Tag: nanowrimo

NaNoWriMo Still

Laura Highcove

So NaNoWriMo is going well. Pounding out words has never been the problem for me. Right now I am drifting back and forth between thinking that the Arthur tale and what it provides for the characters and their development is a great idea, and thinking it’s stupid and that it doesn’t fit with the story as a whole.

Such is the life of a writer.

I’m also getting a little bit of mentoring surrounding the POV challenges I have for this story. It means some more research, but for right now I’m still focusing on getting the story hammered out, then I can worry about how it’s told later.

Outside of my writing my husband made some slow cooker pork for tacos that was wonderful. I started learning about bending and suppling my horse on the ground. And I played some Hyrule Warriors last night for the first time in a long time.

NaNoWriMo

Laura Highcove

It occurs to me that writing a blog post while doing NaNoWriMo is just extra work. I have enough trouble convincing myself to do it when I am not trying to write 2400 words a day, because the weekends is when I have the most time to sit down and work on my writing.

I am certainly hitting the same wall I did before with the second half of my book, but having the word requirement means that I just pound out words and I get a few gems. I guess I’m annoyed that I have to write so many superfluous words to get to the good stuff, but I am happy that I am getting any good stuff.

Not much is happening in the rest of my life because I am spending most of my free time writing. Oh, but I am finishing up Christmas gifts for the hubby’s family since we’re going there for Thanksgiving, so we exchange gifts early. I love shopping for gifts.

My Unicorn Horn

Laura Highcove

Much better progress this week. Got through two and a half chapters, though one of the chapters was rather short, I was still able to reach my goal which is great! I have started setting my timer again when I begin to write. Something about the numbers actually counting down with the threat of an alarm at the end adds a sense of urgency.

I also wanted to make sure that I don’t always just make this blog a grocery list of what I’ve done or haven’t done. Sometimes that’s all I’m in the mood for, but this week I wanted to share a little bit about me with everyone.

Ever since I was young, I’ve had a bump on my forehead. It’s a harmless little thing, but people notice it from time to time and ask me if I bumped my head. I got a little tired of telling them that, no, I just have a lump on my head (I know, it sounds so pleasant, right?), so I began telling people that it is where my unicorn horn is growing. That tends to give people a laugh.

When I read Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’, the thing that stuck with me the most from that book was when he claimed that writing is like telepathy. I feel like writing a book is all about the author taking what the story looks like in their minds and transferring it into the mind of their reader.

That is what makes me want to be an author, as opposed to just a writer. Someday, someone else will give my ideas real estate in their heads and, just maybe, they’ll care about my characters and stories like I do.

So now, when I get my first book published, that’s when my own psychic powers will have developed, and that’s when I’ll tell people that my unicorn horn is fully grown.

Next week was two more chapters, but I want to see if I can get the last three done so I can spend the last week of October planning, and then I can spend NaNoWriMo pounding out another 50k words to see if I can get the second half of my book out of them.

Plan for the Rest of the Year

Laura Highcove

I was talking with my husband this morning and he asked if I was going to work on my novel, and in jest I said, ‘Yes, I’m going to go work on my boring, old novel.’ Then I stopped and realized that The Storyteller isn’t even a year old yet. The concept for it is about a year old, but I didn’t start writing it until October of last year. And that sort of blew my mind. I have so many other stories that aren’t even to this point that are far older, yet when I think about this novel, I keep having issue with how long it’s taking me to get to beta reader ready. I’m grateful for the reminder that I’m doing a good job.

My goal is to have The Storyteller ready for my beta readers by January 2016. I counted up the number of weeks left in the year. 16 and five days, which I am rounding up to 17 because I can do that. Here is a list of what I still have to do:

Finish writing the scenes involving The Slayer and The Archer. (3 weeks)
Finish writing the scenes involving The Fairy Godmother. (2 weeks)
Finish writing the scenes involving The Huntress. (2 weeks)
Fix three plot holes. (1 week)
Overall run through of story to identify any new problems. (1 week)
Run through to fix any “medium” problems. (3 weeks)
Run through to smooth out as many “minor” problems as possible. (3 weeks)
Overall run through of story as a last check. (2 weeks)

That’s actually more time than I thought I was going to have. Once I wrote it out in a list and put times to it, I’m pretty confidant in my ability to get it done. Though I suppose I have to remember that Thanksgiving and Christmas are in there, and I won’t be able to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. Still, less than a year an a half to get a story to beta readers. I’m happy with that.

NaNoWriMo 2013

Laura Highcove

http://nanowrimo.org/participants/pyropawz

So another successful NaNoWriMo. Much easier this year since my goal was not actually to complete NaNoWriMo, but to finish my entire novel, Shifting Winds, by the end of the year. I have my wordcount 50,921 from just this month. The novel right now clocks in at 116,414, though it’s still not finished. I am having some issues with the very ending section and how things come together, so working that out will be my December.

No NaNo

Laura Highcove

So I got about halfway through the month of November, having no trouble keeping up with my word count when it hit me, that NaNoWriMo isn’t for me anymore. NaNoWriMo gets people who have not been working on that novel that they want to publish, to sit down and actually write. Well I realized that I actually had to stop working on the story I had been working on to do NaNoWriMo, which ended up being a story that I have little to no interest in because I’ve already started all of my good story ideas. So I officially quit NaNoWriMo, by telling the people that knew I was doing it, that I wasn’t anymore, and I went back to working on Shifting Winds.

And this isn’t to say that I like NaNoWriMo any less. I think it’s an amazing program that I will continue to support and may participate in again, but it’s for those people who need that push to get off their butts and write, and that’s no longer me. It helped me in the years I did participate. Now I’m to the point where I can write, so I need to work on turning my writing into the polished product it needs to be, and that is not the point of NaNoWriMo.

Nanoing

Laura Highcove

So it’s 8 days into NaNoWriMo for this year, and I am regretting my choice of story. The premise really was rather stupid, but at the same time I seem to be able to hammer out the words I need a lot more easily than I have in the past. Luckily, I guess, is the fact that this story happens in the same universe as one of my other more favorite stories, and thus whatever I write in this, even if most of it ends up being trash, can do a lot to flesh out that universe. My ideas do tend to flow the best when I’m actually writing as opposed to just sitting around thinking (not that I don’t have ideas that way too, sometimes) so I’m just going to hit all the important points and see what comes out of it. I have no doubt I’ll get my 50k words, but don’t ever expect to see Jeremy five-five as its own story.

New NaNo

Laura Highcove

So I had a lot of trouble with NaNoWriMo this year. Partially because I started raiding again. I ended up not writing any on those weekends and then catching up on the weekends. It got rather annoying, and more than once I wanted to just give up and not bother with it anymore. However, I did not give up and actually finished early thanks to a desire to play Skyward Sword on the Monday after Thanksgiving. But I kept going and managed to get my 50k words. And I am very glad that I did it. This year was “The Colors Of” my rovas story.

NaNo and beyond

Laura Highcove

Once again I have managed to be NaNotorious.

It was harder this year, for sure, since I had a full time job. Week three was the worst, I really wanted to just give up and get on with…well not doing this. But I managed to stick it out. Once again the book is not finished. I think I’m further through the book than the halfway of last year, but once again, we’ll see how that goes. I, of course, celebrated by starting work on my other book, The Trickster.

That being said, we’re less than a week away from Wow’s Cataclysm launch which will consume my soul for at least a month before I come up for air. Looking forward to the days off if nothing else. Though with the time, I really should get the ‘credits’ thing done to try and encourage other people to make their own so I can get that done before Cata launches.

There’s also the pesky issue of my lost SoulSilver game, and with it all of the Pokemon I have collected over the past, roughly three years. I have reached the last gym of the Diamond version of the game (which I hate as a game, but made better by sending over eggs from my husband’s Heart Gold game for a familiar team) and am playing with getting White when it comes out in March. However last night I looked over the pictures of the pokemon from Gen V and am sadly (but expectantly) disappointed by the horrible designs in most every respect. Most of my problem being that a lot of the pokemon don’t *look* like pokemon. The style seems incorrect. The starters are fine along with a few random pokes, but even the legendary dragons don’t really fit the style of pokemon designs I’m used to. I still desperately cling to the original 151 with some passion, with only tiny cracks for some pokemon from the later releases. By the time they hit Diamond’s pokemon, I was thoroughly disgusted, and think I hold no love for any of those pokemon (I’d have to check to be positive.)

So what is the point of going into Gen V? The possibility of at least good gameplay. I did not dislike Diamond only because of the unfamiliar, unimagined pokemon, but because the gameplay itself was terrible as they took a Game Boy game and spent five minutes making it DS compatible. (I also didn’t like it because of the storyline. While Team Galactic was cool for once again having a PLAN, the idea of being able to put the world’s creator in a ball in my pocket really pushes past even the suspension of disbelief one must have for being able to put something the size of Onix in a ball in my pocket.) SoulSilver was everything that I could possibly want in a game. All of the pokemon. A huge world. Fabulous gameplay and an actual (fabulous) use of the ds screen. In my mind they improved the game in almost every way. (Even the pokewalker was so cool.) So I’m hoping that Black and White will be worth it. If not, I suppose I’ll get another SoulSilver game at some point and complete my Gen IV collection and be happy with that.

NaNoWriMo 2009

Laura Highcove

It’s that time of year again. NaNoWriMo is once again upon us. This year I am full intending to win. I’m going to be writing the rough first draft of Candidate that I failed to write for this site. Then hopefully I’ll be able to edit it into something I feel I can post (though still not a final draft) here.

This year I’ve even gotten a few other friends involved. Hopefully that will help keep me motivated. The challenge of keeping up (or beating) them.

For right now, this is my page: PyroPawz

My husband: Mssngrdeath

And one friend: PhoenixAscending

Writing starts tonight.