The Nanowrimo Dilemma

So I've done this fun writing event called Nanowrimo for three years in a row. I finished the first book, and only half finished the other two. That makes me so sad. I loved writing those stories! I wonder if I'll ever get back to them.

But the dilemma, and I bet you can guess it. Should I do it this year? It's like coming up in mere weeks! But, as you know, I'm not feeling the writing thing like I have the past three years, but yeah, this truly might get me going again.

But, I just don't know.

Is there anyone out there reading this that is going to do it this year? Like TRULY do it? Like really commit to it? Because if I have buddies, ones that will chat with me and share pieces with me and moan with me, then maybe... maybe... I'll try it again.

If I'm on my own, I don't think I have it in me.

And then there's the question of what I'd write. All my ideas sound so lame right now. The only thing I want to do is write kdrama fan fiction, which is just...silly. Or write the book I wish Kill the Boy Band would have been...so also a sort of fan ficiton... which, yeah,  cracks me up.

What is fan fiction anyway? Taking someone else's story and messing with it to make it your own? But it's different than a retelling, right? You use their characters?  You use their world? The plot is pretty much the same, but you change up the characters? I don't know!!!

Really, how would you define this?

Because maybe, if I don't have to think up all my own stuff, I can try it.

Maybe.

So... fan fiction, with a buddy or two...can this happen?

NaNoWriMo Update Four: DONE!

Actually, I got to my 50,000 words last Tuesday! So I made my goal of finishing before Thanksgiving, which is always helpful since my attention needs to be so many other places then.  And I haven't looked at my story since I declared myself a winner... and I must say, I've been missing it. Dying to know what happens next!! Because no, it is far from finished.

But I'm also frustrated with all the stuff I skimmed over and left out and forgot. All the stuff I meant to do! So here's hoping I can keep up the everyday writing habit (once this crazy weekend is over!) and finish, then fix this story.

I want to be brave enough to share an excerpt with you... let's see...how about this dance moment:

He smiles and brings her close. In her ear he whispers, “I’m watching you.” Then he spins her away and hands her off to the next guy. Her head explodes and the dreaded dizziness descends on her again. Her feet tangle up, twisted into each other. She stumbles. But hands grab her and keep her spinning and spinning and spinning from person to person to person. How long does this crazy dance last? She’s not sure she can make it much longer and keep her dinner down.

And then, the music changes again. Slows, clears, shifts. She is handed off one last time, to someone who keeps her and holds her, steady and sure against him. She knows without looking that somehow Khol has found her in that frenzy of spinning bodies. She lays her face against his chest. It’s damp and heaving, so she knows he too has been out here dancing, this whole time. Her arms come up and around his waist. She refuses to move again for now. Maybe forever. If this dance is a throw-a-girl-around-dance, she won’t play. But his arms hold her tight, his hands press hot through the thin material of her shirt. It appears they are staying put for at least one song's worth. They barely move to the music. She closes her eyes and tries to catch her breath and dispel the spinning in her head. The movement of his chest calms her. Their breathing slows, bit by bit, and syncs together. Now, this, this she could do forever. 

The first he and the second he are two different he's in guess that's not clear from this bit! And yeah, it appears there's a dance of some sort in every story I write. Or several dances for that matter. There's just something about dancing, is there not? :)

Anyway, so there you go. Nano 2015 is a wrap! I can't believe it's over already! And now here's to another year of revising!

NaNoWriMo Week Three Update

Just in case you're following along, here's my week three report. And wow, that week flew by, did it not? I did have a couple of bad days this past week, writing-wise, just as I expected, though even then I managed a couple hundred words just so I could update the page and say that I've haven't actually missed a day! Even that's a pretty crazy goal and accomplishment really.

So, I loved my story up until Thursday/Friday and then BAM, I hit a wall. You know all the feelings... why am I doing this... this is crap... what a lot of time to waste doing something that will go nowhere... I don't know what to write next... it's terrible so why try...blah blah blah. I hate it when that happens. But then Saturday things picked up again, I got over the little hump of "what happens next" even though the story is going its own direction and I'm just hanging on for the ride. I wish I was more imaginative than I am so I could truly figure things out but who knows. Maybe something cool will happen.

My story has three distinct parts... and I've just crossed over into the third part. While that doesn't necessarily mean I'm nearing the end, it feels like things are going to start getting crazy in anticipation for that climatic moment (assuming I can write myself there) which makes me excited. I'm frustrated because I keep thinking of things I need to go back and change, or add or fix or delete, but that's not what Nano is about, so there's a huge list that's started and hopefully I can remember what/how/who/when I need to make those changes.

I was pondering sharing an excerpt but I'm vetoing everything. Instead, I thought I'd share a list of some of my characters names. A few of them have been nameless until today and I'm excited that they finally have names! So I give you, my characters:

Khol
Taryn
Traze
Brandi
Jastin
Landan
Zax
Jaro
Gavrin
Yan
Solmon
Balee
Lira

Speaking of characters, one thing that happened this week, I started reading last year's Nano story, which I haven't looked at for pretty much a whole year. And I'm dying to work on it again! And revive those characters! And actually finish it and polish it and see what someone other than me, thinks of it. So that'll be the project starting just as soon as Nano ends. I wonder if I can revise two stories at the same time. Or three even.

Well anyway, as of the beginning of today, I'm at about 42,000 words. One week to get 8000 more. I can totally do this, despite Thanksgiving!

How about you? Feeling strong? Pushing on to the end? Giving up? Wondering what the heck is happening to your story?

Isn't Nano so much fun!?!

This is how I keep track of my word counts.

Brand new writing buddies. Aren't they so cute!?

NaNoWriMo Week Two Update

Another week down! Everyone says we should be feeling sluggish and bugged and frustrated with our stories about now. And while I'm having moments of those things, for the most part, I'm feeling really good about my story. Today, I managed over 3000 more words, which bumped me over 30,000 total. That number looks so cool! :)

I remember being worried about having enough time this past week for writing and it turned out not too bad. But believe me, this coming week is going to be horrendous! That's why this weekend I want to double up to get a good big pile of words so that if I have some completely no writing days, it won't totally kill the groove.

Some highlights of the writing week:

• killing off a character, which, while exciting in theory, turned out to be a bit anti climatic in the story. Note to self: revise this bit later!

•  having lots and lots of sprints with Megs which really ups the word count! They are scary in a sense and awesome in a sense. Try it, you'll like it!

• some pretty good swoony scenes, but alas.. with the wrong guy! Things will be shaking up this week!

• stuff that has come up that I really need to figure out and learn more about: weapons, boxing, secondary characters names and attributes, the layout of space ships, more detail in the back stories, more detail in the level of technology this world has 

•  I decided that perhaps I'm creating world that I can call "steampunk space." I have no idea what that means, but I like the sound of it.

Well, at this point, half way in, I'm happy to say, I'm still having fun! How about the rest of you Nano-ers??

NaNoWriMo Week One Update

One week down, three to go! It's been a fun week of writing. It started out slow and I felt my story was so so boring, trying to establish character and setting and all that, but the past three days of writing it feels like it has really picked up. I feel excited to go where I think ('cause you never really know!) it's going and I can't wait to get there! This is the adrenaline of Nano that I keep talking about, the addictive nature of it. That feeling of anticipation to see if what's in your head pans out. And how.

I've had a few new thoughts about my story after starting that I'm excited... well nervous... about too. I think this time around I'm being much braver, and that's such a good thing I'm noticing! I don't know, I guess we'll see.

So, after a week I'm at 15,805 words, which is a little head of the game. That's because I know there will be crazy non-writing days to come and I really want to be ahead when those hit! I haven't written anything yet today, so here's hoping by the end of today we'll be about 2000 more, which seems to be my daily average-ish. Only today might turn out to be one of those crazy days before it's over.

What I'm loving so far about this current writing experience:

• writing in present tense. I feel more... um... present! :)
• having my characters be different, like not exactly what we'd expect to see here in this world.
• having the world be different, though sometimes that's hard because my imagination is crap
• having a better idea of where this is going, and that's only because it's a retelling so I have the outline of the original story to go by!
• having my sister participating with me fairly consistently. We chat while writing and moan and worry and sprint and bounce ideas around. It's lovely. Here's hoping she stays with me for yet another week! And another. And another.
• having my family "get it" a little better this time around because they've actually seen a printed up visual of the story from two years ago. I think that makes a huge difference, to actually see that... oh, cool...you really WERE writing something!
• figuring out a music playlist as I go. Why is that so much fun?
• having so many published authors, and favorite authors participating. I know they have in the past, but it seems more this time. Anyway, to compare my daily word count with Brandon Sanderson's (so far about the same!) makes me smile. (To have him working on Stormlight 3 makes me smile even bigger.)
• feeling a little braver and a little less restrained in the writing and truly noticing an improvement. This is the best thing of all. Here's hoping it's not all in my <crappy> imagination!

I can't wait to keep going! Are you writing? How did your first week go? Are you still excited about your story? Let me know!!

(P.S. If we aren't buddies on the Nano page... find me: SueySays. Also, if you are interested, I pushed  the public button on my new writing website. Still not sure how to make the transition with writing related posts, as you can see I wanted to reach more people and post it here, (and I'll probably cross post this one there) but we'll get there maybe. If you click over, let me know what you think. I'd love feedback!)

Nanowrimo 2015

It's my third year committing to Nano. I'm amazed at the excitement that accompanies this commitment. Why does it seriously cause butterflies in my gut just to say to myself: "I'm going to write a book this month?" And that happens even though I have no idea what it's going to be? I think it's because the anticipation of creating some new characters, and a new story, and a new situation,  is the coolest. It's like making new friends. Or falling in love. Or something. It's really weird and I have no words to describe it.

Maybe the only way I can actually get words out is to push myself like this endeavor makes one do, and have that tangible goal and be doing it with thousands of others around the world. Maybe that's it.

And it's yet to be determined if my words are worth anything. This part is the hardest most frustrating bit. But for some reason I keep pushing on in this and hope to find out soon. There's a small group who say they (the words) aren't too bad so for now, I'm believing them and pushing on.

At any rate, the feeling I get doing this is addicting, so here I am for the third year.

So if you plan to give it a try, either again or for the first time, let me know so we can be Nano buddies. I find the site to be pretty worthless with regard to connecting to people, but it's fun to see what your plans are and your progress as the month goes along. (You can find my profile here.) Most of the real connection happens on Twitter or through our blog posts, so, do let me know so I can stalk you!

As for my plans . . . I hope to finally try science fiction. YA of course. I've always thought it would be fun to set a story on a cruise boat... so I thought I'd combine the two ideas. A space cruise. And then bad stuff happens. But I'm not sure what that bad stuff is yet. I've started making a Pinterest board (a secret one of course!) with ideas, which is a blast. And I've pondered a re-telling of some kind, because that seems to be such a trend and makes plotting a gazillion times easier. So. Maybe.

Meanwhile, I'm still working through my first story, the one I wrote at my first Nano two years ago. And I haven't yet forgotten about last year's Nano story. Whenever I read over some of that stuff it makes me smile and I love those characters. So. I want to share that someday and see if it's just me or if others would feel the same. There's a lot to do! What have I started???

Let me know if you are Nanoing!

NaNoWriMo Update: I Did It!

Well, would you look at that! I actually managed to get to freaking 50,000 words!

A few days ago I decided to give up. I was close, but not close enough and figured with Thanksgiving and all the stuff I would be doing with family that I'd have no time to keep up with it. So I just decided, this is not happening.

But then, whenever I had a moment or two, and in the mornings before things got crazy, I wrote a few hundred words here and there. And wouldn't you know it, those few hundred added up to a thousand or so and that thousand or so added up. Which is to say that I managed to keep pretty much right on task until just now, a few minutes ago,when  I finally broke 50,000 and WON!

So, the story is not at all done yet, which is pretty normal for most people. 50,000 isn't long enough to be a complete novel usually. So I have more to write to finish it. And now I must decide, is this story worth finishing, because it's a pretty crap story. Fun, perhaps. Silly, for sure. Weird, definitely, but worth finishing? I don't know.

I'm going to give it a break because one thing I do know, I'm sick to death of it! And after a little break, we'll see if I'm dying to come back to it and see how it all ends.

Whew. I'll be happy to get back to reading and watching Netflix in my "spare" time. And work on last year's story, which I actually miss somehow!

And maybe I'll manage  to decorate a tree and buy some Christmas after all!

I can't even tell you how nice it is to see that number!!!

NaNoWriMo 2014: Google Searching

We're half way there! Wow, time flies!

One of the most interesting things about writing a book is researching. And by researching I mean simply finding the answers to questions that come up as you are in the middle of a scene or something. Or you are pondering something but then you don't feel like you can write it correctly until you google around for a minute. It happens pretty much constantly. And I love it though it is EXTREMELY distracting to doing the actual writing and can make what would be an hour writing moment turn into hours and hours.

So, I've been making a list of  stuff I've been googling this week:

* John Travolta movies of the 70s
* Led Zeppelin
* How long ET was in the theater
* renting VCRs  and what movies were available to rent in the 80s
* what a bracelet from Poland would look like
* 80s slang
* what was playing in theater on specific weekends in 1982.
* what songs were on the radio during specific weeks in 1982
* Flock of Segulls, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, B 52s
* My Favorite Year

What have you been learning about for your Nano writing experience?

And now I'm off to try and get to 25,000 today, the half way point. I have a couple thousand to write. Wish me luck!

NaNoWriMo Update: Week One!

Well, one week down and I'm at just over 14,000 words.... barely hanging on at the "PAR" amount. I was just looking at what I wrote last year at this time and I was at just over 21,000 words. So, right there you can see the comparison! I feel flounder-y! Friday especially was terrible. I had no desire to write and no idea what to say. What do you do on days like that? I managed 700 words of crap. So there you go.

What else am I feeling about now. I'll tell you:

** I'm enjoying my story but I think it's pretty dumb and silly.
** My writing is also dumb and silly. No pretty words or descriptions. It's all angst angst angst.
** Most of my writing dilemmas are finding ways to use 80s slang.
** I'm using WAY to many !!!! because it's two girls writing to each other and it just calls for lots of !!!! you know what I mean?
** It's hard to use a lot of conversation in an epistolary novel and I love writing conversation, so that's a problem.
** I am enjoying cheering everyone else on who's joined this party. Are you on my cheer list?
** Time is being an issue, as it is for everyone else. There's too much stuff happening. And this week I must celebrate a birthday too! I think I will tell everyone... for my birthday I want to sit at the computer for the whole day!
** Actually, I'm going to make everyone go to Interstellar with me. :)
** Do you see how easily distracted I am? The same happens when I'm writing!
** I'm going to be highlighting lots of music and movies in my story and I want to know... what's your favorite Led Zeppelin song? Comment below!
** Mostly I am feeling a little sluggish with my story right now and I think I need to make something really big and exciting happen fast!

And finally, to share a little excerpt (because I'm stupid like that.) Here's a bit I wrote yesterday. And now you can see what I mean about the silly. In this bit... Jan is in English class, writing a note to Liv:

Have you seen what Jace is wearing today? Instead of a tshirt with a button down shirt over the top… it’s just the button down shirt. What happened to the tshirt? He looks so spiffy! I’m dying here in English. I want so bad to say something. Like for instance,

“Hey Jace.” Tap on his shoulder. He turns around. He looks at me with a question in those amazing eyes. And I say, “Hey. You look really nice today. I just thought I’d tell you.”

And then he smiles. And I get how many points for that? Oh, at least another point on our ongoing tally! And maybe he’ll even say, “You look nice too.” And then I’ll turn hot pink and hide in my hair.

Dare me to do it?

(a few intense moments later)

DONE! And now I’m hyperventilating. Must go breathe.

— Jan

LOL. Yeah. So, how's Nano going for you all? 

(P.S. and lest you think I stole the name Jace for my character from a recent series,  let it be known I wanted to use this name WAY before that series came out and made that name really popular!)

NaNoWriMo 2014: Day One!

First sentence: Physics is going to kill me, but I'll die happy. 

Day one was awesome! Guys, I was lucky to have a whole Saturday with pretty much NOTHING on the schedule. It was a perfect day one for Nano!

I did get on the computer at the crack of midnight last night and wrote my first 700 words. Just enough to participate in that initial rush of excitement for all the online peeps and to get the feel for what I wanted to do. And then, after a major sleep-in this morning, I got up and have pretty much been on the computer the rest of the day. (I did run an errand or two and have been up and down here and there.)

So my word count for Day One is just over 4,000. I needed to do at least two days worth of writing because tomorrow will be a whole different story. We have a family event and I'll have zero writing time. ZERO. So today I planned to get ahead. Thankfully, that worked out.

But can I just say, wow, it doesn't take long for a story to get in your head and take up residence! Know what I mean? I had my characters ready to go and an idea of what might happen, but nothing really set and then I start writing and it suddenly, it starts to feel like a real story. I love that.

Granted, my story is a really simple one. I have no idea how people do it who have these massive huge complicated plots going on. Impressive. But still, even with a simple story, I'm finding that there's going to be more going on and more to keep track of than I thought! And my characters are already morphing into something just a little different from what I'd imagined them to be. It's almost creepy how they do that!

And all this means I can't wait to keep going. But for now, I think I'll read a bit.

How's all my Wrimo friends doing so far? Want to share your first sentence? Please? :)

NaNoWriMo 2014: Prepping

I had a blast last year writing updates here on the blog about how my Nano experience was going. Hopefully some of you, my fellow Nano participants at least, will find it fun to follow along this year with whatever thing I feel the need to vent about. I'm thinking maybe Saturday will be a good day to blog about this as it feels like that's normally a pretty dead day around here. So we'll see how that goes.

So today, we are ONE WEEK away from November 1! Can you believe it? That means ONE WEEK to get ready! What do I need to be doing this week?

1. Finish last year's story! Yes, all year I've been going through it getting alpha reader feedback and fixing a few things but mostly figuring out the big things that need fixing. But I didn't quite get through it! And.. I never quite actually finished to the point of writing THE END. Sadly, I don't think it's going to happen this week. Sigh.

2. Figure out who my characters are in this next book. I've got an idea, and I've got a basic thought for some of their "things" but not totally. I'm hoping much of this will come when I start writing. But I need to make some more lists, especially for ideas for side characters and family situations and stuff.

3. Have some blog posts scheduled. I might do the BookBlogWriMo prompts... as featured over at Book Bumblings.  Or I could get really ahead in Top Tens. and catch up on reviews, I have a couple to write. But for the most part, I think I'll be winging the blog as I go this month. Last year I seemed to keep up okay, but we'll see.

4. Stock up on easy to make food and plan a few crock pot dinners. For the most part, my family doesn't care about dinners anymore, but still, it would make me feel better if I have a few things planned. Besides, I won't be writing very well if I'm starving.

5. Plot out a schedule of sorts. I'm usually quite the fan of doing stuff whenever it fits and not forcing a schedule, but I've recently (within the past couple of weeks) been doing tons better with the Zumba thing (I should blog about that one of these days. I want to find out who my fellow Zumba-ers are!) and I know for a fact that I'll write better if I manage to continue fitting that in. So.. how to do it? I've got to figure it out, that's all I know!

6. Research some more! My book will be set in the 80s and I want to be sure to include actual events that happened then, and so I've been making lists. But I want to feel good about those lists and like I'm not forgetting something really huge and obvious! What happened in the world during the school year of 82 to 83 (Sept 82 to May 83) that I simply can't forget? Any 80's children out there? Let me know!!

I'm sure there's more stuff, but those are the main things in my brain at the moment. Wish me luck this week with all the plans! Seriously, I'm so excited I could explode... or something.

P.S. I'm thinking I need some motivating helpers too:

A Writing Space!

When my oldest son got married in March, my middle son moved downstairs into his room. That left a room upstairs totally free to do with whatever I wanted! And I wanted to create a writing space. I wanted to call it my "morning" room like they do in the Regency books... you know the room where they go in the morning to do their correspondence?  Well, not sure I've settled on that name as I think I'll probably spend many evenings there too!

As I was dreaming about this room, my husband decided he wanted to partake in the excitement, so we began to envision ways to have a shared office. I told him he had to be creative if he was to use this room. So while he might not do writing, he maybe will do some computer programming. That's the idea anyway!

So I waited most of the summer to get moving on this room project. We had some furniture in there that we needed to move out, and we had to wait until my daughter, also recently married, moved to a spot where she could take some of this furniture. So at the end of August after all the moving and furniture shuffling happened, we started working on it.

Here's the bedroom after my son moved out,
and during the time we used it for our Japanese student for a week.

With the furniture gone, we could paint over the green stripes!
This is a nice subtle gray color.
Although this picture makes it look puke color.

Painting is done (and now you can see the gray I' talking about!)
and instead of replacing the carpet
we bought a cool looking area rug instead.

This is where we had a hold up for awhile. I'd seen the perfect desks at IKEA one day, but we weren't ready for them yet. We went back the next week and learned that they were discontinued and there were none in stock. But, they were planning to have a new brand replace the old. But they wouldn't be in for a month! GAH! I wanted my desks!

But we waited. For about two weeks. Then one day, my husband was passing IKEA and decided to drop in and check on the situation. The desks were in! So, we bought them, along with some book shelves, and that weekend, we assembled furniture! So exciting!

Here's what it looked like after assembling was over and I moved in my computer.

And here, with more stuff moved in, a curtain, a lamp and a new chair!
My husband has yet to personalize his half, so Toto is using it for
a homework station. 

So there you go. It's been a fun and exciting project and makes me so excited to sit at the computer and do all my computer stuff... writing, blogging, etc. It's so nice to have a spot to organize papers and writing books, and notebooks and file this that and the other. I love it!

And now that means, no more excuses for not writing!  I'm ready to go. Nano 2014 here I come!

A to Z Blogging: Nano-ing Again

While November is Nanowrimo, I guess April is Camp Nanowrimo... which is different in that you can set your own word count goal. And I'm gathering that everything is also much more low key.

But since I've been in the midst of revising (ah that's such an official term! I want to say something like... fixing!) the stuff I wrote in November, I thought, why not? And joined up with Camp Nano. I'm thinking that this was the initial purpose for Camp Nano anyway, for all the November Nano-ers to set aside a month for fixing.

So I've been fixing... revising... my story. And it's really hard to actually call that writing. I mean, how do you determine a word count when all you are doing is fixing and changing words around? But the other day, one of the Camp Nano dudes during the live stream said he calculated every 1 hour of revising as 1000 words. I liked that! So now to determine how many hours I've worked on my story this month....

I have no idea.

But it's a good handful. And it's fun. Yes, it really is fun. It's great to take all those messy words and turn them into something.... not quite as messy. And to figure out where more detail needs to be, or where less detail needs to be. And then share them and let others tell you. And then hopefully they'll say, "hey, that's... not too bad really." Or maybe they'll say, "Um.. yeah... so it's pretty bad. This is how you fix it!"

But I get discouraged when I go to the conferences and/or workshops and they say.... "your first novel is crap you know. You won't have anything good until your, I don't know, 16th novel or so!" Which makes me want to stop working on this my first novel and start some others so I can get the 16th one! Why waste time on this my first one, right? That's what I hear when  they say stuff like that!

Because, speaking of time, the other bit that's discouraging is the part when they say, "Yeah, so this will take awhile. Yeah, probably like 20 years or something before anything will happen."

That's all well and good if you start this process in your 20s or even 30s. But what if I'm nearly 50? Yeah... what then? I might be DEAD by 70!!!

But still... I'm revising away, because truly, I have no expectations other than learning and enjoying the process and just the ability to say, I've done this thing.


(For more A to Z posts, here's the main website link.)

NaNoWriMo Ends!

So I survived my first try at this Nanowrimo thing. I submitted my words clocking in at 53,775. However, I didn't quite finish the story. It still has a couple more chapters to add. Thanksgiving happened, and I haven't sat down to try and finish things up. And now I'm out of the mode. Wow, that makes such a difference. How can I wrap it up if I haven't been immersed in that story for several days? Ugh. No wonder this exercise makes you pretty much write every day if you want to finish. If you don't write every day you totally lose the flow. I get that now!

Anyway, it was a fun experience. I look forward to slowing down now and spending lots and lots of time making it better and fixing stuff and adding stuff and making the actually story make sense, I hope.

And, I hope I can justify the time spent doing it. If nothing else I promised Kathy she could read it (if I can read hers of course!) but there is no way I'm sharing it until  I fix a TON of things! :)

My husband is convinced I should go on to pursue things further, but I feel like that is so far out there, I can't even go there. Several someones will have to tell me it's good enough to go for it before I can convince myself of that. So we'll see.

Meanwhile, I'll be much more aware of potential stories, because I'm pretty sure I'll be doing this again! It really makes me want to go to more writing conferences, find a writing group and really just... you know.. do it!

Here's to writing in 2014!!

Nanowrimo Update: Google Searches

I'm still writing! Are you impressed? It's been pretty hard at some spots. I truly have no idea where I want this story to go, I mean,  a little idea, but I can't figure out how to get there. And I'm to the point now where I need to start getting there, so it's a little weird right now. But still fun. I really am anxious to just get this over with though, so I can go back and add and fix and figure stuff out. They say that's what December is for.

Yeah, right. Maybe I'll try for January on that.

One of the most interesting parts of writing is learning all the stuff you don't know. And then using our lovely Google to figure it out. Kathy from Read This Instead shared some of her searches with you this week. And I've seem some fun Nanowrimo forums where people go on and on with the interesting things they are looking up. So I thought I'd join the party list a few of my searches for you too.

Things I've been learning about:

• pink cowboy boots
• horse riding terms
• poisonous pipe smoke
• the Navajo skinwalker legend
• Native American stories for the constellations
• marriage and relationships among cousins
• the Homestead Act
• the history of Memorial Day
• The Witchery Way
• Paul Revere and the Raiders
• usage of the term "pertnear"

Fun stuff, yes? I hope to make that list even more interesting before it's over! One week left! I can do this!

Swoony vs Cheesy: A Mission For You

So I mentioned in my Nano update on Sunday's post that I'm curious and pondering and wondering how authors can write scenes that come off as swoony rather than cheesy or corny. I'm to those parts in my own Nano story now where as I'm writing I'm thinking, "sheesh, this sounds so stupid!" And, you know, I don't want them to sound stupid, I want them to be SWOONY!

Even though I've read I-don't-even-know-how-many-books where there are swoony parts, I can't quite put my finger on what makes them so and then to be able to go and do likewise.

Thus, I'm coming to you all for help!

Here's how I define the two:

SWOONY: Obviously, the parts of the romantic story that make you swoon, as you read it. Which is to say, it is full of all sorts of emotions that make you actually feel right along with the characters. It makes you fall in love too. It makes you say after reading it, "that was the BEST!"

CHEESY: The parts of the romantic story that make you groan and roll your eyes and go oh, sheesh, why? It makes you want the scene to just be over already. It makes you wonder why she even likes him, or he even likes her, because you just don't get it.

I've been asking around in other places, but I really want to ask here and to know what you my bestest blog buddies think. Here's your mission should you choose to accept it:

1. Tell me how you define these terms and what EXACTLY makes one scene one way and one scene other. Are there certain words that need to be used or avoided? Is it simply a matter of cliches vs. new ideas? Is it your investment in the characters? Is it just some overall feeling that you can't really describe? Is it different for everyone? Is it a personal taste sort of thing?

2. Give me some examples! I know you must have your favorite swoon-worthy scene you can share with me! Or even a remembered cheesy one! But I really want to dissect the swoony ones so I can copy learn from them! And no movie scenes allowed because I want to see how the author uses the WORDS to create such scenes. Am I right? So....can you think of some?

Here's one of my favorites from Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi: 

"I can't concentrate. I thought I could do this." He put his hands up in defeat. "Can't." Then he came closer. Aria didn't think her heart could beat any faster, but then it did, faster with every step he took toward her, until it hammered against her chest, making her breathless when he stopped right in front of her. Her wooden blade rested on his chest. She stared at it, her heart in her throat. She stared at the way it pressed into his shirt.

"I've been watching you and Roar. Wanting it to be me training with you." His shoulders came up. "I don't want to do it now."

"Why?" Aria's voice was high and thin.

He smiled, a flash of shyness, before he leaned close. "There are other things I'd rather do when I'm alone with you."

Time to step off the edge. "Then do them."

Anyway, I hope some of you take me up on this and share your thoughts. I really would love to know what you think and what you feel is the bottom line thing that is the difference between these two sorts of romantic moments.

Have fun! Thank you!

Nanowrimo Update: Week Two Slump

The word on the street is that if you participate in this Nano thing, you WILL feel a little discouraged during week two.

Yep, they are right!

Here's what I've been experiencing this week:

• fighting the negative talk in my head "this is crap, why did you even try to do this, what will you do with this when this is over, this is all a waste, you can't write, why are you even trying, this is crap, this is crap, this is crap"
• fighting the urge to go fix things... now! 
• wondering where the HECK this is going. I feel like I'm in a fog with no direction. I have no idea what to do with my characters next. I'm second guessing everything I had in my head at the start.
• And... I feel like things are happening too fast and I'm going to get to the end when I don't want to be at the end yet.
• dreading the writing time instead of looking forward to it. That's because... as I already said, I don't know what to write next. (Ummm... I guess people often call this writer's block... yeah, that.)
• finding time... time is always an issue, always
• wondering how I make things SWOONY and not CHEESY! Man, I want to write something swoony so bad! It all comes out cheesy! GAH!! (Look for a future post on this soon!)
• worrying about letting someone read this someday. It's a viable thing to worry about, don't you think? BUT, I shouldn't be thinking about that now. Write.. .just write and write and write.

Well, so there's a start of the "problems" of the second week for me. I am still keeping the word count up, just passed the 30,000 mark tonight. Wahoo! So, I feel committed for the long haul now. Here's hoping I can figure out enough story to last the remaining 20,000! If only I could go back and add the detail that I keep thinking about... but no... that is not allowed!

Here's to week three of newbie Nanoing!

Nanowrimo Update: The Things I'm Learning

As you may or may not have noticed, my blogging.. and reading.. is suffering from my participation in this Nano thing. But... I'm learning so much stuff! For instance:

• It's really really hard not to use adverbs! I like a good adverb now and then. It's also really hard not to use really! Or very.
• The whole time I'm trying to write there's a thing, a demon sort of thing in my head that is saying constantly "show don't tell, show don't tell, show don't tell." 
• Those author people have been right all along.. the characters really DO take over! 
• It's fun when you are on a roll and it's not fun when you come to slamming stop.
• It's very weird to get caught up in a story that's coming out of your own head. Very weird.
• Music helps. And so does chocolate.
• I am much more distracted by life and stuff happening around me when I'm trying to write than when I am trying to read. This is proving to be challenging.
• If they say "write what you know" then why am I ending up writing stuff I don't know? Why?
• Being aware of word count has been interesting. I'm finding that my normal sit down and write moments can get me to about 1000 words pretty easy...after that I have to push. 
• Imagining someone else reading this stuff I'm writing makes me a little sick to my stomach with anxiety. How do the real authors ever get past this point?
• I feel like I'm writing a story that is very much a skeleton and it needs flesh and clothes so bad!
• If  I were to actually peruse this, I'm going to need a writing group. Just sayin.

At any rate, the experiment has been fun so far! I still feel like I'm crashing a really big party, or playing at a very fun and interesting game. I'm a little worried about keeping up the momentum. I feel like I will run out of stuff to write before I ever come close to that 50,000 word mark. As of this blog post, I have about 21,800 words written. So I guess we'll see!

How are my other writing buddies doing? Any past participants have any great advice for me? 

Nanowrimo: Update One and a Little Writing History

So yes,  I signed up to try this writing-a-book-in-a-month thing. This crazy "let's go and write 50,000 words RIGHT NOW" thing. I still don't know why, but I just needed to try it and see what happens. I just NEEDED to.

Hopefully I won't bore you with an exhausting account of the experience but I thought I'd at least do little updates every week, just in case you did happen to wonder.

But first, I thought I'd give you my writing background history. Because I KNOW you want to know all THOSE details! :)

The first time I remember loving writing was in 3rd grade when the teacher gave us a creative writing journal and a prompt... nearly every day I think. I loved it. No inhibitions then at all!

Then I started a journal when I was 12 and wrote in it very frequently for years and years. That journal (now 15 or so volumes big) is chuck full of angst and drama. So much fun!

Then I went to college and writing got serious and not fun. I should have taken some fun writing classes. Really. So that sort of slowed things down.

Then I had kids and quit writing pretty much anything. Except I did end up editing lots of newsletters... for church, for school, for the family. That was fun too.

And then about 7 to 10 years ago (when my youngest was still little, but I was starting to think... okay, now what?) I took a few online writing classes. And loved them. They got the ideas flowing, the thoughts racing, the excitement peaked. And I read a bunch of writing books and those pumped me up too.

I wrote some things, including a picture book, poems, travel articles, and the start of a book. But then I just put them away.

It was about that time I started this blog. And I started stalking the authors and listening to them and going to the LTUE conference and reading so much more then I was reading before. It was then I decided... I can NEVER do this. There is NO way. Never in a million years.

I deemed myself a reader only and not a writer.

I saw Nanowrimo happening year after year and it looked like a blast, though I knew I didn't heave time for it. And besides. I was not a writer. So there was that.

But then, this year, my daughter had to pick her Winterim experience at school (where they have a concentrated study thing for three weeks after Christmas before going back to normal classes) and she was choosing between a movie making one, and a writing one where they would do their own version of Nanowrimo. I told her if she picked the writing one, I'd do it with her. She picked the movie one.

But that made me think, hey! So maybe I could just go ahead do the REAL Nano this year! I mean, why not? (I watched We Bought a Zoo, and I can say this all the time now!) WHY NOT? November is going to always be crazy, it will NEVER get less crazy, there will NEVER be a dead November, so it's pointless to wait for that little thing to happen.

So.. WHY  NOT?

I thought about doing it all secretly, but realized, what's the fun in that? So instead, I wrote a post and asked you all about it and told you my fears, and then some of you said, I'll do it too! And some of you said, tell your brain to shut up! And some of you said, you know, this really is fun.

So I signed up.

Then for a week, I thought and planned and listed. And realized (not that I didn't already know this) that I don't know how to make a plot happen. But who cares. And I begged for buddies and added a few people and I clicked around and found the forums and the facebook page.

And then I couldn't sleep for thinking about the freaking story!

And then I waited and waited and finally midnight on Thursday (Halloween) came.

Nanwrimo Day One

So I joined the excitement and wrote for about a half hour at the dong of midnight. But actually, I was re-writing because I got out those old chapters, and according to the "rules" you must start over if this is your plan. So I did. Sort of.

Nanwrimo Day One... continued

The first day, Friday, I was busy until the afternoon, and then stuff happened that made me crazy so I waited really, until 10:00 pm to truly write. And I was sick of re-writing so I started in on the new stuff. By midnight (with lots and lots of interruptions between those two hours of course) I had well over 1000 words. It was a stupid chapter I wrote though. I'm anxious to get to the good stuff. Is this what  it's like for the real authors?

The stuff I re-wrote was about 4000 words long. So I counted myself at about 5000 words by the end of day one. Not bad. And it looks much better than it really was.

Nanowrimo Day Two

On this day I had to drop a kid off at an hour long rehearsal so I brought my lap top and hunkered down in the car for that hour and just wrote while I waited. Ah, it as perfect I tell you! No distractions, very comfortable (you'd think the car wouldn't be but it was) beautiful weather. And I actually truly wrote for that hour, another chapter down, 1500 more words! That hour flew by.

I managed to find a few more moments later on the day, but nothing to get too excited about. I'm finding that if anything is going on around me, I tend to have an issue writing. I can read with all sorts of noise, but writing? Not so much.

Today is day three, and here's hoping I can find more snippets of time to write. Without distractions. Ha.

To NaNoWriMo or Not To NaNoWriMo?

I was reading a book this morning (I know, it's hard to believe) and it said something about the conflict between our right and left brains. This is EXACTLY what I've been experiencing the past couple of days.

So what does that conversation between my brain halves look like? Take a peek:

RIGHT BRAIN: You know, you really should try this NaNoWriMo thing. I think you'd love it.

LEFT BRAIN: Are you KIDDING me? Where in the heck would you find time for THAT right now?

RB: Um well, I could do it. I could. I mean, there are moments all through the day that I waste. So I could fill them up with writing.

LB: Yeah, right. Something will have to give. Are you ready to give something? And besides, what makes you think you can write a book. That's like, HARD!

RB: Well, I, you know, write every single FREAKING day! (Almost.) I have tons... thousands... of blog posts you know....

LB: A blog post is different than a book. There's this thing called PLOT. What do you know about plot? Nothing!

RB: Well... what better way to learn then to try. You know, I can TRY at least!

LB: Well, I guess so, but still, it's going to be hard to write something if you have no idea of the direction it's going.

RB: I sort of have a direction. I wrote those four chapters years ago, remember? Back when I thought I could do this? And I just re-read them and, guess what? They aren't half bad!!

LB: They're pretty bad.

RB: It's got some awesome dialogue, you have to admit.

LB: Dialogue is no plot.

RB: You have to start somewhere. Seriously, you KNOW it would be fun to try. You know it! Who cares if we don't know how. And it's not like I'll try to get published or anything. Sheesh.

LB: Well then, why waste all that time if you don't have a goal like that? How can you even justify the amount of time this will take?

RB: It's on my bucket lists... that's how! Those lists (both the bookish one and the whole life one!) justify ANYTHING!

LB: You can't do it.

RB: Yes, I can.

LB: Seriously, you can't.

RB: Oh yes, I so can.

LB: Nope.

RB: Yep

LB: You are not going to do this.

RB: I am. I am so going to.

....and on and on and on it goes.

I'm not kidding this is totally what's been going on in my head for the past few days. One morning I was totally excited about the idea. By the evening, I was thinking, no way. Can anyone relate? How do you overcome this conflict?

And... you ARE doing NaNoWriMo this year? Please, if I do this I need lots and lots of cheering friends, as you can see. We need to fight that dumb left brain!

EDITED TO ADD:

I've just signed up! Now, help me find all you other writers there! :)