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#NaNoWriMo2016: Week 3

Wow this month is flying by so fast! Can't believe we're at week 3 already.

This past week has been full of highs and lows... lots of lows...

I got writers block. Yep, the words stopped flowing. I had days where I wrote 0 words. Others when I wrote just a few hundred. It wasn't good. In fact it wasn't until Friday that I actually did any significant writing. Friday was a good writing day.

The Block

A writers worst nightmare. The words just don't come. Those of you that have been following my progress this month will know that I hit a few slow days already during week 2. My characters took over and well, I ended up getting lost. This week I had to deal with the after-math of that.

I ended up doing some serious brainstorming. My antagonist had just turned out to be a whole lot more of a bad guy than I'd originally planned for, and my protagonist now has to face new challenges.

I roped in the help of others (brainstorming with others really helps me organise my thoughts). On Tuesday evening I chatted with a friend of mine about the story and why I was stuck. That in itself actually helped a lot. Explaining in a brief summary how I got to this point was really good for getting my focus back on the story. Together we started to find possible answers for the never ending list of questions that had arisen, and I started to get a better idea about the backstory of my antagonist.

I started to pull together my new ideas for where the story was going. Not great, but a start at least. It was enough to beat the block, and turn things around.

A Good Writing Day

Like I said, Friday was a good writing day. What I call a jet-pack day. I got down over 3K in less than two hours. The words began to flow again. I was back on track!

Hitting 40K

On Saturday I reached the big 40K landmark. I have to say this felt pretty darn good :) It's great being able to see the end approaching.

Unfortunately I didn't get time to come up with any NaNoRewards though as my youngest came down with a fever :(

Sunday was declared PJ day in our house, and the kids and I spent most of the day watching films from our DVD collection. Managed a quick word sprint session and got down 719, bringing my total to 40,719.

As my youngest is still ill, and therefore off school for the day, not sure how productive I'm going to be able to be today, but hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in a word sprint or two at some point. Fingers crossed.

#NaNoWriMo2016: Week 2

Time to tick off week 2 on the writing frenzy known as NaNoWriMo, and what a week it was! (If you missed the week 1 update you can find it here: http://www.jolinsdell.com/2016/11/nanowrimo2016-week-1.html)

Getting lost

I started week 2 by getting lost. My characters took me off my original plot outline, which was fine for a brief moment, but then everything suddenly became hard. Following my scene outlines everything had been going really well. Words flowed and I knew exactly where I was headed. Not any more. Thanks characters!

So what do you do when your characters take over, and leave you feeling lost? Turns out you just keep on writing. It was that simple, and that hard. I kept writing through it and somehow managed to bring my story back on track with my original story plan.

Allow yourself to suck

A really important thing that helps in situations like this is something that NaNoWriMo creator, Chris Baty, talks about in his book No Plot? No Problem (grab a copy here: http://amzn.to/2eUCNhg). In chapter 5, he asks that I let the NaNoWriMo team "Take my inner editor". There is a very good reason for this. The goal this month is to write a first draft of a 50K novel. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be written.

Knowing that I'm not writing a great masterpiece, but instead building a foundation that can be worked on later, helps. Trust me, I've written some sentences over the past two weeks that are seriously cringe-worthy. I have written over 30,000 words in just two weeks though, some of which are even good.

There is no limit to how rough a rough draft can be.~Unknown #NaNoWriMo2016 #amwriting #quote

Big milestones

On wednesday I reached 25,000 words. The big halfway mark! This is a huge turning point in the challenge as what is written from now on is more than what is left to write in order to reach the 50K goal. It's no longer so much about how much you still need to write, but instead knocking words off the still need to write tally. It feels good.

NaNoRewards

Let's talk a bit about NaNoRewards. A NaNoReward could be something small like allowing yourself to eat a chocolate after you've written 500 words, or going out for dinner to celebrate hitting a big milestone (yes, both of these are on my NaNoReward list ;)).

After the high of Wednesday, I gave myself a big, well deserved NaNoReward. I gave myself the day off. Yep, the whole day. A daily word count total for Thursday of 0. It was wonderful. I caught up with other tasks I'd been putting on hold, spent time with family, relaxed... bliss.

Friday was not so wonderful. You see the problem with taking the day off is that you come back with a sense of guilt. You see that big fat 0 on your progress chart and kick yourself. What was I thinking?!

Writing was hard going, and most of Friday morning was very frustrating. The words just didn't seem to flow. Then I remembered what had happened on Monday. I just kept writing... and it worked. I still made good progress.

Writing with kids

Weekends are always hard for me to find writing time. I have two small children. With the help of cartoons, and video games I managed to squeeze in some word sprints though and met my goals. Don't underestimate the power of those quick 10 minute sessions. It might just gain you 300 words, but it makes a big difference at the end of the day.

Current stats as of Sunday 13th Nov.

and then there was this....

#thatmomentwhen you realise you are #writing book 1 in a series. #notplanned #nanowrimo pic.twitter.com/Wg4EngluYm
— Jo Linsdell (@jolinsdell) November 11, 2016

Yep, looks like this is going to be a series. Still not sure how I feel about this.

T'was The Night Before NaNoWriMo...

So tomorrow is 1st November and the first day of NaNoWriMo 2016. Despite not being sure about whether I'd be taking part or not this year up until a couple of weeks ago (my health continues to give me problems), I'm actually feeling quite prepared.

You can check out the draft cover design, and read the synopsis here: http://www.jolinsdell.com/2016/10/nanowrimo2016-do-you-like-me.html

This year I'll be writing a YA. There will be a bit of romance, a bit thriller.... should be fun.

I made the most of my kids swimming lessons to write up some plot notes. I always have a notepad and pen in my bag, and so pulled them out as I sat pool side and did some brainstorming, and plotting.

I've written up some very basic character notes for the main, and secondary characters too. Things like; name, surname, age, height, build, hair colour and style, eye colour, and relationship to main character.

I also made a board on Pinterest for inspiration. I've been pinning inspiration pics for locations, and character outfits.

As my book will deal with stalking I've also been researching stalking laws and statistics online.

I even made a word count tracker (you can grab yours here http://www.jolinsdell.com/2016/10/nanowrimo-2016-word-count-tracker.html). I'm all set to be writer-tastic!

What I hadn't banked on was earthquakes. We've had a lot of earthquakes recently here in Italy, and some of them have been pretty scary. Due to damage to some buildings in Rome following the earthquakes, they've decided to close the schools for security checks today. Tuesday the schools are shut anyway as it's festive here. So, whilst I'm happy that they've adopted a better safe than sorry approach, this does not make for the best of starts to my writing frenzy month. I was hoping to have more time today to sort through my NaNo prep, and maybe do some more work on my plot. I may still fit in time for some work on my scene outlines though. Fingers crossed.

In past years I found a good way to increase my word count was to do word sprints. Usually 10 to 15 minute sprints. I think I'll be doing lots of those this year. I've set up an event page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/events/2203724819766193/ where I'll be posting about my writing progress, and writing sprints I'm doing. I hope you'll join in with the sprints :)

Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? How have you prepared for the challenge?

In July I took part in the CampNaNoWriMo challenge for the first time. My goal for the month was to rewrite an old NaNoWriMo novel (working name Twice) and turn it into a complete 50K novel.

This is how I was doing at the half way mark: http://www.jolinsdell.com/2016/07/campnanowrimo-half-way-mark.html

Unfortunately things went a bit down hill from there. I didn't collect my winners certificate but I'm still counting it as a success. Here's why...

1) It was my first time trying to do a NaNoWriMo challenge in July. My house has been full of kids (on summer break), it's been super hot here in Rome, and a bunch of other things that made me realise it might not be the best time of the year to try doing such a demanding challenge. Despite all that I did make huge progress with my project. I didn't hit 50K, but I did write over 30K.

2) Twice became Just Love Me. This is one of the biggest breakthroughs of the month. Whilst rewriting I made some big changes to the story and decided to give it a new direction. The new working title is a much better fit for the story now.

3) The big reason why my word count stopped increasing is that I decided that I needed to make more changes to the story. I basically need to go back to the beginning and rework the plot outline. This is actually a really good thing, because now I have a much clearer idea of what the story is about, and what I want to happen to each character.

4) I love the characters in this book. Working on this project again was like meeting up with old friends, and after a month back together I'm now super excited about giving them the story they deserve.

So, I'm going to be doing another rewrite from the beginning, which might make you think I failed big time with this challenge, but really this means the challenge was a HUGE success. Thanks to CampNaNoWriMo I now have; a new title, a clear idea of my story, my characters, and a new motivation to get it written. Some of the 30K I wrote in July will be used in the new version too, and even if it isn't it helped me get to this point with the story.

Watch the day by day challenge report here:

Did you do CampNaNoWriMo in July? How did you do?

Throughout July I'm taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo. I'm using the challenge to work on an old November NaNoWriMo project that had the working title of Twice. My goal is to rewrite the manuscript and end up with a completed 50K novel b the end of the month.

As today is the 15th July, today marks the half way mark of this challenge. Here's a recap of how it's been going so far:

The first week was awesome! The words were flying, and I got ahead of my word count goal, despite having a couple of slow days along the way. In fact, I discovered that having slow days is totally fine. For example, on the first Sunday of the month museums and some tourists sites are completely free to visit here in Rome, and so I took my kids to explore the Palatino. We had a lovely day exploring old ruins, visiting the museum, and learning about Roman history. We even got to hear the sound check for the Pink Floyd concert that was happening in the evening at Circo Massimo (located right below the Palatino). All in all a pretty awesome day. Not so great for my word count though. In fact I wrote nothing that day.

Here's a few pics from the trip:

Week number 2 involved slow days too. Unfortunately it didn't balance itself out with turbo days though and so I went from being head with my word count to falling behind. I know that a couple of good days will put me back on track though. Not in panic mode yet!

With the kids being off school for the summer break my days are pretty full as it is. Most of my writing has been done in the evening once they're in bed asleep. Only problem with writing in the evening is that I spend all day trying to make them tired so they go to bed, and then I'm tired too.... probably even more than they are.

We have made some fun creative projects together though, including these fab toilet roll puppets. We spent the morning making them, and then the kids spent the afternoon planning a puppet show with them :) Apparently we need to make more of these (these need more characters for their puppet shows).

Toilet roll puppets #CreativeKids #Kidscraft

Although I'm now playing catch up with my word count, I have made huge progress in the first half of this challenge that will, hopefully, mean I meet my goal of 50k by the end of the month. I've done a lot of brainstorming, planning, and general thinking about the story. I've outlined some sub plots that I'm writing in, developed some of the secondary characters, and made some big changes to the initial story idea. One big change is the title of the book. Twice just doesn't fit anymore. The book has taken a new direction and so I've been coming up with ideas for a new title. I'm still not 100% decided on what the title will be, but I've narrowed it down for just a few.

This is my current word count:

Are you doing CampNaNoWriMo? How's it going so far?

November Challenges: The End #NaNoWriMo #WNFIN #PiBoIdMo

WOW! What a month!

This November I decided to take part in not one, but three, writing challenges (crazy I know!).

- NaNoWriMo AKA National Novel Writing Month, goal to write a 50K novel in 30 days.

- WNFIN AKA Write Non Fiction in November, goal to write a non fiction book in 30 days.

- PiBoIdMo AKA Picture Book Idea Month, goal to come up with 30 ideas for children's picture books in 30 days.

We've finally come to the end of this roller-coaster month of highs and lows. It's been 30 days of writing frenzy, but I've had a blast along the way.

Here's a quick look at how things went:

NaNoWriMo

This was hard this year. In fact, I didn't win. Both kids got ill, I got ill, life happened and well, my novel stopped happening. I'm still pleased though as I'm 30K into a novel that was just a blank page at the the start of the month. That's still pretty good going.

I love the characters I came up with, and the story, and will be working on finishing this first draft of Family Secrets over December and January.

WNFIN

Ta da! My winners badge! :)

I successfully managed to finish the first draft of my non fiction book From Idea to Published. Loving how it turned out, and can't wait to jump into editing it this month (more about that soon).

PiBoIdMo

And another winners badge! :)

Not all the ideas on this years list were amazing but there were a few diamonds in the rough that I'll be turning into books in 2016. One thing that did surprise me was the number of non fiction picture book ideas I listed as in past years I'd always listed mainly fiction ideas. That said, the ideas I'm most excited about are fiction ones.

Want to go further behind the scenes? Watch this video of my day by day diary of the highs and lows of; writing a novel, a non fiction book, and coming up with 30 ideas for children's picture books, all in just one month.