You are doing this because you are fantastic and brave and curious. And, yes, you are probably a little crazy. And this is a good thing.
— Chris Baty
As Isaac Newton observed, objects in motion tend to stay in motion. When writing your first draft, being busy is key. It may feel frustrating at first, but having daily writing periods curtailed by chores, family, and other distractions actually helps you get the thing done. This is partly because the hectic pace forces you to type with a fleet-fingered desperation. But it’s mostly because noveling in the midst of a chaotic life makes “book time” a treat rather than an obligation. It’s a small psychological shift, but it makes all the difference in the world.
― Chris Baty
Deadlines bring focus, forcing us to make time for the achievements we would otherwise postpone, encouraging us to reach beyond our conservative estimates of what we think possible, helping us to wrench victory from the jaws of sleep.
― Chris Baty
I don’t know if it’s because of the pandemic, because we’re not supposed to go out and do stuff, but I don’t feel as frazzled with this NaNo as I usually do. In past years I’ve climbed aboard the crazy train trying to get everything done and get my words in, but I’ve been very Zen this year.
In the past couple of weeks I’ve interacted with friends, cleaned my office, made the meals, done laundry, took a couple of trips up to Costco and other shopping, kept up with my blog posts without having to stay up extra late to do so, and even took a road trip with the daughter to pick up her new puppy.
Could I actually be getting the hang of this NaNo thing?
I can remember when doing a story from a prompt once a week became such a chore that I finally stopped doing it. But now, I’m doing a story a day and I’m pretty much rocking it, if I do say so myself. My longest story so far has been 2,808 words, and the shortest has been 1,402 words. In fact, out of the thirteen stories I’ve written so far, only three have been under 2,000 words, and only two failed to meet the 1,667 daily word goal for NaNo.
In case you’re wondering how I’m keeping track . . . I used to keep track with pen and paper, writing down my daily word count and keeping a running total, but someone posted an Excel Spreadsheet template on line about 10 years ago and I’ve been using it ever since. I keep a blank one as a master, and just have to change the year at the top and save as that year.
I really wish I could remember who posted it, they did an amazing job. It shows the goal, the daily quota, word tally, words left, daily average and a bar graph at the top. Below that it has columns for the date, target total, words today, hours today (which I don’t fill out), running tally, percent today, words left, days left, daily average, projected finish date, and percent complete. The only one I have to fill out is the Words Today – everything else is automatic.
AND there are tabs at the bottom for pages for Progress (which is a bar graph), Novel Info (for your cover picture and synopsis), Characters (with a chart for character names and descriptions), Chapters (for titles and outlines), Plot Sheet (with helpful suggestions for plotting as well as space to do it in), Character Sheet (for individual characters), and Plot Example (a filled out plot sheet to show you how it’s done).
Clearly someone put a lot of work into it, but to be honest, the only thing I use is the Word Tracker. Being a pantser, I tend to let my characters reveal themselves to me bit by bit, and I never plan ahead for chapters, even when I do chapters that begin with journal entries. As for plots, well, they never turn out the way I expect anyway.
Still, having worked with Excel, my hat’s off to whoever created the spreadsheet.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Wordage Report
NEW WORDS:
Flash anthology – 14,880
Blog Posts – 1231+707+542+1278=3,758
Total = 18,638 words
I was a little more up and down with the word counts for my stories last week, but I’m still ahead of the game over all. After all the editing and re-writing I was doing over the last many months, it’s kind of nice to write something fresh.
EDITING:
It occurs to me that just because I’m doing NaNo, where you’re not supposed to edit until you’re done, doesn’t mean I can’t be editing something else. I’ll have to think about that going forward.
WHAT I’M READING:
Still not doing a whole lot of reading. I’m about a quarter of the way through The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman. It’s making me want to read the others in the series again, only I’d want to put them in order first. Still working away reading Lichen, and I’ve discovered it’s a literary journal put out by a writer’s group (I think).
On the Kindle I finished Signed, by Layla Nash, which was about mail order brides and bear shifters. At one point I really wanted to just thump the two main characters on their heads – if they’d just talk to each other they could’ve avoided a whole lot of misunderstanding, but of course if they’d done that it would have made for a shorter book, so I guess I’m glad they didn’t. LOL
Now I’m reading . . . to be honest, I’m not sure what I’m reading. I started reading another bear shifter romance, but I didn’t like the way it was starting out so I switched to something else, only it’s been a couple of days since I’ve been on my Kindle so I don’t remember what it was. Oops!
GOALS
Well . . . two out of three ain’t bad, right? I’m still acing my NaNo, and I got all my blog posts up, although when I scheduled the spice post to appear I forgot to schedule it on my regular blog so it didn’t get up on time.
But as far as getting out to enjoy the sunshine, that was a bit of a bust. I did get out one day for a walk down to the beach with a friend, but it started drizzling, and then turned to rain. The only other day I got out was Wednesday, when I drove the daughter to pick up her new puppy (two hours each way). I guess that doesn’t really count, does it?
THIS WEEK’S GOALS
1. Keep up the good work on NaNo.
2. Keep up the good work on the blog posts.
3. Try to get out and enjoy the sunshine, if we get any.
Write on.
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