandable.

Beyond that, it’s just a question of what matters.  You will find novels where the characters never go to the bathroom, never eat, never sleep, never sneeze, etc.  You’ll find others where they do often.  Obviously it is assumed that these activities are being engaged in, at other times it is quite clear that the author did not consider it as you have no room within the scope of the narrated time-frame for such to have happened.

You will never please everyone.  Some people what to see everything.  These people read Wheel of Time.  Some people want nothing of the sort — I’m not sure what they would read because, at the minimum, food is generally going to come into things somewhere.

Should your characters have sex?  Well, maybe.  If you’re writing for young children, this may be a very peculiar question, and one that should be approached with caution as most feel that such things are rather inappropriate; certainly one should assume that graphic and explicit sex ought to be avoided in this situation as far as the culture of most English speaking readers are concerned; the values and mores of other segments of humanity I cannot implicitly speak for.

Should your characters eat?  Well, at the very least, they should eat within your own mind.  This avoids them going three days without a single moment to have a bite of something and not being the slightest bit affected by it.  Then again, maybe you’re writing a very simple fairy story, and people don’t tend to worry about such trivialities as eating in those, except at banquets or the like.

Should they sleep?  Again, it’s probably best to assume they do, and then decide when and where it might fit to show this — or not.

Should … yes, and no.  Tell your story.  Some conversations will take place over a glass of wine.  Some will happen while trying to decide where to eat or what.  Perhaps it will be necessary for the large carnivore to burst into the toilet where the character is currently occupied by …

But do not tie yourself down to necessary.  That’s a sticky word.  It implies that the scene, detail, whatever is vital, inviolate, unremovable.  No.  Not necessarily.  Sometimes little things that hold no import to the plot or the larger story are in there just to keep the setting real, to keep the people real.  Does it matter if Lauren wears green shoes with her dress?  No, not typically.  It does, however, matter in the sense of it gives little clues about the person that Lauren is.  Does it matter in the slightest if Salencia is wearing a pink shirt?  Well, once, actually, but any other times — no.  But then again, yes — if I do it often enough it becomes evident that her favourite colour is “dusty rose” (that’s true, by the way, she loves that shade of pink).  It’s Bilbo Baggins and his pipe — it hobbitises the character, gives him depth and shape.

You should leave out tedious details.  If you learn nothing about the character to describe, in detail, how they comb or brush their hair — don’t.  If, however, they brush/comb their hair in some remarkable way — show it!  In the former, it suffices to tell — “she combed her hair, washed her face, and headed to the party.”  In the latter it does an injustice to leave out the scene of the complex, Wallace & Gromit style automatic hair combing device, though once it’s established it might be best to skip it in later uses, unless there is some literary device served by showing its repeated use; maybe it is quirkily changing over time, or in the case of W & G’s movie about the Were-Rabbit, we learn that Wallace is, in fact, losing weight.

A good rule of thumb, if you are bored and don’t give a damn about what you’re showing, just tell it.  If telling it seems like tedium and padded word count, then don’t even bother to mention it.  You can never go wrong by assuming that, if you don’t care, your reader won’t care.  True, some readers will, but probably not the ones who want to read a story you’d care to write — best to write for yourself and entertain the people who read as you do.  You may or may not get better or worse sales for it, but it’s safe bet you’ll enjoy the process of telling the story far better.  And anyone who writes for the money is probably someone who believes they’ll get rich playing nickle slots in Vegas; true, it happens, but it’s always pure, outright, dumb, blind luck.

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Chapters

Published on by Jaye2 Comments

Well, another topic that interested me turned up.  So, here we go.

Chapters.  How long should they be?

Oh my, oh honey, no.  That would be one of those silly “writing rules” that are such a terrible travesty of the creative process.  Forget should.

Now, that said, I’m going to tell you how long a chapter should be:  as long as it needs to be.

I say that a lot, don’t I?  Should a character be gay?  If they’re gay, yes.  Should I write in English or French?  Which do you prefer?

The only rule of writing is:

a) write
b) use proper grammar, punctuation, spelling, and so forth except when you need not to.  Never ignore them out of laziness or ignorance.
c) openly, deliberately, and consciously violate the laws of reality.  Doing so out of ignorance won’t do.  That’s not to say you should become a master locksmith to make up a lock for your burglar series, but rather that you should realise you know nothing of locks and thus deliberately make it up.  Know thyself whenst thou writeth.

What does this have to do with how long to make a chapter?  That’s the point.  How long a chapter is is only as relevant as it needs to be, as with most aspects of writing.

Really, just ask the lovely gentlemen of Oxford:

noun

  • 1a main division of a book, typically with a number or title:we will deal with this in chapter eleven
  •  an Act of Parliament numbered as part of a session’s proceedings.
  •  a section of a treaty:a majority voted for the inclusion of the social chapter in the treaty
  • 2a distinctive period in history or in a person’s life:the people are about to begin a new chapter in their history
  •  a series or sequence:the latest episode in a chapter of problems
  • 3the governing body of a religious community or knightly order:land granted by the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral

See?  No defined length.  

There’s nothing even dictating one must have chapters.  Look at the fantastic Sir Terry Pratchett.  True, his YA Discworld books have chapters, but that’s at the behest of his YA publisher.  He’d not have them otherwise and has said so.

Oh, but Jaye, you’re one to talk your own chapters are absurdly long!  Well, okay, yes they are.  I have my methods.  I seriously considered not using chapters, but I decided that they made the story more manageable for both writing and reading if it had chapters and I agonised, at times, over where to break them.  I hope that, by and large, I’ve done well on that point.

Still, as with any aspect of storytelling, the length of a chapter should be natural.  Don’t put parameters of word count or page count to it or you’ll find yourself breaking your parameters often in order not to break in awkward places — or, worse, following them too rigidly indeed and breaking in those terribly awkward places.  A chapter break goes where a chapter break goes to you — where you feel is a good place to close this, oh look a cliché (actually an idiom, but too many authors and readers alike are fuzzy on the distinction), chapter of the plot (expression seem familiar?  “This chapter of my life” help?).  When in doubt, ask yourself where, in a movie, there would be a nice dissolve, or in TV where a commercial break would fit comfortably and you’ll be on a fair track.

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Now what?

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Well, the Now & Forever ABCs are done.  Now what do I do?

First off, probably not have anything daily to say anymore.  I’ll probably cut back to something a couple times a week.  I can’t promise I’ll have anything regularly, but I will try to.  I’m, in fact, considering a rule of one post a week, and if I wind up with two or three then queuing them up to guarantee a post for the next week.  Reblogs, of course, don’t count.

Also on my list of ways to give myself Hell, I’ve finished the first edit run of Ready or Not and … well … I’m happy with it up to the final two chapters, the ones I wrote for CampNanoWriMo.  Those are awful, I think.  I’ve left them in, for now, and handed the thing over to my editor for her opinion, but odds are that those two chapters will need scrapped and a new ending written.  Until this is complete, Book 3 is still “Book 3” and still non-existent.

Færie Patrol is still a dream project.  But I might dust it off and get back to it, maybe give myself a short vacation from Now & Forever for a little bit.  Who knows.

In the mean time, Love or Lust continues to sell — not as well as it did in July, but it’s selling.  I really must say, thank you all who’ve bought the book and/or told your friends and family that they ought to buy the book.  And thank you to any who buy the book in the future.  Publishing a book by any method, traditional or indie, is a gamble; anyone who tells you they’ve the secret to what book will sell, and/or how to make sure a book sells probably will next offer you ocean-front property in Niger.  That my book spend a couple of weeks on a best seller list, was a Hot New Release on Amazon for its entire eligibility timeframe … I’m awed.  I hope, one day, to make writing my living — without the distractions of a day job I can write more, faster, and better, and this is a solider first step in that direction than I’d dared to hope.  I’m in no danger of paying the rent every month with my book, but some months — it would seem — I can.

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Maybe the NaNoWriMo bits aren’t so bad

Published on by Jaye3 Comments

Well, I’m pretty sure, now, that I’m editing bits I wrote during November’s National Novel Writing Month event.

They’re not half as bad as I remembered them being.  Things are going amazingly smoothly.

I know the Camp NaNoWriMo portion near the end is going to make me cry.  I wasn’t happy with that while I was writing it.  Hopefully a solution will present itself before I get there.

Regardless — I’m done with them.  No more writing challenges for me except the ones I set for myself … which generally amount to things like “have some word count before going to bed”.

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Status update: Ready or Not

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Well, Love or Lust is holding strong as an Amazon bestseller and hot new release (for category, but hey — it is a bestseller list — says so on the label).  Which is lovely.  Even climbing charts globally.  A ping on the German radar and some love from Down Under hath come my way as well — thank you.

In the meantime I’ve got back to work on Ready or Not and am nearly half through it.  So far it’s not quite the disaster I was thinking, but I also don’t think I’ve hit the bits I wrote during NaNoWriMo or Camp NaNoWriMo.

I’ve a horrible, sinking feeling when I consider what I can recall of them.  They’re actually great parts — by themselves.  I’m just terrified that, when I get there, they won’t fit and can’t be made to fit.  If that’s the case, then that’s about one third of the book down the drain and a lot of work to get to before I can have the next book out.

If I’m wrong — things are going well enough between my own read through and my editor’s pile of work to do that she ought to be sitting down to attack it with her mighty Red Pen of Death which I swear is filled with human blood — possibly magically siphoned from the author upon whose work she applies it — instead of ink.  We’ll have some lovely conversations regarding my dyslexia, my inability to grasp various minutia of English grammar and orthography and then I’ll give it one more read for ‘now how in Hell did this get by both of us!?’ moments.

Should the universe be benevolent and kind (please do stop laughing, please) I might have book 2 out by Christmas.  Realistically speaking, I’ll say don’t expect anything before Easter 2014 and I might even wind up so close to 29 June 2013 that I may hold off to release on the 1yr anniversary of the first book.

All told I’m impressed with this first half, really.  There’re some very touching moments, and a good tear jerker in there.  I’ve managed to have some really good humour bits.

For fun I’ll post the only part, aside from a poem from late in the book which has already been released here, I’ll give you a sample of the only other part I’m willing to present to the wider public:

Disclaimer

The story which follows contains people:  Tall people, short people, fat and skinny.  It will contain intelligence, stupidity, ignorance and knowledge.  It will contain people ambulating, masticating, respirating, and articulating.  It will contain people who are homosexuals.  It will contain heterosexual people.  It will contain males, females, and God help us all, humans.

It should be known that the author is not promoting anything.  This story is for enjoyment, entertainment and, if the author might be permitted a moment of vanity, inspiration.

Reading it will not make you gay, straight, masculine, feminine, feline, canine, richer or poorer (well, maybe a little poorer as I hope you bought a copy, but I hope not significantly poorer).  It will not make you smarter or stupider, more or less violent.  It will not send you to Heaven or Hell (I think).  It will give you super powers if read while being exposed to cosmic rays*.

If you like it, fantastic.  If you hate it, I’m sorry.  Just know that you’ve been warned.

Yours with love,

Jaye Em Edgecliff

*Please use cosmic radiation responsibly and only according to the direction of a scientific genius or similar.  Author cannot be held responsible for injury or disfigurement caused by exposure to strange solar emanations.

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I won!

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Well, it took me to the last day to accomplish it, but I’ve got my 50k words for NaNoWriMo!  I’m still not done with Ready or Not, but I’m getting there.  Once there I still have to type all of this, normally I do that about every 4 – 8 chapters, but that wasn’t an option if I wanted to have time to get my word count.

Anyway, the migraine fairy has come to visit and I have to see if Sally winds up in hospital.  Busy day.

Finally, on target

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Well, still sucked into NaNoWriMo.  It’s, honestly, done me some small good.  I’ve somehow learnt how to overcome getting stuck.  Honestly, nothing for the past dozen days is anything new.  I’ve written more word count by far in less time before (one point in writing Love or Lust I’d managed something like 10,000 words in a day … despite doing things like eating, being at work, having pets to care for, and so on.  Still, a deadline that isn’t self-imposed does help encourage me to write at least a few hundred words a day.  Somehow I’ve actually accomplished it.

It was a slow start.  No words the first day, 860 the next.  As of yesterday, though, I’m on track to finish by the 30th not only by my own count, but by NaNoWriMo’s.  It’s nice the damned thing finally agrees with me.

It’s been fun, I got to take the girls to Paris.