NaNoWriMo: One Day Left. You can do it!

I wanted to give a shout out of encouragement for anyone participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I usually post my own progress throughout the month, but I couldn't really think of anything to say, so here I am, on the day before day 30 with a last minute pep talk.

Go team! Hang in there, throw whatever comes into your head onto that page. Be creative and don't worry about being right. Avoid the urge to edit and let those fingers fly across the keyboard. 

Some of you may already have won by now, some may be on track to finish today or tomorrow, and some others might finish a little bit after the deadline. But all of you have tried something amazing and challenging this month, and I for one am proud of you and that effort, win or not.

So, keep writing and keep challenging yourself to greater things. It's how we grow and learn. It's how we see what we're made of and what we can do. What works and what doesn't.

So keep writing and if you don't make it this year, here's to trying again next year. Now stop reading this and get back to writing.

You're in the home stretch.

You can do it!

PNDS: Post NaNoWriMo Depression Syndrome

Yeah, I made that up. But, here's the thing, maybe it should be a real thing. Every time I finish a story, particularly for NaNoWriMo, there's this huge surge of euphoric accomplishment. Yay, I did it! Look, I made it!

And then PNDS hits. A void has formed where once the story lived, not just were the story held my attention, but where it lived. The characters, the setting, the trials, now nothing but a vacuum in my heart. I miss them, and I find myself trying to fill that space with other things: trying to read all the books I set aside, writing blog posts (or mostly just looking at a blank page trying to recapture the magic that created an entire novel, and failing), watching movies.  Anything to fill that void.

The effect seems worse after NaNoWriMo, probably because of the tight deadline, the all consuming trial of compressing what normally takes months into just days. The creative abandon, the rush of seeing a story come to life so quickly. So much energy put in, and then it's just gone. The energy is still there, the urge to write, but the story is finished.

It's odd and pervasive. How can finishing a story be such a downer? And really, the only thing I can do about it, the only thing that really works, is to start another. Maybe that's why I have a backlog of drafts that need editing. Editing is great, but it's not the same as writing. It doesn't fill that void.

Luckily, though, the effect seems short lived. The result is another story started or long put off editing kicked into overdrive. I just have to push through a rough week or so after the story wraps while I ask myself, "What now?"

So, I'm curious. How do you feel after finishing a story, or any big project, really? Let me know in the comments.

Woot, 2014 NaNoWriMo Target Hit!

I am thrilled, to say the least. Finished with eight days to spare and two thousand more words than I'd estimated. Whew!  Now, to rest for a little while and think up an nice ending for the story. Final battle and narrow escape, all good. Now to draw the conclusion.

No idea when I'll publish this...

NaNoWriMo Status Update: Great Progress, Still Stressed

This year is the first time I've actually started my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) novel on November 1st, and I'm hoping to finish early.  I base this on the fact that I've managed to finish on time the last two years, while starting late.

So, how am I doing? Pretty good, just about exactly on target for the challenge, but then again, my target is to finish early.  I've figured out that based on my formatting, I need 60 pages of rough draft to hit 50k words. I'm at 18 right now. I want to finish about 20k per weekend.

That means I just need to knock out 2 pages today, right? Wrong. Why? Because now that I'm going, I don't just want to finish early, I want to finish way early. Le sigh.

So, status. I'm at 15239 words of 50k. I'm on target to complete right on the 30th and pretty close to my side goal of finishing early if I knock out a couple more pages today. And, I'm stressing because I want to see if I can round this weekend off to 20k words or more (that would be 10k words today).

Hmm, why can't I be this motivated when I write books any other time of the year? Don't know, but despite the stress, I dig the game. I guess that's why I keep coming back for more.


So, who else is playing along with NaNoWriMo this year? What are your goals? How are you doing? And, most importantly, are you having fun?

NaNoWriMo 2014: Avalee and the Dragon

An idea has hatched.

My NaNoWriMo story this year will be called Avalee and the Dragon. Here's a short description.

Avalee's village is peaceful and safe, a great place to live, but the long shadow of Dragon's Mount is a constant reminder of the price the villagers must pay every ten years.

I have a ton of ideas floating around for this one, but I think I can get 50k words out of it and have fun doing so.

Wish me luck!

NanoWriMo Plans and Book News

So, next month's NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month), and based on last year's attempt to dodge that siren's call, I'm probably going to be spending my month writing.

Last year, I said I wouldn't, then on around day 17 I decided I would. I still can't believe I finished in time, but The Freeze is in the 3rd round of edits and nearly ready for some beta reading and cover design. Already I've chopped about 4k words, so it's no longer a 50k book, but that's ok. The challenge is to write a 50k first draft in November, not a 50k final draft.

Anyway, it's a ton of frenzied, nerve wracking storytelling and, of course, I'm going in without a plan. I have so much trouble even thinking of a topic ahead of time, and I've got to hand it to those who manage to do that and come up with an outline. I admire them for that.

So, what do I do to get ready? Well, I make sure I have a notebook (that I won't likely use), I forewarn my husband, and I tell everyone to ignore the absent gazes that might overcome me from time to time. I also run through ideas in my head, particularly on the way to work when I'm fresh.

I probably won't be reading a ton of new books when I'm actively writing, but I will keep reading, and I will keep up with my family time and my hobbies. Just because I'm writing doesn't mean I have to lose sight of everything else that matters in my life.

That being said, who else plans to take the NaNoWriMo challenge this year?

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Book news:

All four of my published books are 99c on Amazon right now. Fearless is now out in paperback. The Freeze is on track for release in December. Shadows of Valor 3 will likely be released in Winter of 2015 (still on the 2nd draft). Finally, I'm about 30% in on a vampire story. It has no name yet, but it's been fun to write so far.

That's all for now.

NaNoWriMo 2013- The Freeze is Complete at 50310 Words

This morning at 2:30am, I finished The Freeze, my second NaNoWriMo novel. It's a fantastic feeling, wrapping up a 50k word novel in 30 days, and this time, I did it in 14.  Talk about procrastination.  But it was fun.

Just for fun, here is what my mini descent into the crazy writing frenzy that is NaNoWriMo looked like this year.  Obviously I'm a weekend warrior when it comes to writing, but this time I took it to the extreme. I had a couple of 8k days and even a 10 and 12k day. Coming to the end of one of those is like coming to edge of an insanity cliff and looking over the edge.

NaNoWriMo 2013-The Freeze

I was good and only wrote 3k on Thanksgiving, spending the day cooking and the evening watchin Punkin Chunkin on Discovery with my family.  But on Black Friday I avoided the stores and sales in favor of a pie induced sugar high and a 12k word writing marathon (actually 10k on the 29th and 2k after midnight).  I must have found words for the perfect ending three or four times in those final few hours, only to check my word count and realize my work was not done yet, a symptom of NaNoWriMo. The book isn't over until you reach 50k.

So what did I write about? A frozen future where residents of a city, led by a prepper named Mr. Prowler have taken refuge in an underground tunnel system. A young girl, Andrea, sick of writing sappy, optimistic essays for what the adults call school, decides to try her luck on one of Mr. Prowler's scavenging crews, who go topside to sweep the abandoned city for cast off supplies and materials.  With the help of a boy she likes who happens to be Mr. Prowler's son, she joins the team as Chaz.  But getting on the team isn't at all what she expected and she soon finds herself separated from the team, lost in the frozen city and alone.

NaNoWriMo 2012- Fearless (The Zombie Logs)

Of course, this year I knew I could do it. This wasn't my first trip down this road, and last year I spent 20 of the 30 days of NaNoWriMo delving into my version of the zombie apocalypse. Why? Not because I like zombies or zombie stories. Quite the opposite in fact. I wrote Fearless (The Zombie Logs) to combat the desire to hide out in the computer room whenever my husband watched The Walking Dead. It was therapeutic. It was also fun, sad, and the first book that actually had a scene that brought tears to my eyes when I wrote it. I also gave myself some writing constraints just to make it a bit more interesting. One, I never say the word zombie anywhere in the book. Two, the whole thing is written as a journal from the perspective of a young woman who managed to survive the outbreak and who finds herself the leader of a small band of survivors. Three, I only name three characters over the course of the book, though to hit my word count I did a run down of who's who at the very end. Still, I surprised myself.  Even with all these constraints, the characters took on realistic identities, humor and tragedy blossomed from the pages, and I even managed to fit in a little romance.  

The downside, though, was that I had a totally weird timeline since I didn't have a calendar out when I wrote it.  I'm working on taming that timeline in my current editing run for this book. In fact, I've got everything labeled with the correct date and now I'm just running through it making sure I haven't talked about it being Christmas in the middle of April or Thanksgiving in the middle of October.  Details, details. 

That's all for now. I'm giving myself the rest of the day off to recover.  Tomorrow? Well, tomorrow I'm back to editing. 

Did any of you NaNoWriMo this year? If so, share your experiences with it in the comments.  What was your best word count day? How much caffiene did you ingest? Etc. Etc.

While you're at it check out MichaelSciFan's interview with me and enter to win a free ecopy of Forgotten Valor.

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NaNoWriMo is going full swing, but I told myself I wouldn't do it this year.  Nope, not me.  Instead, I want to recover from the months of editing and rewriting I've just wrapped up for Forgotten Valor (to be released Nov 20, pictured right), Shadows of Valor, and The Golden Ship.  But here's what's going to get me.  I've got an insane urge to just jump right in there, 7 days late, and do it anyway.

Ideas are churning.  Plot points and twists are spinning, looping, and somersaulting through my head on the way to work, when I'm eating dinner, when I'm practicing Karate.  I can't stifle them.  I can't ignore them.  And the longer I try to the more they press on my mind.  The story is calling, and I'm not sure I can resist much longer.

So, long story short, I've got a long weekend coming up and I might just throw sanity and peace to the wind and jump into the frenzy after all.  So, on the off chance I jump in and do it, the posts and reviews might become sparse this month.  If not, I'll work on taming the book I wrote for it last year, Fearless, and see if I can get it up and running by Christmas.  Nothing like a zombie book release just in time for the holidays.

Well, I'll keep you posted.  Wish me luck!  Either way I'll be busy this month.