Saturday, July 9, 2011

Camp NaNoWriMo: Day 9

Well.

This hasn't been going so well that last few days. Between work and being busy with other things (making wands for the Harry Potter premiere!), I haven't written a single word since the sixth.

Ugh. I'm supposed to be at about 14500 words by midnight tonight. It's 8:30 right now...

I'm going to finish reading some forum threads I have open and then shut off my WiFi connection. I need to get writing, even if it's just random stuff. I think the problem is that my story is finally starting up for real, and it's just sort of intimidating. But I do not want to fall off the wagon! I really want to write this story and I really don't want to lose yet another NaNo. :(

Wish me luck.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Camp NaNoWriMo: Day 6

Today was awesome, if I do say so myself.

I ended up way behind on my word count yesterday, thanks to a combination of procrastination and a horrible night at work. So I tried to get started early in the day today, to make up the lost words. My tentative goal was to make it to 10,000 words before midnight and...

I DID IT!

Yes, I got to the end of the first real meaningful scene (meaningful to the plot, I mean) in the story and updated my word count for the day to 10,118. According to the new stats page on the Camp NaNo website, I wrote 3,156 words today! That amazes me, honestly. I was really on a role today. I wrote more than I've ever done in a single day before, I made my lofty goal, and I actually am starting to feel like my story is finally moving along! Most of this first 10,000 is full of long descriptions of things and my false-start beginning, but I finally completed the scene that starts the whole motion of the novel.

I'm also really starting to like my characters. Claire is getting more confident (I realized that she was acting kind of like a little kid, and it was getting out of hand) and Simon is awesome (I love writing his dialogue, it's got hints of Fred and George Weasley in it). Noah finally said something and one of the other band guys, Rich, actually got a teeny bit of back story!

Two things are helping me get the words out right now:
1. Bean's fullscreen mode (I highly recommend!)
2. Pure happiness

The more I wrote, the more excited I got, and the more I wanted to write. Also, I seem to be finally teaching myself some self-control! I go into fullscreen mode, and I can only exit every thousand words, or at least if i get to the nearest 100. It is seriously working wonders. I just can't wait to get started tomorrow! The kids are gonna be off on the main adventure quite soon!

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Camp NaNoWriMo: Day Three

Well, technically now it's day 4. But I'm of the opinion that it's still the same day until I go to sleep, so there you go. This is going fairly well for me so far, honestly. Today I decided to scrap my beginning (but keep it for word count of course, I don't want to lose two days of work) and go with a completely different plot in a different genre. I was doing a sort of supernatural mystery thing, but I just wasn't feeling it, and it's a good idea but I need more time to flesh it out, instead of diving right in. So I left that alone for now and reworked the characters into a lighthearted teenage romance kind of thing. Now my distant relatives are twins and they're going to end up on a summer adventure sort of thing...eventually. I haven't gotten very far in the plot yet but the words are coming easier than before so I'm just letting it flow and I'll see where it goes. But I'm a lot happier with this one. My boyfriend pretty much bailed. He was excited at first, but I think he kind of thinks the NaNo style of writing (forcing out this quota of words each day) isn't for him. And it may not be, so I respect his decision. He said he'll keep writing, but I don't know. I think I'm going to dig up my copy of No Plot? No Problem! and have him read it, to see if it changes his mind at all, though. That book really made me understand the point of NaNoWriMo. So we'll see with that situation, as well. My final word count today was 4,111. The minimum goal for today was 4,839, but I got a very late start and I find it hard to focus, so I feel like I did well, anyway. I need to really work tomorrow if I'm going to catch up, though. I don't want to fall behind too much! Well, that's all for now, I need to sleep. Wish me luck!

Saturday, July 2, 2011

A Short Introduction

Hello all!

I'm Emily. Normally I blog over at Divine Chaos but I decided to make this blog as well, to have all of my writing-related posts in one place! Plus, that blog has a little different audience than this one will likely have! This way my NaNoWriMo friends won't have to scroll through my crafty posts if they don't want to, and my crafty friends won't have to scroll through what will probably be text-only posts about the progress of my novel. Everyone wins! :D

So, as it's probably obvious by now, this blog will be full of posts about current writing projects and maybe just writing in general.

I'm eighteen years old and I've been writing as long as I can remember. I love to read and write and create. I've made several attempts at NaNoWriMo in the past, but I've never won. The most I've written on a single project was 11,000 words of a screenplay about pirates during the first ever ScriptFrenzy.

Right now I'm participating in a new program, Camp NaNoWriMo. It's pretty much NaNoWriMo in July and then again in August. Same goal, 50,000. And my boyfriend is doing it with me! :D

I'll be posting updates here every day or so. You can check out my progress on my Camp profile page, here, and follow me on Twitter for generally up-to-the-minute updates, here!