Well, NaNo is over, and I’m so happy it is. I was not loving it this year. Okay, that is a huge understatement. I hated it. I resented every minute spent working on ‘NaNo’ stuff. What I really wanted to be doing was sitting and thinking, taking time to let my brain work through some of the details I need to know about the setting and society See The Sky Again is set in, and working on it. That doesn’t work as a NaNoWriMo project. So I started working on rewriting Shadows. Fantastic…until I hit a bump that again, required some time and quiet contemplation. Anyway, I won’t bore you with all the details, but I wrote 50,000 words, crossed the finish line and am seriously thinking about skipping NaNo next year. There was a time in my life I needed it, but I believe that time has passed.

There was, however, a contest

I promised a prize to the person who guessed the day I finished NaNo (or came closest). I wrote my 50,000th word on the 30th. There were a handful of entries, and everyone had more faith in me than they should have, it seems LOL Mindy came the closest, however, when she guessed the 27th. Thank you to everyone who entered, and Mindy, keep an eye on your email.

Lastly, for today. The new Niteblade Anthology, Nothing to Dread is finished and available as a paperback or a download. Yay!

So, for the second year in a row I have stopped trying to write See the Sky Again as a NaNo novel. This time for different reasons.

Last year when I started writing See the Sky Again there were still a lot of blank spots in my mind. I knew the setting, one of the characters and the ending. That was pretty much it. When I stopped writing it as a NaNo novel it was because I thought I should fan away a bit more of the fog and solidify some plot points in my brain before I worked on the project in earnest. Then I got distracted with other projects and See the Sky Again got put on the back burner for a while.

Well, when I dusted it off to work on again I had a good idea of where it was going and how it was going to get there. Or, if not good, at least I had an idea, which was more than last year. Unfortunately, as I was writing on it for NaNo I just wasn’t feeling it. I love the story, and I’m excited to tell it, but I don’t think it’s destined to be written in this way. Which is too bad because I’d like to get the first draft done sometime soon LOL

However, like I said above, I’ve pushed it to the side again for a while (shorter term than last time I hope LOL). Now I’m working on the re-write of Shadows as my NaNoWriMo project.

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What?

I couldn’t help it. Shadows won’t leave me alone. It’s always on the edges of my brain, demanding my attention. After the critiques I got from Jim C. Hines and Deena Fisher I had some really great ideas on how to improve it – trying to make it wait its turn until after I got the first draft of See the Sky Again done was, apparently, a very bad idea. I couldn’t focus on StSA because I really wanted to be re-writing Shadows.

Now that’s what I’m working on for NaNo (Note to any rules lawyers out there: I know that’s technically against the rules and um…I don’t care) and it’s going well. I’m enthusiastic about writing again and I really feel like the story is being filled out more this time. (One of my goals was to add more description and fill out the middle which I felt was lacking.) Yay! I’m hoping to complete the ‘new first draft’ via NaNoWriMo and then, just to be novel, NOT workshop it to death.

My nano word count is 6,652 so far, and I haven’t written yet today. Soon, I hope.

I’m also still working on the Poem-A-Day challenge and still loving it. Wheee! I’ve got 4 zombie poems (that I Love) and 2 more mainstream ones. I haven’t even looked at today’s prompt yet, but I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be sure and share at least one of the zombie pieces in my newsletter this month.

So far, November is being good to me. I hope you can say the same thing

It’s technically day two of NaNoWriMo, but I haven’t written anything for my project yet today, so I feel like I’m still on day one. I’m still lacking enthusiasm about NaNo, which is kind of odd because I like the novel I’m writing so you’d think that enthusiasm would bleed over. So far, not so much. Yeah. Weird. I told you.

In addition to doing NaNoWriMo this year, however, I’m also doing the PAD Chapbook Challenge. Times two, actually. My friend Beth Cato told me about it and I said I’d do it if she did. She accepted my challenge, so on top of the 50,000 words we need to write this month, we’ll also be writing 30 poems.

Actually, I’ll be writing up to 60 of them because I’ve decided to do the Chapbook Challenge times two. The first collection of poems will be mainstream and the second will be horror — zombies, to be specific. If a prompt doesn’t lend itself well to one of those genres I may only write one poem that day, but I’d really like to see two a day. We’ll see, I gues.

I hope to share some results in my newsletter, if there turns out to be anything worth reading just yet LOL There isn’t going to be much time for revision until December.

I’m pretty happy with the PAD challenge so far, in case you hadn’t guessed, and my word count for NaNo is still on track, so I’m counting day one as a victory.

It’s almost November that around here that means NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo is a huge part of my life. Historically it’s important. Winning my first NaNo honestly changed my life. It showed me that I could write a novel, it infused me with confidence about my writing (which is odd because that novel was freaking terrible) and it was the beginning of NaNoLJers. It lead, directly or otherwise, to my leaving my former job and really making writing more than a hobby.

I’ve done NaNo every year since 2003, I’ve won every year since 2005. There is no challenge in it for me anymore.

I could just try for more words, but despite the whole quantity over quality thing, simply writing more for the sake of writing more doesn’t make sense to me. As it is I keep writing until the story is over, I don’t just stop at 50,000 but intentionally padding it wouldn’t really make NaNo more challenging, it would just make it take more time.

A couple years ago Danica did NaNo. That helped me stay engaged. I got one of her friends involved as well and saw it as my sub-mission to help herd the two of them toward the finish line. It worked. I wrote my 50k and helped Dani and her friend reach their goals through write-ins, pretzels and encouragement.

The next year (last year) we created teams on NaNoLJers and I used that as my motivating factor — I wanted to win NaNo and lead my team to winning the NaNoLJers cup. It worked. I was engaged with the process, I finished my novel and helped my team win the cup. Yay!

This year… this year I don’t have any external motivation and I’m not feeling it. I’m detached. Danica is doing NaNo again, and we have teams on NaNoLJers. It’s my intention to help motivate both my child and my team toward victory, and of course I’ll write my 50,000 words (at least), but I’m very lethargic about it. I wish I were impatient for the month to start, or excited, or hell, even nervous, but really… mostly I’m bored.

And that sucks.

Especially since I talked the teacher I volunteer with into doing NaNoWriMo in her classroom this year.

Hopefully I’ll find some motivation somewhere, some driving force that will infuse me with some enthusiasm. The grade twos, maybe. If I don’t I’ll still do NaNo, I’ll still write 50,000 words (or more) on See The Sky Again, and I’ll still win, but it would sure be nice to enjoy it while I’m doing it.

How about you? Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Are you excited about it? What are your goals?

I just sent out the October newsletter a moment ago. This month it has a bit of my rambling (sorry) as well as a poem and a bit of flash from ‘back in the day’. I hope you enjoy it.

If you’re not subscribed and you’d like to be, check this out –> Newsletter

I plan to have a contest in November for all the people subscribed to my newsletter. The basic idea is that all subscribers will get to guess what day they think I will cross the 50,000 word finish line for NaNoWriMo and the winner will receive a prize. It should be fun I’ll be mailing out the details and telling everyone how to join up in the next few days so if you want to play make sure and subscribe soon.

Wheee!