We are getting up there in days now. Nano is over half over and it is occurring to everybody worldwide that soon we will have to return to our normal, everyday, non-noveling lives. If you’ve been following me at all, you know that’s not my goal. I want to be a writer. Full time, staying at home, interacting with craft and creating novels. It’s a tough dream, but I’ll get there one day.
I’m not quite caught up yet. My current word total is 27,121. Like I said, a bit behind but nothing to be worried about yet… I would be working on my word count now, but I suddenly realized this blog needed to go up.
This has been an eye-opening month for me. I’ve learned so much about myself, even if I won’t be able to make full sense of it until December comes around and my Squishy Brains are back to normal. I can’t wait to share all of it with you.
In the meantime, keep writing. If writing isn’t what makes you want to get up and dance though, find out what that love is. There is something in all of us that we are called to do. Find that job and I while I can’t promise that you’ll never have to work, I can promise that you’ll be happier than you will doing anything else.
Posted in Blogs on November 18th, 2011 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
The Fifteenth has arrived. By our Nanowrimo mandate, today we should have reached 25,000 words on our goal towards 50,000. I did this, managing to reach 25,019 words. I think my main issue today is dealing with the exhaustion.
I’ve been sleeping mostly well and yet today I’m still tired. Not sleepy, but I want to rest. My mind is tired and even if the body is willing, the mind can’t do anything half asleep. Also, my nose has been stuffed up all day and my head has been feeling like it’s got some cotton stuffed in it.
This can and will happen to you during your journey to 50K. During these days, I would suggest hanging out with friends and then getting some sleep. Do your minimum word count and get some extra sleep.
Also, if you’re anything like me you may need a bit of a pep talk. So here’s that part.
Always remember that you are a great writer. You are not an aspiring writer. You are not going to be a good writer someday, when you’ve absorbed enough information to finally get good at it. You are a great writer now. The next page will be even better this one and this page (no don’t read it now) is pretty damn good. Trust in yourself. It may be hard right now but you just need to do it. From this point on, it gets easier and easier every day.
Posted in Blogs on November 16th, 2011 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
Okay, I have a bit of a confession to make. The flu/cold has finally caught up to me. I have a mildly sore throat, My nose feels permanently stuffed up and my head feels as though it has been wrapped in cotton. On the other hand, these symptoms are less than they were yesterday or the day before that, so hopefully I’m on the mend. The worst part about getting sick is that on the little sleep I’m getting it makes me feel like I have literally not slept, no matter how good it is. It hasn’t been great for my word count either, which is why I’m only at 624 words for today, though I’m going to write up a few more before night’s end and hopefully hit 26k.
Yesterday was the 15th which meant that we all got to party. Our region had a midway bash and it was pretty fun. Not much Nano-stuff happened there (we were all asked not to bring our laptops) except for the meet and greet, but the food was good and it was great seeing everybody. I sat with my friend, Danni, who is also challenging herself at Nanowrimo (among others). Or perhaps I should say, she is challenging herself with a Nanowrimo type-challenge during the month of November. Like myself, she’s a bit of a rebel. The differences in how we rebel are interesting though.
As you know, I am challenging myself to write 50k of fiction this month. Most of that has been re-writes in my finished novel (the ending requires more editing, but the beginning required more rewrites) and I’m loving it. She on the other hand, rebelled by setting her goal as 200,000 words. When she was challenged, she immediately raised it to 300k. Seriously, if you’re not following her, go and check her out. She finished Nanowrimo’s challenge and got to declare her win of 50k… On the 5th of November. (Unbelievable, Yes, but it is awesome.)
Why am I mentioning this? Well, yesterday while at the midway bash, it occurred to me that everyone was feeling the week 2 blues disappearing. The clear skies of week three are looming wide on the horizon, even if they aren’t quite here yet. The interesting part was that everyone felt this way, including people like Danni who are already on their second novel and pulling up to 150k for the month.
I don’t know if its the general feelings on the forums or a world wide emotional wave, but most of us follow that Nanowrimo weekly emotional rollercoaster to a ‘T’ whether we’ve written 2,500 words or 25,000 words or 250,000 words. It really helps all of us to feel closer come November and its wonderful to kno wthat some great friendships will be forged during those final days incredible pushes at the end of the month.
So today’s is this. Keep going. Know that there are hundreds of thousands of us standing behind you, beside you and waving from the finish line cheering you on to win.
Posted in Blogs on November 15th, 2011 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
Today’s topic is stolen whole-heartedly from Epic Robot Danni’s blog and something that Lani Diane Rich said in her Storywonk Podcast. Today’s topic is about Squishy Brains.
Squishy Brains (or Mushy Brains as Lani originally described them) are what happens when normally intelligent people do Nanowrimo. The first ten days, no matter how well or how badly it’s going, people will be up excited and will not be able to wait to get to their computers. However, after 10 days of living in a caffeine/sugar driven world, working the equivalent of a second job, you start getting pretty tired. The tired mounts up, the sleep isn’t quite as awesome as it could be since you’re thinking about your novel 24/7 and the coke/coffee/sugar isn’t doing its job anymore.
That’s when it hits, usually around the middle of week two. You wake up one morning and realize that you have Squishy Brains (also known as the Dumbs). Squishy brain allows you to write and think about your novel all day, but the intense focus in this one area starts causing you to make mistakes everywhere. Things that are normally easy take an extra minute or two to figure out, things that normally come easy are suddenly hard, and people that you normally think of as a near relations of cave men will suddenly be able to out-think you on questions and problems that you’re having.
None of this tends to give writers much confidence in themselves and certainly not in their ability to write. The interesting part of this is that this is conversely the time when I find that I do some of my best writing. I’ve been thinking about the book for so long that by the time I touch fingers to keyboard the words just flow and all of the problems have been solved in advance. The spelling may not be as good as it normally is, but the ease with which the story falls onto the page is incredible.
What I’ve always found the most confusing is that this is the point at which most Nano’s give up. They decide that life while trying to do Nanowrimo is too hard, their novels must suck (look at how much their everyday life is sucking, after all) and they would really like to catch up on their tv shows that they’ve been missing.
So today’s instruction is to find glory and release in the Squishy Brains. They will make you happy, they will improve your writing and they will make you ready to take on the world. However, they will not make it easier to make complex decisions (that don’t concern your novel) or to help you in the finishing of menial tasks. This is the place the inner editor hates the most. It’s the area when he knows he’s needed the least and so he’ll fight you hand and foot to get you back to where he considers you on track.
Don’t let him. Kick him down. When he comes for you, laugh in his face and say the words…Squishy Brains… with glee!
Posted in Blogs on November 15th, 2011 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
Today I wrote 2476 words. I will say that the vast majority of those words were written very early this morning between midnight and 2 AM and most of the rest of it was spent editing. However this does bring my total to 23,050 words. This only puts me about 300 words behind my goal for tomorrow. However any extra words every tomorrow will be much appreciated since I won’t get tons done on Tuesday since its the day we will be having our midway bash. I’m having a lot of fun this nanowrimo.
I won’t deny that I haven’t had my down days but I will say that I’ve been enjoying it a lot. One of my goals for this nanowrimo was to learn how to do this as a full-time job. That means spending time on it every night, still keeping up my relationship with my husband and being able to keep up my work at my day job. The last year I’ve been feeling like I’ve been working a second full-time job but this shows me that I can indeed do it.
One of the things that help me make today a really great day was that today I got a little bit of recognition. The Daily Mongerer is an online writing newspaper. Every day they post a link to people’s blogs and tweets of interest to writers. Yesterday, they featured my “Nanowrimo, Day Twelve” blog post.
It was a very small thing but it really felt like it was huge. It also really helped that a friend of mine said, “when they soon I’m going to be able to say I knew her back when…” when I told her I still have quite a ways to go before I got to that point she commented, “it’s never met anyone with the determination and drives to learn all about the process like you do. It will be sooner than you think.”
I know it’s just because I am a proud Story Wonk that loves learning about craft, but that was one of the sweetest things that anybody’s ever said to me. It reminded me that the best part of the recognition isn’t people that I don’t know saying that I’ve gotten somewhere, but the people I do know saying that I deserve to be there.
Posted in Blogs on November 14th, 2011 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
I originally wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to write about today. I’ve reached 20,000 words and I will probably get another couple of hundred words before I head to sleep. I’m doing quite well there. I’ve also had time to bake cookies, make dinner and do some minor housecleaning. My story is going well and I don’t think I’ve run into issues with writing in the last couple of days.
So, of course, I went to write this blog post and couldn’t think of a single thing to talk about.
When everything is going well, it’s hard to find things to have a great discussion on. It’s much easier to know what to talk about when you are solidifying information or wanting to explain what you’ve learned about writing.
I’ve decided that I should celebrate everything going well though, with a blog post about that. What to do in Nanowrimo when everything is going well.
Going into week three as we are (2 days from now), you’ll find your writing going much easier. It’ll be clear sailing, the end in sight and you’ll heave a sigh of relief.
My advice is to not stop writing. It will be tempting. “Maybe just a single video game?” No, not even if its Skyrim. “How about a book?” No, not even if its your favourite.
What you are allowed to do is to take a single day off and do whatever you want. But after that day, get back on the horse. When things are going well though, write as much as you can. It helps for the times when you either come down sick and can’t write or you hit a bit of writers block and you can’t put words down on the page.
In fact, that’s a good rule for life. “Just Write. Whenever you can, write. Never stop! You are a writer and that’s what writers do. They Write.”
This is a rather short post today, but I will get you all up to date. My total is now, 17,372 words, which is almost a full 1000 below the 18,333 words I should be at. However, I should be able to make that up tomorrow while I write. At the very least, I should be caught up again by Monday.
I would have been further ahead, but this is the time of me learning to write as a career and still have a life. I had friends come over for Poker tonight and let me say, it was a blast. Sometimes taking a single night off can be awesome (especially if you were able to write prior to your company arriving) and can really recharge your flagging spirits.
For the rest of my post, I’ll leave you with a video of Errol’s, A Nano-er from Ontario. He does parody songs all year round, but this one he did with a few of his Nano friends is awesome. Please, enjoy.
.
Errol himself has done quite a few awesome Nanowrimo based videos alone, but I would suggest subscribing to both his personal channel and this one for DebsAndErrol.
Posted in Blogs on November 12th, 2011 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
Once a year, it comes around. Rearing its head from previously calm waters, it is suddenly upon you, eating your motivation, intention and willpower. Yep, some of you know what I’m talking about. Drama. But not just any Drama. No, this is a very specific kind. Yep, I’m talking about the Drama Monster that you never expect.
Nano-Drama.
Yes, this is a thing. This wild beast only raises its ugly head when lots of writers get together and proceed to get hoped up on Caffeine, hope and endorphins.
It happens when you say a careless word or try to help and get bashed down. It happens when somebody else feels that they are excluded from something and have to make a big deal of it. It happens when you refuse to say anything about issues you’re having because you don’t want to create Drama and then somebody else does it anyway.
It’s annoying because there is no good answer and (if both parties are adult about it) they know that.
On the other hand, adults solve this by deciding (as Jack Sparrow put it), “What a (wo)man can do and what a (wo)man can’t.”
If I am willing to put up with issues, then in my mind, the problem was not large enough for me to be complaining about. If it is big enough that I must eventually start speaking up then I can decide if that problem is big enough for me to stay or leave. So, how do I decide if I need to fight for my rights or how do I decide that my rights are less important than the groups? Each answer is different and no two will ever be the same.
Whether its somebody saying you’ve lied about your total, somebody bashing you or your words or perhaps even you making the eternal tired mistake of opening your mouth when you shouldn’t have, the advice is the same.
Pull up your Big-Girl Panties and get on with your life. The entire world doesn’t need to change to suit you but neither do you need to change to suit the world.
Decide what you can do and what you can’t. That will tell you everything you need to know.
P.S. – Also, remember that the only person who can let Drama stop you from writing is yourself. So keep writing… even if it is the last thing you want to do. This month, your novel is your refuge. Don’t let anyone take that away from you.
Posted in Blogs on November 11th, 2011 by B.A. Matthews | | Comments Off
Today, I am pleased to say that it is 9:52 p.m. and I haven’t written a word all day. Most days during nano this would drive me mad. Honestly most days in my life, period, this would drive me mad. Today though I am making an exception. You see last night I got home from the meet up and was stretching my wrists when all of a sudden my tendinitis flared. It hurt to do anything with them, up to and including not doing anything.
It stopped me from posting last night, which is why I posted first thing when I woke up this morning. I’m very lucky in that most of my blog posts I can do without having to resort to actual typing. My Dragon NaturallySpeaking works very well for that. For actual writing of course, it sucks. Something about the way I talk when I’m writing to the way I think when I’m writing makes it very hard for Dragon understand me.
So today, after much deliberation, I decided to take the day off. I know that it is nano and that its it is one of my few days that I’m not working that this nano is about more for me than just hitting 50,000. It’s also about learning about myself as a writer, learning how to take myself out of a writing space and put into an editing space and learning how to treat my writing like it’s a job. I don’t want to take all the fun out of it, but I do want to be responsible enough to be able to do this full-time. Sometimes that means knowing when not to write.
So my word count won’t change today. However it isn’t changing not because I made an EXCUSE, but because I made a CHOICE.
On the other hand I won’t say I mind reading a couple dozen manga’s of Shugo Chara at all (Ikuto all the way!).
Here’s hoping that you all reached your word count for the day, whether that was zero or 10K.
P.S. – I’m pretty sure that my Chara would look something like this.
Today I managed to reach 1,826 words which brings my total up to 13,763. It was a hard day I won’t argue, especially since I work full-time job as well. While I was sitting at the local Nanowrimo meet up, I was very surprised to have one of our ML’s come up to me and said that she shocked as to how we can do it. I didn’t realize this before, but this is her first year participating in Nanowrimo where she actually has a full-time job. It got me thinking about how much I actually put into my writing each year.
Before this year, my writing took a backseat to almost everything else. It was something I would do whenever I had free time. This year though, I have really been trying to improve and of course to finish my first draft. This year it actually felt much more like a second full-time job that it felt like hobby. A lot of it has been how I’ve been considering it. My thought was that it was paying me for it that I could be excused for taking the time that I thought I needed this.
I realized earlier this year that this was not the case. I needed to spend more time on it if I truly want to make it a viable option. Honestly this last year has taught me a lot about my writing. Perhaps even more importantly, it is taught me an awful lot about myself.
The first is that if my tendinitis isn’t hurting when I start writing than it takes an awful lot of writing before it will start. Conversely, writing at my daily job is a lot more painful. A year ago I thought writing was writing but I now realize that there is something different with the way I type at work then the way I type at home. I don’t know exactly what the difference is but I do know what it means for me. It means that I really need to get out my job.
My husband has made me the glorious offer that I can make half of what I normally do over a two-year period as an advance for writing that I can quit my job. But I’m wondering if I might not be able to get out of it sooner. Depending on how much I get when I do begin selling my writing, I may be able to start doing my job part time. I don’t know if it would be viable or not but I think if I want to help my hands to heal then I need to start looking at these options.
I don’t know what, if any, changes this will mean for me next year, but I do know that it will be very interesting to find out.
We are getting up there in days now. Nano is over half over and it is occurring to everybody worldwide that soon we will have to return to our normal, everyday, non-noveling lives. If you’ve been following me at all, you know that’s not my goal. I want to be a writer. Full time, staying at home, interacting with craft and creating novels. It’s a tough dream, but I’ll get there one day.
I’m not quite caught up yet. My current word total is 27,121. Like I said, a bit behind but nothing to be worried about yet… I would be working on my word count now, but I suddenly realized this blog needed to go up.
This has been an eye-opening month for me. I’ve learned so much about myself, even if I won’t be able to make full sense of it until December comes around and my Squishy Brains are back to normal. I can’t wait to share all of it with you.
In the meantime, keep writing. If writing isn’t what makes you want to get up and dance though, find out what that love is. There is something in all of us that we are called to do. Find that job and I while I can’t promise that you’ll never have to work, I can promise that you’ll be happier than you will doing anything else.
The Fifteenth has arrived. By our Nanowrimo mandate, today we should have reached 25,000 words on our goal towards 50,000. I did this, managing to reach 25,019 words. I think my main issue today is dealing with the exhaustion.
I’ve been sleeping mostly well and yet today I’m still tired. Not sleepy, but I want to rest. My mind is tired and even if the body is willing, the mind can’t do anything half asleep. Also, my nose has been stuffed up all day and my head has been feeling like it’s got some cotton stuffed in it.
This can and will happen to you during your journey to 50K. During these days, I would suggest hanging out with friends and then getting some sleep. Do your minimum word count and get some extra sleep.
Also, if you’re anything like me you may need a bit of a pep talk. So here’s that part.
Always remember that you are a great writer. You are not an aspiring writer. You are not going to be a good writer someday, when you’ve absorbed enough information to finally get good at it. You are a great writer now. The next page will be even better this one and this page (no don’t read it now) is pretty damn good. Trust in yourself. It may be hard right now but you just need to do it. From this point on, it gets easier and easier every day.
Okay, I have a bit of a confession to make. The flu/cold has finally caught up to me. I have a mildly sore throat, My nose feels permanently stuffed up and my head feels as though it has been wrapped in cotton. On the other hand, these symptoms are less than they were yesterday or the day before that, so hopefully I’m on the mend. The worst part about getting sick is that on the little sleep I’m getting it makes me feel like I have literally not slept, no matter how good it is. It hasn’t been great for my word count either, which is why I’m only at 624 words for today, though I’m going to write up a few more before night’s end and hopefully hit 26k.
Yesterday was the 15th which meant that we all got to party. Our region had a midway bash and it was pretty fun. Not much Nano-stuff happened there (we were all asked not to bring our laptops) except for the meet and greet, but the food was good and it was great seeing everybody. I sat with my friend, Danni, who is also challenging herself at Nanowrimo (among others). Or perhaps I should say, she is challenging herself with a Nanowrimo type-challenge during the month of November. Like myself, she’s a bit of a rebel. The differences in how we rebel are interesting though.
As you know, I am challenging myself to write 50k of fiction this month. Most of that has been re-writes in my finished novel (the ending requires more editing, but the beginning required more rewrites) and I’m loving it. She on the other hand, rebelled by setting her goal as 200,000 words. When she was challenged, she immediately raised it to 300k. Seriously, if you’re not following her, go and check her out. She finished Nanowrimo’s challenge and got to declare her win of 50k… On the 5th of November. (Unbelievable, Yes, but it is awesome.)
Why am I mentioning this? Well, yesterday while at the midway bash, it occurred to me that everyone was feeling the week 2 blues disappearing. The clear skies of week three are looming wide on the horizon, even if they aren’t quite here yet. The interesting part was that everyone felt this way, including people like Danni who are already on their second novel and pulling up to 150k for the month.
I don’t know if its the general feelings on the forums or a world wide emotional wave, but most of us follow that Nanowrimo weekly emotional rollercoaster to a ‘T’ whether we’ve written 2,500 words or 25,000 words or 250,000 words. It really helps all of us to feel closer come November and its wonderful to kno wthat some great friendships will be forged during those final days incredible pushes at the end of the month.
So today’s is this. Keep going. Know that there are hundreds of thousands of us standing behind you, beside you and waving from the finish line cheering you on to win.
Today’s topic is stolen whole-heartedly from Epic Robot Danni’s blog and something that Lani Diane Rich said in her Storywonk Podcast. Today’s topic is about Squishy Brains.
Squishy Brains (or Mushy Brains as Lani originally described them) are what happens when normally intelligent people do Nanowrimo. The first ten days, no matter how well or how badly it’s going, people will be up excited and will not be able to wait to get to their computers. However, after 10 days of living in a caffeine/sugar driven world, working the equivalent of a second job, you start getting pretty tired. The tired mounts up, the sleep isn’t quite as awesome as it could be since you’re thinking about your novel 24/7 and the coke/coffee/sugar isn’t doing its job anymore.
That’s when it hits, usually around the middle of week two. You wake up one morning and realize that you have Squishy Brains (also known as the Dumbs). Squishy brain allows you to write and think about your novel all day, but the intense focus in this one area starts causing you to make mistakes everywhere. Things that are normally easy take an extra minute or two to figure out, things that normally come easy are suddenly hard, and people that you normally think of as a near relations of cave men will suddenly be able to out-think you on questions and problems that you’re having.
None of this tends to give writers much confidence in themselves and certainly not in their ability to write. The interesting part of this is that this is conversely the time when I find that I do some of my best writing. I’ve been thinking about the book for so long that by the time I touch fingers to keyboard the words just flow and all of the problems have been solved in advance. The spelling may not be as good as it normally is, but the ease with which the story falls onto the page is incredible.
What I’ve always found the most confusing is that this is the point at which most Nano’s give up. They decide that life while trying to do Nanowrimo is too hard, their novels must suck (look at how much their everyday life is sucking, after all) and they would really like to catch up on their tv shows that they’ve been missing.
So today’s instruction is to find glory and release in the Squishy Brains. They will make you happy, they will improve your writing and they will make you ready to take on the world. However, they will not make it easier to make complex decisions (that don’t concern your novel) or to help you in the finishing of menial tasks. This is the place the inner editor hates the most. It’s the area when he knows he’s needed the least and so he’ll fight you hand and foot to get you back to where he considers you on track.
Don’t let him. Kick him down. When he comes for you, laugh in his face and say the words…Squishy Brains… with glee!
Today I wrote 2476 words. I will say that the vast majority of those words were written very early this morning between midnight and 2 AM and most of the rest of it was spent editing. However this does bring my total to 23,050 words. This only puts me about 300 words behind my goal for tomorrow. However any extra words every tomorrow will be much appreciated since I won’t get tons done on Tuesday since its the day we will be having our midway bash. I’m having a lot of fun this nanowrimo.
I won’t deny that I haven’t had my down days but I will say that I’ve been enjoying it a lot. One of my goals for this nanowrimo was to learn how to do this as a full-time job. That means spending time on it every night, still keeping up my relationship with my husband and being able to keep up my work at my day job. The last year I’ve been feeling like I’ve been working a second full-time job but this shows me that I can indeed do it.
One of the things that help me make today a really great day was that today I got a little bit of recognition. The Daily Mongerer is an online writing newspaper. Every day they post a link to people’s blogs and tweets of interest to writers. Yesterday, they featured my “Nanowrimo, Day Twelve” blog post.
It was a very small thing but it really felt like it was huge. It also really helped that a friend of mine said, “when they soon I’m going to be able to say I knew her back when…” when I told her I still have quite a ways to go before I got to that point she commented, “it’s never met anyone with the determination and drives to learn all about the process like you do. It will be sooner than you think.”
I know it’s just because I am a proud Story Wonk that loves learning about craft, but that was one of the sweetest things that anybody’s ever said to me. It reminded me that the best part of the recognition isn’t people that I don’t know saying that I’ve gotten somewhere, but the people I do know saying that I deserve to be there.
I originally wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to write about today. I’ve reached 20,000 words and I will probably get another couple of hundred words before I head to sleep. I’m doing quite well there. I’ve also had time to bake cookies, make dinner and do some minor housecleaning. My story is going well and I don’t think I’ve run into issues with writing in the last couple of days.
So, of course, I went to write this blog post and couldn’t think of a single thing to talk about.
When everything is going well, it’s hard to find things to have a great discussion on. It’s much easier to know what to talk about when you are solidifying information or wanting to explain what you’ve learned about writing.
I’ve decided that I should celebrate everything going well though, with a blog post about that. What to do in Nanowrimo when everything is going well.
Going into week three as we are (2 days from now), you’ll find your writing going much easier. It’ll be clear sailing, the end in sight and you’ll heave a sigh of relief.
My advice is to not stop writing. It will be tempting. “Maybe just a single video game?” No, not even if its Skyrim. “How about a book?” No, not even if its your favourite.
What you are allowed to do is to take a single day off and do whatever you want. But after that day, get back on the horse. When things are going well though, write as much as you can. It helps for the times when you either come down sick and can’t write or you hit a bit of writers block and you can’t put words down on the page.
In fact, that’s a good rule for life. “Just Write. Whenever you can, write. Never stop! You are a writer and that’s what writers do. They Write.”
This is a rather short post today, but I will get you all up to date. My total is now, 17,372 words, which is almost a full 1000 below the 18,333 words I should be at. However, I should be able to make that up tomorrow while I write. At the very least, I should be caught up again by Monday.
I would have been further ahead, but this is the time of me learning to write as a career and still have a life. I had friends come over for Poker tonight and let me say, it was a blast. Sometimes taking a single night off can be awesome (especially if you were able to write prior to your company arriving) and can really recharge your flagging spirits.
For the rest of my post, I’ll leave you with a video of Errol’s, A Nano-er from Ontario. He does parody songs all year round, but this one he did with a few of his Nano friends is awesome. Please, enjoy.
.
Errol himself has done quite a few awesome Nanowrimo based videos alone, but I would suggest subscribing to both his personal channel and this one for DebsAndErrol.
Once a year, it comes around. Rearing its head from previously calm waters, it is suddenly upon you, eating your motivation, intention and willpower. Yep, some of you know what I’m talking about. Drama. But not just any Drama. No, this is a very specific kind. Yep, I’m talking about the Drama Monster that you never expect.
Nano-Drama.
Yes, this is a thing. This wild beast only raises its ugly head when lots of writers get together and proceed to get hoped up on Caffeine, hope and endorphins.
It happens when you say a careless word or try to help and get bashed down. It happens when somebody else feels that they are excluded from something and have to make a big deal of it. It happens when you refuse to say anything about issues you’re having because you don’t want to create Drama and then somebody else does it anyway.
It’s annoying because there is no good answer and (if both parties are adult about it) they know that.
On the other hand, adults solve this by deciding (as Jack Sparrow put it), “What a (wo)man can do and what a (wo)man can’t.”
If I am willing to put up with issues, then in my mind, the problem was not large enough for me to be complaining about. If it is big enough that I must eventually start speaking up then I can decide if that problem is big enough for me to stay or leave. So, how do I decide if I need to fight for my rights or how do I decide that my rights are less important than the groups? Each answer is different and no two will ever be the same.
Whether its somebody saying you’ve lied about your total, somebody bashing you or your words or perhaps even you making the eternal tired mistake of opening your mouth when you shouldn’t have, the advice is the same.
Pull up your Big-Girl Panties and get on with your life. The entire world doesn’t need to change to suit you but neither do you need to change to suit the world.
Decide what you can do and what you can’t. That will tell you everything you need to know.
P.S. – Also, remember that the only person who can let Drama stop you from writing is yourself. So keep writing… even if it is the last thing you want to do. This month, your novel is your refuge. Don’t let anyone take that away from you.
Today, I am pleased to say that it is 9:52 p.m. and I haven’t written a word all day. Most days during nano this would drive me mad. Honestly most days in my life, period, this would drive me mad. Today though I am making an exception. You see last night I got home from the meet up and was stretching my wrists when all of a sudden my tendinitis flared. It hurt to do anything with them, up to and including not doing anything.
It stopped me from posting last night, which is why I posted first thing when I woke up this morning. I’m very lucky in that most of my blog posts I can do without having to resort to actual typing. My Dragon NaturallySpeaking works very well for that. For actual writing of course, it sucks. Something about the way I talk when I’m writing to the way I think when I’m writing makes it very hard for Dragon understand me.
So today, after much deliberation, I decided to take the day off. I know that it is nano and that its it is one of my few days that I’m not working that this nano is about more for me than just hitting 50,000. It’s also about learning about myself as a writer, learning how to take myself out of a writing space and put into an editing space and learning how to treat my writing like it’s a job. I don’t want to take all the fun out of it, but I do want to be responsible enough to be able to do this full-time. Sometimes that means knowing when not to write.
So my word count won’t change today. However it isn’t changing not because I made an EXCUSE, but because I made a CHOICE.
On the other hand I won’t say I mind reading a couple dozen manga’s of Shugo Chara at all (Ikuto all the way!).
Here’s hoping that you all reached your word count for the day, whether that was zero or 10K.
P.S. – I’m pretty sure that my Chara would look something like this.
Today I managed to reach 1,826 words which brings my total up to 13,763. It was a hard day I won’t argue, especially since I work full-time job as well. While I was sitting at the local Nanowrimo meet up, I was very surprised to have one of our ML’s come up to me and said that she shocked as to how we can do it. I didn’t realize this before, but this is her first year participating in Nanowrimo where she actually has a full-time job. It got me thinking about how much I actually put into my writing each year.
Before this year, my writing took a backseat to almost everything else. It was something I would do whenever I had free time. This year though, I have really been trying to improve and of course to finish my first draft. This year it actually felt much more like a second full-time job that it felt like hobby. A lot of it has been how I’ve been considering it. My thought was that it was paying me for it that I could be excused for taking the time that I thought I needed this.
I realized earlier this year that this was not the case. I needed to spend more time on it if I truly want to make it a viable option. Honestly this last year has taught me a lot about my writing. Perhaps even more importantly, it is taught me an awful lot about myself.
The first is that if my tendinitis isn’t hurting when I start writing than it takes an awful lot of writing before it will start. Conversely, writing at my daily job is a lot more painful. A year ago I thought writing was writing but I now realize that there is something different with the way I type at work then the way I type at home. I don’t know exactly what the difference is but I do know what it means for me. It means that I really need to get out my job.
My husband has made me the glorious offer that I can make half of what I normally do over a two-year period as an advance for writing that I can quit my job. But I’m wondering if I might not be able to get out of it sooner. Depending on how much I get when I do begin selling my writing, I may be able to start doing my job part time. I don’t know if it would be viable or not but I think if I want to help my hands to heal then I need to start looking at these options.
I don’t know what, if any, changes this will mean for me next year, but I do know that it will be very interesting to find out.
B.A. Matthews is an amateur author hoping to make her way into the world of published works. Her novels and short stories tend to be Fantasy, slipping into Dark Fantasy often as not. She also used to write music reviews over at Pagan Radio Network (www.paganradio.net).
I am currently working on two novels, Falling through the Threshold and a book tentatively titled Dual Melodies.
B.A. Matthews tries to update her blogs once a week and her various writings under the Pages section twice a month.
