Who Else Wants to Win Nano 2011?

    I do! I do! *Raising and waving hand wildly*

   And after two consecutive years of failing Nano, I am stepping up and following a training plan. Nothing complicated or scary. Just three simple steps.

1. Organize Story Ideas. 
  
 I bought a bunch of cheap notebooks during the Back-To-School sales and labeled them all for separate plots that have come up over the months. Then I just jot down notes in the appropriate notebook whenever I think of of something that can go in one of them. It has helped my organization of plotting immensely. 


On November 1st, I will choose a notebook of plot notes and begin my story!

2. Train to Write Early and Everyday

 In my meandering across the web looking for a good kick in the butt to get motivated to write every day, I came across the perfect tool for the occasion: http://750words.com/ .

The link will explain itself best, even without my help. It's a place to write 750 words a day, no matter what they are about. It won't post it or send it anywhere. The only person who sees it is you. The point is to get into your creative mode and start a habit that will get easier the more you do it.

I have my settings sent to send me a reminder email every day at 8 o' clock to write 750 words. My email is the first thing I check when I get on my computer in the morning, so I go right from there to 750words.com and pound them out. So far so good!

3. Plan ahead for Time

  If you are like me, then you know well the feeling of last minute cramming in words as fast as you can before midnight, because you've been busy, or put it off, or took too many breaks. This year, I have vowed to myself that it is not going to happen. Because this year, I'm planning my time. 

First, is making a plan for when and how long I'm going to write. I am currently practicing waking up early and getting my writing done in the morning. I have two major distractions past 8 o'clock in the morning. One is two years old, and the other is four. They are adorable little writing banes. So the plan is to get up and start writing at 7am. I will get as much writing done as I can before the little boogers wake up.

 Second, I'm planning "Catch-Up" days. If I am always on track, these can also be "Forge Ahead" days. I've already talked to my husband about it. So the plan is that on Sunday, he takes the kids out of the house for a couple hours. I will then have the house to myself; peaceful and quiet with nothing for me to do but write.

And Concluding... So there it is. I am planning on following up this plan after November to post about how well it worked for me. If this works, it is totally going to be my personal mantra.

Bring it on Nanowrimo!

Time for the reboot of Nanowrimo!

Nanowrimo finally released their website reboot! It looks awesome and it gets me stoked to start preparing for the 2011 Nanowrimo again! Just for the mood, I'm posting my new 2011 badge!

So it's time to collect all the ideas that have been milling around in my head for the past year and pick a story seed to grow into a novel. I'll come back with a list!

Old Stories, New Stories.

I get Randy Ingermanson's regular emails about writing, organizing and publishing and I often learn new things about writing that didn't occur to me before.

The most recent one I received talked about how a story often doesn't start from nowhere, it starts in the middle of another less interesting story. Ingermanson explains it better. Basically that people aren't waiting around doing nothing before the story begins, they have thoughts, ambitions, and lives that they are already in the middle of. Little Red Riding Hood was going to her Grandmother's house to have tea when she meets the Wolf; David Copperfield lived in a little house with his mother in a loving home until his mother married and her new husband expected Davy to go to Boarding school; Lucy Pevensie was at a mansion because of the war with her siblings and playing a game of hide and seek when she discovered Narnia.

The main point is that the characters have a purpose and an idea of how their world works and what their future looks like before the new story begins. The character's old story is the world as they understand it. The new story begins as their world becomes upset. And when they launch into the new story, their old story influences their thoughts and decisions.

Of course after I read about it, I knew it wasn't any extraordinary secret. Obviously you see it everywhere when you're paying attention. But I realized that this could be a big help for me in writing beginnings. Because I have a really hard time pin-pointing a place to start my stories, a lot of times I start going back further and further into backstory trying to figure out where to begin. Honestly, I most often have to do some free-writing about what I want to say in the story in order to start comfortably writing the actual story.

In Practice.

I am developing a story about a man who is traveling and comes upon a village on the side of a mountain. The sun is setting soon so he decides to stay for the night and continue the following morning. Throughout the evening however, he gets the feeling he is being watched by the villagers whenever he isn't looking. He tries to ask the serving woman about it, but she merely dismisses it as normal for people in a small place to stare at strangers. He agrees, until he realizes later that night that there are very few men in the village near his age, and none that look to be older. His first impulse is to leave, but after learning about the town's curse, he begins to believe his only hope is to stay.

Now I need to separate the old story and the new story. Obviously the new story begins when he feels there is something strange about the way people are acting in this town. The old story is where I begin, however, and it's the part I'm not sure of. So here's for a short summary.

Old Story	New Story
Man is traveling a long distance. Why? He stops in a village  he's never been to before.What is his original destination? He is alone, who are the people that he knows and is familiar with?	Man feels people are staring at him. He asks about it. His concerns are discounted, but then he realizes some disconcerting things.

HTML Tables

I don't know anything about where my character is coming from or what his initial purpose is. It's a block because I need to know where he's coming from to write his point of view.

New Nano Year coming up

Its September, and Nano is right around the corner of October. This means this month is dedicated to plotting, characters and background!

Heigh ho, heigh ho...

Lagging with Nano

Just an update to mention that I haven't given up on Nano, even though I'm super duper behind cause I got frustrated with my main plot. Now I realize that I'm much more into my minor characters subplots than my main plot. I think it's because I know what the conflict is in my subplot, and I haven't really unearthed it in my main plot. Mostly because my main character is all angsty and moody all the time. She doesn't talk enough to other people around her to actually conflict with them yet.

NEED Conflict!

Nano widgets and progress

Well, my widgets are finally working! yay! Unfortunately, they show how horribly behind I am. So basically my goal is to make one of those days in November green.

How far am I into the story? Chapter 2. Yep. I'm still in the expositional phase of the story. And this post is a shameless procrastination.

So yeah. Back to writing I go!

Happy Halloween, and Nano's Eve!

Yes! Only 3 more hours until It begins! The mad marathon of writing called Nanowrimo. I'm jumping in again this year with my 2yn story idea, since I never really did start it. I've been doing some plotting in the past couple weeks though, so hopefully it goes smoothly.

Last year I participated in Nanowrimo, starting off with nothing more than a plot idea. It was a fun crazy random story and I didn't finish it, but I had a blast! I won the 50K goal even if I couldn't end it, and I learned a ton about noveling in the process.

So this year I'm going to make a further goal beyond just reaching 50K. This year, I'm going to finish the story! This is pretty significant, because even though I've been writing since I was 12 or 13, I've only finished the story I was writing about 3 or 4 times. So that makes about a dozen years of unfinished storylines! I'm going to do it this year! I will!