nanowrimo

NaNoWriMo 2021

Writing

It’s that time again. This is actually the midpoint and it’s been a fun challenge again this year.

This time around, I am utilizing an application called Dabble. I tried this application last year during the trial period in an attempt to writing for NaNoWriMo. It was a good distraction, but I did not make much progress to that 50k goal. This year has actually gone a lot smoother for when I do have time to write because I actually did some plotting ahead of time with Dabble’s plot grid. *shock*

Next year, I think I’ll do a National Plotting Month in September (Halloween is too important to eat into for October).

The best part about Dabble is that it works seamlessly between my mobile device and my desktop. I’ve been able to write via desktop and then if I needed to go somewhere away from my desktop, I can pick it right up using my phone browser.

Then when it comes to writing distractions, I’ve been having fun with Canva to make book covers. Unsplash is a great place to grab images that could be used for free. I had this lofty idea a long time ago of drawing my own covers but never really made the time to do that. But Canva definitely helps with just getting the concept out.

Check out a couple of the covers I put together for this year and past stories…

Do you think you’d want to read any of these?

Hello November

Thoughts

National Novel Writing Month is here. Some folks look forward to the holidays or to the gifts that come with those holidays, but the end of the year I look forward to the most is that crazy literary challenge in November.

When I first started taking on the challenge, I would fly by the seat of my pants. A “pantser” as people in the crowd call it. But I do feel like with the practice of trying it out year after year that I’m transitioning to more of a planner.

Even though the challenge focuses on the quantity, not quality, it’s been difficult to get to the end of a story. How do I get my character from A to B when I don’t really know what B is supposed to be? Well, this time around I wrote up A to G to P. Which is way more planning I’ve done ahead of time than in the past. And yet I still find myself in the struggle 😅. Granted other life things have come up in the first few days. So, hopefully, week 2 will even it out.

NaNoWriMo 2013

Writing

I’ve started again! A day late but off to a strong start. This time I’ve actually worked out an outline and some characters which is very different from what I’ve done in the past. I’ve always tried to start from scratch and would always get stuck.

But this time, I’ve got an outline! OMG how different it is. It’s like having goals throughout the story that I can see and move towards. Eventually, I’d like to go back to some of the previous stories I started and flesh it out with an outline.  Now back to writing!

NaNoWriMo

Writing

It’s the start of National Novel Writing Month! It’s the first day and already, I’m behind. Or at least, it feels that way. The goal is to get 50,000 words by the end of November. Which leaves it to about 1,667 words per day that need to get written.

The hardest part is starting the story. This time around, I’m just going to go the nonsense route and see where it takes me. Not to mention that I’ll be writing it by hand as well. Then I’ll type it up so that I can get some easy word counting done as well as some spell checking.

I think I feel a story bubbling… so good luck to everyone that’s participating!