Finish line in sight

Last night I made the most progress in my NaNo novel so far. I came in just short of 4k words. With the end in sight things are starting to get pretty interesting in my story and I couldn't stop. Admittedly I had to dry my eyes a couple times as I killed off one of my favorite characters, but I always knew his time was short. Luckily he'll live on in memories :)

Only 8k to go, and I'm so close to the end I'm not sure where I'll put all those words. Last night I started dreaming up new scenes to add some character depth into the novel so that's always an option. I'd guess today I'll get to the end of the story and start working my way back from the start, adding in things here and there.

When I hit 50k this project gets shevled until I sell my first book. Hopefully I will revist and polish it up and it can join it's predessor on a shelf in a book store one day. I've really enjoyed my very first NaNo and can't wait till next year.

Blew through the first half.

Woot over 25k now and still going strong. I've been hitting my daily quota regularly (okay, I admit, I did miss one day) and thanks to some good advice (Thanks Judith http://judithgraves.com/) found a whole new avenue to explore within my book from a second character POV.

I'm getting pretty close to sending out my queries for my first book THE STONE SLEEPERS. Now that I've been tweaking the story line to make things work for the second book, there's some work to go back and fix to keep things linear.

Anyways, enough procrastinating for today (Seriously, my living room didn't need dusting, vacuuming and rearanging...well, probably the dusting, and fine the rearanging too--just bought an X-Box Kinect and those suckers need some open floor space)

Things are starting to pick up now!

I forgot how hard it is to write the beginning of a book. My last one ended up with a total of seven starts. With NaNo I don't have time to rewrite yet so I'm just plowing ahead.

12k plus words. I'm getting into my groove and making some good progress. I'm excited to sit down and see what happens next. I've learnt alot about my characters and the big picture of what this series will end up being.

I think today was a record. I got to my word goal by 10:30 am, instead of staying up late into the night to make sure I didn't fall behind! I have the rest of the day to sit down and write when I want to, rather then having to.

My fav threads in the forums so far are
-Adopt a tag line for a villan (can't stop saying 'I'll kill you right in the face' lol)
-Free words (I wrote down most of them and am crossing them off as I sneak them into my work)
and last but not least
-I didn't know that about my character (so of course I had to write up Declan, my bog snorkeling, Irish distant relation to my FMC that literaly popped up from nowhere and decided he was sticking around)

3 days in!

So NaNo is finally here and instead of going with my well thought out and planned novel--seriously I have each scene written out and filed in a recipe box--I've jumped the smooth sailing ship and am headed up pants mountain along with most everyone else.

I'm still hard at work on my YA novel THE STONE SLEEPER'S and didn't want to get into writing the sequal until it was completely done. Until I could read it start to finish without making the slightest tweak. After realizing that day would never come I said to hell with it, maybe I'll get to know my characters better through the sequal and it can only improve my first novel.

My NaNo project has turned into Book Two of the Stone Sleeper's series and I'm having a blast. The course has been rocky these first few days and I'm desperatly walking around the house gong "I need an action scene, maybe____can happen?"

The forums are a fun place to hang out waiting for inspiration to strike. Already I can't wait to do it again next year!

(4485 and counting)

Prep work

I've been trying to get the house in tip top shape so when November rolls around I can let things slide. That way the house will still be semi-intact at the end of NaNo.
Plus it gives me somthing to do to keep my fingers off my keyboard.
Now that I've got the story brewing in my mind it wants out!

NaNoWriMo

I contemplated doing NaNo last year but was in the midst of a really intense round of edits on my book in progress and decided jumping into a new project wasn't a great idea.

This year however I managed to talk not only myself into it, but my sister as well. Since we live so far away from each other I thought this could be a great thing to bond over.

After signing up I had a minor panic attack...what was I going to write about? I've been so focused on THE STONE SLEEPERS for the past couple years that I haven't begun to think what other projects I could begin developing.

I remembered a few great instructions from my writing class this spring.
First develop your characters, learn about your protagonist, what do they want? Make sure it's not something easily obtainable. We should know what the conflict is by the end of the third chapter. Find ways to keep them from getting what they want.

It was surprisingly easy to come up with a rough idea of a potential novel and start sketching an outline for it. Last night I dreamed up a whole new cast of characters and I can't wait to start writing about them.

Have any thoughts on NaNoWriMo?

Making time to write.

My usual writing time is in the afternoon as my kids nap, something that has to change now. As they have recently been staying up until ten or even eleven at night they need to be weaned off the napping.

Since my computer desk sits in the middle of a very high traffic area of our house I don't get much done duing normal 'business' hours, -the kids run around momming me every five minutes.
Nor do I get any writing time in the evenings when my oldest daughter gets home from school and husband from work. Admittedly I get distracted quite easy. The sound of the television in the next room, the dog barking outside, my husband typing away on his keyboard next to me all fight to keep me in the present, instead of letting my imagination wander into my story. No wonder it takes so long to finish a novel.

Two more years till the little guys are off to school...I can't wait!