nanowrimo Archives - Laura Highcove

Still Missing Goals

November 3, 2022November 3, 2022 Laura Highcove

So it’s 10pm on November 2 and I still don’t have my goals hashed out. I wrote both yesterday and today, but the goal I set for myself this morning ended up not being possible. I went into a scene I thought would be an easy edit, and ripped it to shreds. The next scene I still don’t know what’s going to happen in it.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere about ‘keep at it’, and ‘keep revising your goals’, and you know what? Right now I am just over it. I put in my time today and I’m done.

I mean this isn’t given up forever, but while I could continue pounding on this for the next hour trying to finish it, I think that would do more harm than good. Done for today. There is tomorrow.

Tripping Before NaNoWriMo

October 30, 2022October 30, 2022 Laura Highcove

My plans were very much affected by life. I started off alright, only I underestimated …well everything. First off, there are a lot more emotionally draining scenes at the end of this book than I thought. There’s a lot going on, and obviously this is the point where everything is going wrong in order to make things seem the most dire. In addition to that, I had two appointments on Wednesday, one for the dentist which is just never fun, and another one that I knew would be emotionally draining. So I took it easy Wednesday, planning on getting back to writing on Thursday. Only there are some things going on at work that either on their own, or in addition to the events on Wednesday, made it so by the time I got to Saturday I was so completely and totally out of fucks.

As you may have guessed, that means I got very little (I did get some) writing done. I am still in Chapter 13 in a scene that is emotionally difficult to write, followed by a scene that is technically difficult to write. After that maybe I will get to a few scenes that are mostly together and less draining.

However, you may noticed, as I have, that NaNoWriMo starts the day after tomorrow. And the free time I have Monday morning is taken up by a rescheduled horseback riding lesson. So the short of it is, I can’t finish Draft 0 by November and it would be irresponsible to try. I will get some done, obviously. I think I can get through Chapter 13. Right now, I think I’m going to just get what I can done today, since I have other things I want to do as well. And I’m going to spend my first day of Nano figuring out where I am and then making some new goals.

Preparing for NaNoWriMo 2022

October 25, 2022October 30, 2022 Laura Highcove

Here I am, five days away from NaNoWriMo, and for the first time, I’m not sure what I’m doing. Usually by this point I know definitively whether I will or will not be participating and what I will be doing as my project and what my goal(s) is/are. Those sometimes differ from the “rules” of Nano, but I make it work for me, and I stick to the rules I set up for myself.

This year I am at the end of Draft 0. So close that using Nano to finish it would be a waste, but far enough that I’m not convinced I’ll be ready to move onto another project. Add to that the wrinkle that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are coming out on November 18th, and let’s be honest, if I get any real work done in the month after that game comes out I will be very surprised.

The plan right now is, Nano or not, to get Draft 0 of this book finished and then turn it into a First Draft which can be beta read. The current word count is 97k. That does include some notes and such.

And I just went and made an outline (omg discovery writer writing an outline!!!) of what needs to happen from where I am to the end and I think it actually makes sense. I was rather surprised at how well it all came out. It took me forever to get a handle on this story and the characters, and I think I managed it. So now I just have to write the scenes I don’t have yet. It’s close enough to the end that I don’t think there will be many surprises, at least not big ones. (Please, please no huge surprises that require a reworking of the entire book.)

Now the question is, “Do I think I can get this written in a week?”

I think it’s possible assuming none of these scenes just wipe me out emotionally. I had a scene with Jen that I just finished that did that. Hard to write but totally necessary. There might be a few, but with a week to do it …of course I have lost all sense of chapter breaks after Chapter 12. Truthfully, the chapter breaks in this book suck in the first place, but I digress. This made it hard to plan out the rest of my schedule based on chapters. So I had to do it scene by scene, and let me tell you, judging how long it will take to write a scene from just a few sentences of ‘this is what’s going to happen in this scene’ is not a skill I have yet. If I push hard, I can get Draft 0 done by November.

Then I suppose the idea for the first half of November, not necessarily Nano, would be to read through and write down allll the plot holes, and try and get those finished before Pokemon comes out. Would be nice to be able to throw out the story to my beta readers when it’s time to play Pokemon. Let’s see.

End of the Year

December 8, 2020December 8, 2020 Laura Highcove

So I have been having a hard time getting back into the habit of these journal entries, but I really want to. Not for all of you necessarily, but because they help me focus, plan, and …why isn’t goal a verb? Even goaling isn’t. Making a goal. Planning a goal. Bah, I’m annoyed by that the same way I am that there’s no word for shaking your head.

But I digress. Last week was the end of NaNoWriMo for one of the …most eventful years of my life. I finished my 50k words. I had been debating authenticating them because of all of the rules I had made up for what I was counting as words for this year. Only the website has changed such that as soon as you put in 50k words as your word count total, you’ve won. Maybe it’s for the best. I did the work, and that’s really the important bit.

And the Wizard still isn’t finish, but it’s so much closer than it was. And I’ve decided I’m taking the month off, or at least a few weeks to just let it settle. Then in January I’ll start organizing what I have and see what’s still missing.

I’ve also been working a bit on the story and characters for Blessings of the Neriel, which has been fun. I’d really like to work on this story next, but I do want to finish the Storyteller Trilogy first.

Pushing Through

November 24, 2020November 24, 2020 Laura Highcove

After the last post, I feel like I should update you on the two big upheavals in my reality.
1) Supernatural’s final episode was complete and utter trash.
2) Trump is refusing to concede to Biden and he’s encouraging his ‘followers’ in the belief that he was cheated out of the election.

Neither of these come as a surprise, but I’m still very upset about both.

That being said, I had a great vacation in Williamsburg. Went to see family briefly, went to a number of nurseries, hung out and had great food with my husband, and got a new video game that I haven’t had time to play since I got back.

Writing has been rough. I kept up with my word count in Williamsburg, but I’m at the point where I have to wrap up everything beautifully. I have to tie up all the loose ends and make it satisfying and once again I’m stuck in the my dead zone, (from the halfway point of the book until the 3/4 mark). I suppose the only thing I can do now is just go write the ending in more detail and hope that at some point I’ll figure out how to get there. It’s already 6pm today and I only have half my words. I wanna put it off for tomorrow but I know it’ll just be worse. Sigh. Just have to keep pushing.

Breaking the Rules of NaNoWriMo

November 9, 2020November 9, 2020 Laura Highcove

Friday and Saturday each gave me a ridiculous upheaval to my reality and I’m still reeling a bit.

Destiel

First, and the one you likely don’t know/care about, is that on Friday I saw the gay relationship of two characters on the long-running show Supernatural Dean and Castiel actually canonized. Like legit. Not like the subtext for the last twelve years that, while amazingly obvious, was still subtext. It was an amazing moment that made me cuss out loud because I never thought I’d see it. And there are still episodes left in the show.

POTUS

Then on Saturday Biden won the presidency. I cried for about a half hour in relief. And I know this doesn’t fix anything, and there are still problems, but right now I’ll settle for it not getting any worse for a bit.

NaNoWriMo

And around all of that, I’m still working my way through NaNoWriMo and I will tell you that I am playing faster and looser with the rules than I ever have simply because it’s necessary. I am doing everything I possibly can to make it the easiest and most productive experience possible. Partially because of mental health issues (which come in no small part to everything that’s been/going on.) and partially because my process has changed so dramatically over the years.

The past few years I’ve had difficulty/gotten stuck in NaNo because what I had written wasn’t organized and thought through yet, thus I couldn’t see the way forward. When trying to pound out words, I write things out of order, I write scenes multiple times with different focuses, everything just comes out into a huge pile. And editing makes it very hard to keep track of word count.

So this year I just said ‘screw it’. I write what I write and count those words, and then I edit those words: copy/paste, write more, delete even more, all to get a working scene, and I count those words as well. Is it to the law of NaNo? Absolutely not. But it’s following the spirit of Nano, which has always been to get you writing. I gave myself permission to do what I needed to do in order to be as productive as I can be AND free myself from the guilt of not following the letter of NaNo. And maybe I won’t verify my story at the end, maybe I will. But either way, I will have more of my story written, and that’s what matters.

My NaNo Pep Talk

November 1, 2020November 1, 2020 Laura Highcove

Okay, so yes it’s scary. Terrifying even that I might not be able to come up with an ending, or a good ending. But all I need to do is write. Write, spend time with the characters. Ask them what they’re doing and see what they say. They’re all established pretty well by now so they should be able to answer. At the end of this month you’ll either have an ending, or you’ll have 50k words getting you closer. And yes, that includes this because the mental game of writing is also important in the writing process. So just write.

Falling into NaNoWriMo

October 26, 2020October 26, 2020 Laura Highcove

Hey, thanks so much for stopping by and checking on how I’m doing. It’s officially fall and we had a great one this year. Two weeks of high 60s, low 70s with 40s overnight. All with the gradual shifting of the trees to their autumnal colors. Beautiful!

So bringing you up to speed, I attended SiWC for the first time. Luckily it was all online, because I’m not sure I would go all the way to California for a conference, even without covid. This was the official alternate meeting place for the displaced Writing Excuses Cruise. Not getting to go on the cruise this year was one of the bigger disappointments, but thankfully I was able to get a little bit of the Wxr Cruise feel around the SiWC.

I attended some Wxr events in the week leading up to the start of the conference itself. Thursday was an all day masterclass, then Fri-Sun were the conference workshops. I learned about plotting, conflict, decolonization, word choice, social media, and endings just to name a few. I’m going to be sorting through that information for a while yet, I’m sure.

And now that October is almost over, it’s time to look ahead to NaNoWriMo! This year has really been rough for writing. Covid simply killed my motivation for several months, and I’ve been working my way back up. This year I’m looking forward to NaNo as a way to just get through the rest of the rough draft for the end of The Storyteller Trilogy so it can be complete. Not only does it mean I’ll finally get to know what happens, but I want to help these characters finish their journey, AND I want to move on to the next project.

I’m also making the shift to a journal entry a week. Every two weeks made it hard for me to remember. Plus, I use these journal entries mostly to reevaluate where I am in my writing and to reset goals if needed, and truthfully, I probably need that weekly right now.

Writing the Storyteller

January 27, 2020March 12, 2020 Laura Highcove

So last week I finished up my read through and wrote out my list of everything major point that still needed to be written in both the Huntsman and the Wizard. Creating the list ended up only taking two days instead of the week I had allotted to it, so I started writing out some scenes that needed to be changed. I’m giving myself a goal of 1000 words a day. Most days so far I’ve ended up writing more than that anyway, but I don’t want the number of words to discourage me too much. I’d rather get consistent words.

Probably get a chapter done a day for about a week and then I’ll just try and write as many of these scenes as possible. When I write new scenes like this I generally end up with something good eventually. Maybe not every scene, but as a discovery writer, discovery writing is where I really shine.

Nanowrimo style for a month now, so I’m excited about what’s going to come out even though I have no idea, but after this I SHOULD have an idea of what the ending will be. This is about when I need to know where I’m going. Then I sort of work in from both sides until I figure out the middle …like a sandwich? Something like that.