NaNoEdMo!

So, it’s March already. How did this happen? Well, maybe I can see how, what with going home over Christmas, moving twice within the space of a month and being a little stressed in the day job. I digress, though.

March, of course, is NaNoEdMo. That means you have 31 days to edit your novel – I think the official rule is you need to put it at least 50 hours of novel revision. I don’t know exactly because I’m making my own rules this year. I want to get the first three chapters all polished and sparkly so I can send them out come April.

Yeah, ambitious as ever. I don’t want to look back at 2009, though, and realise that writing has only played a minor role again…

Happy editing everyone!

So long ago it’s almost not true anymore

Just occured to me today that I have to go much further back. The person who kickstarted my love of the written word was my primary school teacher. At the beginning of second grade, she took us to our local library.

From that day on, it was a Tuesday in late August or early September, I went to the library every Tuesday. Every week I left carrying as many books as I could manage, and I returned them all a week later.

Thanks to my old teacher, I fell in love with books. And that led, a few years later, to my wanting to be a writer myself.

It’s Heroes night

Today I want to say THANKS! to BtVS, Veronica Mars, Heroes and all the other great TV shows that keep teaching me how to write good dialog.

I can do that

I owe my first round of THANKS! to a German writer who was hyped as the new literary wunderkind about 10-12 years ago. I read three of his novels and kept asking myself what all the hype was about. I hated his books and thought that if I wrote novels, they would be much better.

Which is what made me sit down and give this writing thing a go. I began to scribble down ideas regularly, found out that I couldn’t quite write a better novel yet, but I was determined to do it one day.

The seed had been sown.

Counting blessings

The December NaBloPoMo theme is THANKS!

For quite a while, I’ve made a point of focusing on the things in my life I’m grateful for. It’s amazing how we have a tendency to focus on all the stuff that we don’t have in our lives or that goes wrong, instead of looking at what we have and what comes our way. Life is so much easier when you focus on the good things. Writing is so much easier when you look at what you’ve achieved already.

So I think this is what my posts this month will be about – things I’m grateful for because they help(ed) me progress as a writer.

And NaBloPoMo too!

For the first time I also finished NaBloPoMo successfully, too.

I am really pleased about that, even though it has to be said that I’ve written single blog posts that have more words than all my November posts together. But that doesn’t matter, as NaBloPoMo isn’t about the wordcount. I wrote a blog post a day, nobody said they had to be insightful, thought-provoking and witty.

The next round starts tomorrow, and the theme is THANKS! Oh yes, I’m doing it again.

52659

Celebration dance. I did it. It’s over.

I crossed the finishing line just after noon, and finished the story this afternoon. I got together with a few local writers for the last write-in of the year. I think if I had had the energy last Sunday to join them, I would have written so much more. I wrote over 2,000 words in two hours, and we had little breaks to chat, too.

One thing I learnt this time round: Starting a new job wreaks havoc with my creative energy. But I didn’t like the idea of losing, I did want to write 50k and I did want to finish the story. Willpower is an amazing thing.

47483

I have a lot more story left to tell than I could ever fit into 2,517 words. I suppose I’ll fast-forward through the scenes so I’ll actually finish the story tomorrow.

I had to research a few bits of info this morning. I knew I’d written about it somewhere, but wasn’t sure where, so I ended up reading things I wrote in the first week. And, would you believe it, my beginning isn’t that bad. There’s hope yet for this baby.

42132

I. Am. So. Glad. November’s. Over. In. Two. Days.

On the bright side, it looks like I’ll finally make it through NaBloPoMo successfully for the first time. I’ve attempted a few of the themed ones earlier this year but always managed to miss a day. Last year in November we lost the internet for a day, so I didn’t make that one either. This year looks good, though. Even if there’s a problem with the ISP again, there’s always the iPhone.

Right. Bedtime, I have 4,000 words to write tomorrow.

39410

I was slightly tempted to write the remaining 590 I need to make 40k. Too tired, though, and I have a busy day at work tomorrow. So sensible decision: sleep now.

3,530 words a day isn’t that much. I might not quite make that tomorrow, but with an entire weekend ahead of me, I’m not really that worried. I think I wrote 12k on November 29, 2003 to make it.