Tag: author

When November Spawned a Monster

~ Meg ~ 53 Comments

National Novel Writing Month (I refuse to use the acronym, it pisses me off) is off to a decent start. I have 11,315 words written as of Sunday night. That puts me ahead of the average I need to complete on time. Which is a good thing. I struggle to write the same thing every day. Which is bad. I didn’t have this problem when I started the first novel — I concentrated on that exclusively to its completion. What happened to me? I found this on Pinterest the other day I thought it totally applied to the way I’m feeling this month:

I have never had the best self discipline. I do stuff because I want to and the minute I feel like I have to, it quits being fun. “Duty is an ugly mistress,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, is one of my favorite quotes. And another is “I love deadlines. They make a nice whooshing sound as they pass by,” from Douglas Adams. These are both on one of my ubiquitous post it notes stuck to my monitor. I really do love to write so I’m trying not to let November ruin it for me. I also don’t want to bail on NNWM (I prefer initials to acronyms) but I will if it looks like it’ll spawn a monster.

The world turns upside down…

~ Meg ~ 32 Comments

Tuesday is the first of November, the day the novel writing frenzy begins. I have the weekend to prepare, make sure I’m ready to forget everything else and just write. I know some people map it all out, have incremental goals, and so forth. But I don’t flourish as a task orientated writer. That’s not to say I’m not organized. I do have the story all plotted out, but I am not writing with an outline.

When I say plotted, I mean I’ve written down the list of events that need to take place from the beginning to the end. I have snippets of conversation jotted on my index cards. I have character biographies written and I have a blank timeline spreadsheet started to keep track of my events as I write them. This approach can make the pacing of a novel more difficult. That is, making sure all the action isn’t bunched together with lots of dead space in between. We’ll see how it goes. The point of the whole exercise is  to get the story written, after that the massive edit can begin.

I have an obstacle or two to write around as well. Work of course, can’t be set aside for an entire month obviously. But I also have something special planned for the first weekend in November: I have tickets to Hamilton on Broadway. And a visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I guarantee no writing will happen on the 5th and 6th of November. Totally worth it, though.

NaNoWriMo or no…

~ Meg ~ 71 Comments

I am considering participating in National Novel Writing Month this year. Why on earth would I want to subject myself to that torture? Well, here’s why…

I HAVE BOOK FIVE OF MY SERIES FULLY PLOTTED OUT AND I HAVEN’T WRITTEN A BLOODY WORD SINCE FEBRUARY BECAUSE I CAN’T SEEM TO GET OFF THIS STUPID BLOG WRITING CAROUSEL!!!!!

There. I feel better. The truth is I’ve been more caught up in “Here Lies a Soldier” than the novel universe. But I also feel like in being a series writer, the books need to appear in semi-regular fashion if they are going to keep the audience’s attention. Which is why I thought signing up for NaNoWriMo might force me to pick up the thread of the next  Bucks County Novel episode. If I succeed in vomiting out 50,000 words over the 30 days of November, I can edit and proof read in December, get it to the beta readers on January first, and barring any glaring problems with the manuscript, do the final edit and publish before the end of February. Sounds like a good plan.

On the other hand, what that means for blogging is that I will have to drastically cut down on the time I spend here. In fact I was thinking of just hanging in with Lula for drinking adventurously and making that my one and only weekly contribution. And maybe just a quick hello in the comments of your lovely posts as best I can.

I’m still wavering. NaNo is a HUGE commitment. I absolutely despise deadlines. The time constraints might have the opposite effect from what I intend and I’ll just get mad and frustrated. So I don’t know…

Are any of you doing NaNoWriMo? And if you are, care to twist my arm?