Monthly Archives: November 2017

NaNoWriMo VICTORY!

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Home from the last Write-In, and both +Kay Hill registered victories for National Novel Writing Month, both topping 50K.

This was Kay's first year not in the Young Writers Program, and targeting 50K, and she cruised to victory after a few bumpy gaps (carrying a very full course load and joining the Diving team didn't help).

A combination of doing an "edit" year (time=words), and being unemployed, meant that I was able to keep the steadiest curve of any NaNo I've ever done. It was still a grind, but I also felt like was able to get some really good revision work done (some of which included chopping out stuff that needed chopping, other parts of which included writing some new material that needed writing).

So, success!

Many kudo-thanks, as always, to +Margie Kleerup, who continuously supported us in all of our writing efforts.

The weird thing is anticipating next year. +Kay Hill and I have been doing NaNo since 2009. (I also did 2001 and 2002.) She's helped keep me honest ("role model!"), which has been both useful and fun.

Next year, though … she'll be off to college. She currently plans to NaNo there (and I assume it's A Thing at colleges), but even though we'll be writing buddies, it just won't be quite the same. (Sniffles, and cue "Sunrise, Sunset.")

But that's next year. This year? VICTORY! And we can both do the proud Hero Walk into the credits.

#NaNoWriMo

 

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The Coming-Down-to-the-Wire NaNoWriMo Update

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Three days left, and I'm a bit behind, but at a manageable level. My current count is 43,841 words out of the 45,000 I should be at today. 6,159 words to go, which works out to about 6-odd hours of the editing/rewriting that I'm doing this year — eminently obtainable over three days (esp. with a couple of write-ins coming up), but with not a lot of room for slacking off.

I will probably not complete a full-book edit this run-through — I'm mostly done with edits to ch. 3, and I am unlikely to get 8 more chapters done to catch up with where I started NaNo working on. But I'll have it the oldest material in te novel with a good refresh, which was my goal.

I'm feeling pretty good about what I'm doing, though, have cleaned up not only a lot of stuff that got critiqued by my writing group, but a lot of stuff I noticed on my own ad have not had the full-book perspective to spot ("Oh, hey I mention in chapter 15 that character X had a nasty divorce, but here in chapter 3 he talks about going home and talking to his wife").

The daunting thing about all of this is that I don't see running these earlier chapters past my writing group again (twice is probably about all they can take), which means when I finish the remaining several chapters with them, it will be time to fish or cut bait regarding trying to get the thing published. Which this year's NaNo effort will be a large portion of feeling it's ready to give that a whirl.

Hope everyone else is feeling good about their work this year. Three more days! You can do it!

#NaNoWriMo

 

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Your Completely-Unrequested Update on My NaNoWriMo Efforts

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No, nobody has asked how I'm doing with National Novel Writing Month this year. Just consider this a bonus feature.

Despite being sick this week, I only really missed one full day of writing/editing, and yesterday between time I took advantage of during the day and after +Kay Hill got home and was working on hers, I made that up. I'm currently a bit over the needed work count, which I'll be pushing to maintain as we head into Thanksgiving week, where I know there will be a day or two, at least, where it will be difficult to get to my keyboard.

As to actual progress, I am fully confident that I will have the rest of the novel in a suitably polished point to be eviscerated effectively by my writing group, oh boy, with the possibility that I can get some stuff started on the 3rd-novel-which-will-be-the-2nd-novel in the series, or at least get that teed up for November 2018.

#NaNoWriMo

 

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Things are going well with NaNoWriMo. TOO well with NaNoWriMo

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My word-count / time-count is going remarkably smoothly. Doing an editing job and being unemployed is helpful (in this limited context). But, more importantly, I've Figured Something Else.

I had reached the point of original story that hasn't gone through any writing group work, so it's all pretty rough and dismayingly first-drafty. And I had suggestions from my writing group on the material up to that point that, if followed, would have led to basically rewriting the whole rest of the book.

Which sometimes is the right thing to do, absolutely. And their suggestion would work, but …

… I've figured out how to avoid that. And I confirmed that by reading through the rest of my novel, which I probably haven't done in four or five years. And while I put some very snarky comments in the margins (which makes me feel a bit better about putting snarky comments in the margins of people in my writing group), overall I enjoyed what I wrote a lot. I even chuckled several times.

That said, I have one scene coming up that needs to made much more useful (actually adding to the narrative), and another that needs to be essentially rewritten from the bedrock (and to set up some cascading consequences in the succeeding chapters). But those are very doable, discrete things. I have plenty to do, believe me. But I have goals, and ideas, and things to do, and plenty of additional writing to do within all that.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but so far, so good.

#NaNoWriMo

 

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A NaNoWriMo update

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Word count continues to be maintained [1], and I even got up early yesterday to get some writing in before a very busy day.

Although this is a revision / editing cycle NaNo, I'm actually surprised to find how much new writing I am adding in — scenes that folk suggested needed to be shown-not-told, blocks of dialog to change (for the better, I hope) the emotional tone of some of the scenes. It makes me feel a bit better about my effort his year. I'm taking some stuff out, too, but the net word count will almost certainly be going up.

This week things start to hit their stride, with multiple write-ins on the calendar. I'm actually still feeling excited about the month, rather than, "Oh, crap, it's morning and i'm another 1,667 words in the hole." I know that excitement won't last, but I'll enjoy it while I can.

#NaNoWriMo

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[1] Yes, I realize that the more I say that, the greater the likelihood I will be hit by a bus, or ennui, and fall desperately behind. Which is how my NaNos usually go.

 

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It's today's Utterly Critical NaNoWriMo Update!

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Two days in and … I'm still above water! Woot!

The challenge will be this weekend, where I have movies, birthday dinner engagements, theater tickets, sleep, and other things that threaten my virtual word count. (At that, I'm better off than +Kay Hill who has band rehearsals and Pep Band activities.)

"Virtual," in that I'm doing an editing pass on my main WiP, so I'm translating my 1,000 words an hour typing-like-an-unplotted-lunatic rate into an hour-of-editing = 1,000 words.

For each of the chapters I'm going through, I take four passes:

1. Editing with fresh eyes on. This is usually simple word tweaks, but sometimes I have notes with the document that I want to incorporate.

2. Reviewing notes I'd made a few years back for each chapter for stuff I wanted to do on it.

3. Reviewing notes from the last time the chapter was looked at by my writing group.

4. Editing for a list of criteria I have for every chapter ("how are people sitting?" "where is Roger's hat?" "what does it smell like there?")

The chapters I'm hitting now haven't been reviewed (by me or anyone) for a couple of years, which makes them fresh enough to be both interesting, appalling, and intriguing.

The novel in question has had the first 9 chapters pretty heavily critiqued twice now by my writing group; that fits well with having gotten through the first 10 chapters for re-edits at last year's NaNoWriMo.

Up through chapter 15 has been reviewed previously by the group in the more distant past.

Chapters 16-27 has never been gone over by any other eyeballs, and hasn't really been touched by me since it was first written. For where I don't have specific review notes to consider for chapters, I do have general themes and overall changes from the earlier edits and broader critiques of the earlier chapters that I want to apply.

All of which translates into "I have plenty of stuff to edit, you betcha!" And as each chapter is taking a couple of days to do, I will definitely not run out of things to do before the end of the month. For better or worse.

#NaNoWriMo

 

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