Yes, it’s less than two weeks until November 1st when the madness which is NaNoWriMo begins in earnest. My co-Municipal Liaison and I have all our ducks in a row as far as write-ins are concerned. The lounge is up and running with introductory threads and sign-up for the Kick-Off party on October 30th. Four branches of the county library system are working with us to provide write-in spaces and two are holding pre-NaNo plot parties next week. Lots to…
You’ve probably wondered where my updates for Camp NaNoWriMo have been. Well, I haven’t posted them because, frankly, I wasn’t writing. I dropped my word count goal to 12K late in the month and didn’t even make that paltry sum. (For someone who regularly writes 50K or more in November, yes, 12K is a paltry sum.) My final word count as of about 5 minutes ago was 8011, with over 2K of that written just today. Why couldn’t I make…
But plugging away at it. I didn’t write the first two days. The first day is understandable; I had to put down our elderly black cat, the last of four I wove into one of my Thunderbirds story arcs. It was sad but, to be truthful, it’s also a relief. We’ll miss him. The second day, not so much. So, day three saw me starting to write. Today has been far better in terms of getting words down and so,…
In less than half an hour. I’ve set my word count expectations low at 20K so I’m more likely to reach the goal. I can’t bring myself to write it all over again, but I’ll make sure I only count those words I actually write and nothing from my previous drafts. Here’s a little excerpt from my first chapter. You can expect these every couple of days. Feedback is much appreciated!
Well, in my last installment, I talked about the book of short stories my mother-in-law had written and how I’d edited and had them printed up in an amazing quality book for her. (It really is amazing! Thanks, Blurb!) She was ever so happy about it and encouraged me to do the same for one of my own stories. So, yesterday I got a letter in the mail from my father-in-law. Inside was a generous check and a cryptic line, “For…
Over the past few weeks, as a gift to my lovely mother-in-law, I’ve been proofreading and gently editing some of her completed short stories. At first, it was supposed to be a surprise for her, but someone in the know inadvertently spilled the beans, so she knows all about it. Last night, I uploaded the seven stories I had to Blurb, where I have a gift certificate for $20. Turns out, I really didn’t need to use it. The softcover…
I won with 51726 words in a story I may never look at again. We’ll see. After I do all my wrap-up (like posting winners, corralling stragglers, putting up the results of our state-wide word war, and writing thank you notes to venue hosts), I’ll have a couple of down days before plunging back in and picking up on things I’ve let slide for far, far too long. The Thank God It’s Over party will be Saturday and I’ve remembered…
Well, I’m a hair over 45K in word count now. The story? I have no idea where it’s going. I have another murder, I killed another secondary character (brings the body count to three). Sherlock Holmes is a bad guy, so is Watson (unless he’s totally clueless in the Nigel Bruce fashion), Moriarty is at least Chaotic Neutral, and Henry Jekyll has yet to meet his Mr. Hyde. My main character’s boyfriend is having blood-tinged visions and the Door has…
Roughly 600 words to get to 30k, which is right on schedule. I had a bit of an epiphany about the characters in my story: this is not only a fictional world that my main character is visiting, it’s the mirror-verse of that world. So, the person she thinks is on the side of the angels–because that’s the way he’s portrayed in books–really isn’t. I’ve got to figure out why the Door gets stuck in this universe: I guess the…
So far, I’m keeping just above the daily word count goal. The story has developed a romantic turn, to an extent, and when this is through, I’m going to have a helluva lot of research to do! Right now, I’m just pantsing along as usual. We’ll see if it actually turns into something I want to publish, here or elsewhere. I did meet someone at our library write-in who is publishing his story to fictionpress as he writes it. Since…