So I have hit just over 20k on my first week of Nano and am quite rightly over the moon about it, but something terrible has happened. An idea for a second novel, a fantasy novel, has popped into my head and I have been faced with the most awful dilemma. What should I do about it?
I have written down the idea and made some notes on character names and places but thats about it... well actually it isn't whilst sat at work the other day I wrote the first chapter/ prologue. Unfortunately we are losing our external email and internet access at work tomorrow so I had to email my writing to myself so that I did not lose it. Knowing as I did that it might distract me from the novel i am writing for Nanowrimo I composed a letter to myself for the email attached to the file and I thought I would post it here as it's quite funny:
This is the excerpt you wrote on that lunch the other day- hopefully by the time you've read this you will have completed the final 1300 words for today, if not no chocolate for you tonight!!!!
You are not allowed to open this until you finish novel one- do not even think about it even though you want to- I know you are thinking about it now so Stop it Stop it stop it!
You will never be able to finish 1 if 2 is in your head
PS novel 2 can be commenced in approx 2 weeks if you get your act together!!!
BTW I did complete the final 1300 words if you were wondering and the chocolate was eaten.
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Saturday, 6 November 2010
One week in...
Ok so, I am one week in and I have already committed mass murder by killing of three people no less, two of which were... children! so not only am I a mass murderer but I am also a child killer, and there is more death to come.
It has been a difficult week and an exhausting week. This was my first full week at work and my first attempt at writing 3k words a day and it was hard, challenging but also fun and rewarding. 3k may seem quite a high target when the minimum you can do for nano each day to hit your target is 1667, but I write regularly anyway and whilst I could have done the 1667, I prefer to write in chapters and have been aiming to do a chapter a day, and for me a chapter works out at 3-5 scenes at around 3k words in total.
Throughout the week my preferred method of writing was doing approx 1-1500 words before work and then the rest after work,or alternatively writing on my lunch hour, when i could not write before work. I was surprised by exactly how well I committed myself to the task in hand despite the many committments i had outside work. When I think about it I know that I worked 35 hours had 5 hours worth of work lunches the last two of which i wrote in, I also had guiding and also dance classes and yet I managed to schedule in enough hours to do my nanowrimo.
As the week wore on it did get more and more difficult to write, but for me this was because I was exhausted and ran out of steam. Yesterday was a bad day for me. I did not write before work, I then managed only 500 words on my lunch hour which i knew were dreadful and I had written 1000 only the day before in the same time of approximately 30 mins after i had done all my other tasks i do at lunch like eating and so on. When I got home I could not motivate myself to write 2500 words, I was too tired and i knew that what i had already done was nowhere near good enough. Holes had started appearing in my research and I had no names for the minor charactors who were new to my plot, I could not even come up with names for them off the top of my head.
I had to take a break from nano, even if it was for one night only. I went onto our Nano region chatroom but word sprints were going on and it just made me feel worse than I already did. so I logged out of the forums and the chatrooms had a few games of solitaire and spider solitaire,turned off my computer and went to bed. As a result I woke up feeling much better, and even more beneficial to me, my main characters inner voice had returned. She had gone on a days holiday on friday but now she was back and she was talking to me and telling me her story once more. In the three hours that we had in our Nanowrimo meet up for our region in gloucester I wrote 2000 words despite being surrounded by distractions of children, a very busy coffee shop and also the alarms on the coffee machines. I was really pleased with myself and this evening I easily completed my last 1000 words. Yes its true that I am still technically 3000 words behind where i ideally wanted to be, but I don't care and I am still going to make it. Besides I may still catch up anyway.
so 6 days in 15500 words down and 34500 words to go approx. Yay!!!
It has been a difficult week and an exhausting week. This was my first full week at work and my first attempt at writing 3k words a day and it was hard, challenging but also fun and rewarding. 3k may seem quite a high target when the minimum you can do for nano each day to hit your target is 1667, but I write regularly anyway and whilst I could have done the 1667, I prefer to write in chapters and have been aiming to do a chapter a day, and for me a chapter works out at 3-5 scenes at around 3k words in total.
Throughout the week my preferred method of writing was doing approx 1-1500 words before work and then the rest after work,or alternatively writing on my lunch hour, when i could not write before work. I was surprised by exactly how well I committed myself to the task in hand despite the many committments i had outside work. When I think about it I know that I worked 35 hours had 5 hours worth of work lunches the last two of which i wrote in, I also had guiding and also dance classes and yet I managed to schedule in enough hours to do my nanowrimo.
As the week wore on it did get more and more difficult to write, but for me this was because I was exhausted and ran out of steam. Yesterday was a bad day for me. I did not write before work, I then managed only 500 words on my lunch hour which i knew were dreadful and I had written 1000 only the day before in the same time of approximately 30 mins after i had done all my other tasks i do at lunch like eating and so on. When I got home I could not motivate myself to write 2500 words, I was too tired and i knew that what i had already done was nowhere near good enough. Holes had started appearing in my research and I had no names for the minor charactors who were new to my plot, I could not even come up with names for them off the top of my head.
I had to take a break from nano, even if it was for one night only. I went onto our Nano region chatroom but word sprints were going on and it just made me feel worse than I already did. so I logged out of the forums and the chatrooms had a few games of solitaire and spider solitaire,turned off my computer and went to bed. As a result I woke up feeling much better, and even more beneficial to me, my main characters inner voice had returned. She had gone on a days holiday on friday but now she was back and she was talking to me and telling me her story once more. In the three hours that we had in our Nanowrimo meet up for our region in gloucester I wrote 2000 words despite being surrounded by distractions of children, a very busy coffee shop and also the alarms on the coffee machines. I was really pleased with myself and this evening I easily completed my last 1000 words. Yes its true that I am still technically 3000 words behind where i ideally wanted to be, but I don't care and I am still going to make it. Besides I may still catch up anyway.
so 6 days in 15500 words down and 34500 words to go approx. Yay!!!
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Honesty is the best policy
Just wanted to give you an update on my Nano progress. To date i am just short of 10k and doing well so far. One of my main problems at the moment is that I am spending all my writing time on my Nano and so i know my blog is suffering for which i apologise. I think if it wasn't for the fact that i work full time and am doing funny hours this week it wouldn't be so bad, but it is the way it is and what i've been doing is an hour before work in the mornings and then an hour or two until i hit my 3k target in the evenings starting at ten pm.
So sorry if i have been neglecting you but I am updating my twitter page with my progress too and twitter updates appear to the right hand side of this page so as long as i've updated for the day I have an excuse.
Whilst nano is on my blog posts will inevitably be more infrequent however I will do a minimum of 2 blog posts a week to keep you updated.
To all the other Nano participants this year good luck to you.
_________________________
9119/50000 words
So sorry if i have been neglecting you but I am updating my twitter page with my progress too and twitter updates appear to the right hand side of this page so as long as i've updated for the day I have an excuse.
Whilst nano is on my blog posts will inevitably be more infrequent however I will do a minimum of 2 blog posts a week to keep you updated.
To all the other Nano participants this year good luck to you.
_________________________
9119/50000 words
Monday, 1 November 2010
and the race is on for me vs me: NANOWRIMO Day 1
This is a very short post as it has been a very long day.
I stayed up to midnight on the 31st October and I wrote 1k words and upon return from guiding tonight (and after work) I wrote another 2k although I cannot post this on the NANOWRIMO sight as it has been up and down like a yoyo today.
With 3k done I am officially cream crackered and looking forward to sleeping in 30secs time. Todays chapter was also difficult but the characters voice (its a first person point of view) seems to have got louder in my head and I feel like she is telling me her story and I am just writing it down and not so much the creator.
Fingers crossed this continues, and I will try and get a word count tracker for on here to show my progress tomorrow but for now....
1 day down 3k written and 47k to go so thats 3000/50000
I stayed up to midnight on the 31st October and I wrote 1k words and upon return from guiding tonight (and after work) I wrote another 2k although I cannot post this on the NANOWRIMO sight as it has been up and down like a yoyo today.
With 3k done I am officially cream crackered and looking forward to sleeping in 30secs time. Todays chapter was also difficult but the characters voice (its a first person point of view) seems to have got louder in my head and I feel like she is telling me her story and I am just writing it down and not so much the creator.
Fingers crossed this continues, and I will try and get a word count tracker for on here to show my progress tomorrow but for now....
1 day down 3k written and 47k to go so thats 3000/50000
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