NaNoWriMo Winner!

I won NaNoWriMo!

Are you sick of hearing about it yet? No? Good because I'm not done talking about it. For the last 30 days, I spent hours typing away on my MacBook to hit 50,000 words in a novel. I have been fairly on track throughout the month but learned that I did best when I'd take a day or two off from writing, and then write 3-5k words in a sitting to catch up. I had an idea in my head when I started, but had no clear map of how the story was going to go. I had moments where I didn't know where the story was heading next, and then my fingers would just start typing the next time I sat down. 

My novel is titled Proposing the Truth, and my description of the book is A college senior runs a business helping dudes plan proposals while she dates losers and chronicles the dating foibles throughout. 

There were times it was really fun to write, and times I was just o-v-e-r it. I had a mild panic moment Sunday morning when I was less than a thousand words from hitting the 50k goal and decided to validate my word count on the nanowrimo website. Imagine my surprise when the word count showed I had 800 words LESS than I thought I did. I did some searching on the forums and learned that Open Office, which I had used to write my novel, had some word count glitch having to do with the quotations used, and had been skewing my word count all month. GAH.

I had a mild temper tantrum and then just pushed on. I finished writing the story I had planned, and checked my word count. With the glitch: 50,008. According to the validation, I was still ~800 words off so I added an additional chapter/scene that made up the difference. When I was done with this, I was at 50,101 words and was officially done!

I don't know if I'll ever let anyone read this book. It certainly needs some editing. It's funny and fun, and has some serious moments. It's definitely the type of book I like to read, but it's not the type of book I'd recommend to everyone because it's just so OMG good. So we'll see. 

But in the meantime, I'm going to bask in the awesomeness that is finishing my first novel!

NaNoWriMo Progress Continued

Because I'm sure you're all waiting on the edge of your streets to see how my NaNoWriMo project is going since my last post, here it is:

November 14th was a monster writing day for me. I had the day off from work for Saturday and was determined to get caught up! I started the day with a 686 word 20 min sprint. I followed this up with a 1182 30 min sprint. Later I hit 708 words during a 20 min sprint and then another 600 during 20 min sprint, leaving me with 4400 for the day. I also hit the 25,000 word mark earning myself another badge! This put me ahead of pace by one measly day.

And I used that buffer on the 15th by taking a writing "rest day".

On the 16th I got in a measly 500ish words, and another 700 on the 17th.

On the 18th I had a big goal of hitting 30k words and I got there with a 469 word 20 min sprint,  a 915 30 minute sprint, and a 998 20 minute sprint. I ended up hitting 2848 words for the day and hitting my goal. Wahoo!

So naturally I took the 19th off and wrote nothing. Ugh.

On the 20th I wrote about 1200 words, and followed that with zero on the 21st.

The 22nd was a major catch up day and I easily knocked out 1000 words in the 30 minutes I had  before going to yoga. After yoga I hit 978 words in a 30 minute sprint and 5400 words total for the day. By far my best writing day so far!

Sunday the 23rd I struggled for motivation to write, which I'm noticing happens the day after my monster writing days. It's almost like I need to write everyone day or something. I did manage to write 1100 words to get me up to my word goal for the day.

I hope to hit 40k on Monday and hopefully finish up before Sunday the 30th, but I might need every last minute. We'll see!

NaNoWriMo Progress

I started off NaNoWriMo with a bang. I was ready early for work on November 1st, so I sat down and got rolling. I had 250 words written before I was off to work to host a kickoff at my library. I came home incredible inspired and attended some online nano chats that were doing some sprints, and before too long I was just over 2k words for the day.

November 2nd I was up super early because of DST, and I spent an hour writing before the NYCM coverage kicked in. After the race started, I wrimo'd during commercials. I hit my word goal before the race was over. Wahoo, this writing stuff is easy! I picked up my laptop yet again after dinner, determined to earn my 5k badge. Badge earned, wahoo! So I rewarded myself with some blog writing. Which apparently you're not supposed to do in November, because it's "wasting words." Oops.

November 3rd I was again up early because of the time change, so I quickly banged out a thousand words before I went to yoga, and somehow managed to knock out 700 words in 20 minutes before work on November 4th. Thanks again time change!

November 5th and 6th were my first days were I fell behind the daily word count total nullifying my giant word count cushion from the weekend, I wrote about 800 words each day.

November 7th was my first thought of quitting NaNoWriMo, and I text Krista as such. She told me no and to get going. We did a little 20-25 minute sprint, and 900 words later I felt back on track! I did some more writing until Kyle came home from work and got myself caught up to only being one day (1667 words) behind. I also hit a wordcount milestone and earned myself a badge.

10k!

Saturday morning I got up and couldn't decide if I wanted to go to yoga. On one hand, if I have a good chunk of time to write, I tend to find something else to do, but if I only give myself a little bit of time, I can crank out the words. I hit 1200 words in under an hour and decided my award would be some Vinyasa yoga. I came home and showered and sat down for some sprints. I hit 560 words during a 15 minute sprint, and a whopping 1491 words during a 25-30 minute sprint. My new PR. And with that I was back ahead of the word count goal game, ever so slightly!  I ended the day with about 3900 words written.

Sunday's goal was to get to ~18000 words to put me at an average of 2k/day. I wasn't nearly as motivated as I was on Saturday though. I did manage 979 words during a 30 minute sprint but nothing else to crazy. I think I hit 3300 for the day, and was just shy of my 18000 word goal.

Monday I had a weird work schedule, resulting in working from 5:30-9pm. You would think that I had spent all day writing, but you'd be wrong. Luckily once the final hours of my "day off" were trickling away I sat down with some writing motivation and knocked out 1800 words. After work I was further motivated by being OH SO CLOSE to 20k words so I spent some more time plunking down words on my laptop to hit 20k! Wahoo!! And this resulted in my first 2k+ average daily word count. Whoop. I hit almost 2600 words for the day.

Ollie helped. Obvs.

Tuesday I had the day off for Veteran's Day so after a glorious power vinyasa class, I sat down to write with a delicious Coffea latte in my hand. Now if that beast isn't writing motivation, I'm not sure what is!  I hit just shy of 2100 words for the day.

Wednesday And Thursday I took the days off from writing. Still slightly on track to finish on time!

NaNoWriMo Take 2

This year will be my second shot at NaNoWriMo. For those of you unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and writers all over the world log tons of hours during the month of November to "win" the task by completing a 50,000 word novel.

Last year I attempted and failed. I wrote a fanfiction novel rekindling Eleanor and Park's (of Rainbow Rowell fame) relationship 20+ years in the future. I started off with a bang, and as I plugged away at the novel I realized that my idea was more of a novella than a novel. Novella:

a fictional prose narrative that is longer and more complex than a short story; a short novel.

I had written almost 11,000 words and realized if I ended it where I wanted to, I would only get about halfway to my word count. To stretch it to 50k words, I'd have to add a bunch of fluff to bulk it up. I chose to do neither, and went back to my towering pile of books to read that I had neglected for half the month.

But *this* year will be different!

I'm doing some NaNoWriMo events at my library to help other NaNo'ers, myself included, in succeeding in their goal. The first of which was a workshop the beginning of October led by my friend, and successful published author and numerous time NaNo winner, Lacey. I went in to the workshop hoping for inspiration and enlightenment, and I left with both.

I also left with a magical unicorn fusing of two ideas I had been tossing around in my head over the last year!!!

So with this magical unicorn idea, I'm planning to work my booty off to hit my word count. And maybe I'll even share some snippets after all is said and done.

Who's with me??? I'm jerilee40 on the site if you want to friend me so we can NaNo together!!

NaNoWriMo Whoa

A few years back I started to see this crazy NaNoWriMo (or as I liked to refer to it, NannyNannyBooBoo) on the twitterz. I didn't pay much attention to it until Krista participated in 2011.  Here's a blogpost of hers with the intro.  (P.S.  K-bug, please see this as your official fan following of folks requesting that you keep going with this puppy. Kthxbai!)

I was so enamored with her beginnings of a story, that *I* desperately wanted to play along TOO.  Also, I was two months in to a 2 year grad school program with nary a free moment to my name, so clearly I'd want to add something else to my plate. I vowed that my first school-free November I would participate. Flash forward to two months ago when I saw some #nanowrimo twitter rumblings once again and I was reminded:  Hey self. Weren't you supposed to do this??  Yes, self, I am.

It's no major revelation that I LOVE LOVE LOVE a well-crafted story. And occasional even the not so well-crafted stories. I'm obsessed with reading, and books, and being transported to a different time or place because of an author's words. I love to write. When I'm inspired, I love to throw words down on this blog. So am I a writer? Maybe. A blogger? Sure. A novelist? No way, no how. But ask me again at the end of November.

If you're participating too, find me on the NaNoWriMo site (username Jerilee40) and let's keep each other inspired!