nanowrimo2020

NaNo 2020: How’s Your NaNo Doing #2.

byjehunter nanowrimo, writing, Writing Goals , , , ,

I’m very happy to say that I’ve ‘won’ NaNoWriMo. I finished my 50,000 words the other day, which has pushed me well ahead of schedule in my goal to write 261,000 words in a year (I’m already half way there and I only started at the beginning of September). I’m not done the novel I was working on yet, I still have another 40K or so to go, but getting to 50K is a huge achievement, because once you’re this far into a novel, it has momentum, it wants to keep going, and it doesn’t want to stop.

I am, however, going to slow down my drafting now. I’ve realized over the past couple days that I’m tired from pushing myself so hard and that I’m missing things like writing on paper, rewriting short stories, and working on a diverse range of projects, including a bit of terrible poetry.

Now that I’ve completed NaNo 2020, I’m revising my writing goal back down to 1,000 – 2,000 new words a day and shifting a lot of my writing time over to rewriting. If I miss a couple days of drafting, I’m not going to be upset because I know where my project is now and I’m not worried about losing the plot. I’m also going back to taking weekends off and focusing on reading at that time, because I believe reading is a big part of writing. Also, I have Brandon Sanderson’s Rhythm of War to enjoy this month and I’m super excited for the 4th volume of The Stormlight Archive.

As I shift back to rewriting, I find that I’m actually really looking forward to it. Usually I dread rewriting. I love the rush of writing something new, going places I’ve never been before, meeting characters I’ve never met, but apparently it is tiring for me to do it for too long. And if I don’t ever rewriting the things I’ve drafted, then those things are never ready to be shared with the world, and that is a big point for rewriting!

So, that’s where I’m at. And, of course, I always celebrate when I make a goal, whether big or small. This time my celebration was a bit different because of Covid, because it’s November and it’s NaNo, and I’m still working on finishing my novel so I’m staying in. But, there’s still drive-thru, and sometimes a nice latté is all I need to feel the sweet satisfaction of scratching something off my to-do list.

To Do:

Complete NaNoWriMo 2020

How is your NaNoWriMo Doing?

JEH

NaNoWriMo 2020 Update: How is your NaNo doing?

byjehunter writing, Writing Goals , , , ,

It’s almost halfway through NaNoWriMo 2020. If you decided to join me and many other writers this year and stay home and spend all of November writing a novel (maybe your first, maybe one of many), than hopefully you’re a good chunk of the way in by now.

My NaNo is going great, though I was hoping to get in more marathon days. Take a look at my progress over the past week and bit below:

You can see that I was sidetracked on the third day of NaNo and spent a lot of time writing something that I wasn’t planning on writing but that was calling to me. I didn’t mean to do switch tracks, but I’m terrible at ignoring calls to new work. The good thing it was a short side project and it’s all drafted now, so I’m back on focusing on my main project, BGG, which I hope to have fully drafted by the end of the month, though it will be closer to 90,000 words than the 50,000 word goal that is a regular NaNo (hence my larger than average daily word counts. So, in other words, I still have a long way to go, but things are heading in the write direction!

Now, time for a snack and to get back at it.

JEH

NaNoWriMo 2020: Why We Should All Do It This Year

byjehunter nanowrimo, writing, Writing Goals , , , , ,

Happy Day One of NaNoWriMo everyone! If you’ve been a reader of this blog for any amount of time, then you know that I’m an annual NaNo-er. My first NaNo was in 2006 – 14 years ago, and I’m doing it again this year with even more enthusiasm than I’ve had in some other years. This is a great year for NaNo, not just for me, but for everyone. I doubt I really have to spell it out, but I will anyway. Doing NaNo this year is a great way to pass the time while staying home, while trying to decrease the virus load and help end this pandemic sooner rather than later. With the news yesterday that England is heading into another national lockdown, it is a bit disheartening, unless, of course, you’re planning to write a novel this month, because then yes, this is exactly what you need to keep your butt in your chair and writing away madly!

In my fourteen years of NaNo, I’ve written many books. Some of them successufully (and others that turned out to be still uncompleted flops). After finishing my NaNo novels, I’ve gone one to publish many of them, and you can do this too, but you also don’t have to. You can write just for yourself. And let me say that while publishing and sharing my hard work with others is great, the best part is actually living in another world for a full month.

With a load of coffee by my side and left over halloween chocolate, I consider myself ready. I love writing fantasy, which makes my escape all the more distanced. When I was writing Tales of a Red-headed Sea-Witch, the first book my Black Depths series, I loved nothing more than settling into the log house in the woods that my character, Nessa, calls home. For a few hours a day, I became a sea-witch. I casted magic spells, made friends, and fought off monsters. I think we could all use a little bit of that control right now.

If you’ve been toying with the idea of doing NaNoWriMo, let me break it down for you. NaNoWriMo is a promise to yourself to write. You can write about whatever you want, you can make your sentences as short or as long as you want, you can chat with other fellow writers on the forum if you want. The only thing you have to do is write something—and really, if all you write is a title, that’s fine. NaNo isn’t graded. But if you do decide to write a novel this November, what you’ll really be doing is spending a month of your life daydreaming about the kind of world you’d rather be living in right now. Which can be just as powerful as taking a vacation. And heck, if it’s a vacation you really want, why not writing a novel about the vacation you would be on if it wasn’t for Covid-19.

So, come join me and many other writers doing NaNoWriMo this year. It’ll be a blast.

Next time: more on my new series, The Gemology Saga, and the cover for the first novel. And also, how am I doing at NaNo.

Go forth, fearless writers, and write!

JEH