WINNER!

Check out the badge to the right...go on...take a peek...yes, you read it right, I'm a NaNoWriMo WINNER!

I can hardly believe it myself.  I know I was better prepared this year, but even so, it surprised me how easy it was to get to the 50,000.  I hate to say 'easy', because it makes it sound like I could have done it whenever I felt like - though possibly this is true - and that I should have knocked out many multiples of 50k and produced a string of novels by now.  But it really did feel like a pleasurable experience, and looking back I can only remember a couple of days out of the thirty where it felt like a chore.  It almost doesn't feel real.

The extra and unexpected benefit is that I have made friends through NaNo.  I 'homed' myself to Chester and went along to their write-ins at least once a week, and this helped tremendously with my motivation (there were stickers as rewards - I'm a sucker for a sticker).  The online forums were the same.  And having a dedicated #writingbud in the form of a Facebook friend was a brilliant aid, as she and I 'raced' to each daily target and each milestone - 10k, halfway, 40k and on to the finish line.  I genuinely can't get over how different an experience it has been to 2010 and 2011, where I had no plan, no Scrivener and no writing buds (in person OR online).

The best part is that instead of being glad November is over and desperate for a break from my story, I'm finding that I'm missing writing every day.  This can only be a good thing!  Surely it means that I truly am A Writer?   Officially?  I've decided to take December off and then possibly take part in a 90 day challenge that runs from January 1st to March 31st - I'd like to write at least 500 words a day.  Previously this would have seemed daunting, but post-NaNo, 500 words seems like a brief word sneeze...  ;o)

Scrivener - a revelation

Hello loyal readers - and you truly must be loyal if indeed you are reading this after such a long hiatus.  After a good deal of personal turmoil, life is on the up again...and that means I can get back to writing! 

In preparation for NaNoWriMo 2012 I've treated myself to Scrivener - a piece of software designed for writers (of all kinds) as a sort of word processor/corkboard/research storage/Harry Potter-style 'room of requirement'.  That doesn't really do it justice, so please do find out more about it from the Scrivener people themselves here.  I only got it a couple of days ago, and am waiting for Scrivener for Dummies to turn up from Amazon before I get too far in, in case I'm teaching myself the wrong way to use it!  But what I've seen so far looks great.  Being able to keep everything in one place (instead of over a range of Word docs, picture files, web links etc) is AWESOME, and the corkboard feature means you can write separate scenes and rearrange them as you like.  I think having the freedom to write small chunks, knowing it will be easy to piece them all together will be quite liberating for me.  Writing in Word feels very linear, purely because of its ever-scrolling nature. 

This year's NaNo promises to be a whole new experience...I can't wait! 

Happy writing,

Toyah

PS I bought my software using the discount code found at this website - 20% off is not to be sniffed at! 

The results are in...

As the UK is in the grip of what seems to be The Worst Winter Ever And It's Only The First Of December, I write to you from within a huge jumper, thick trousers and fingerless gloves.  No, I'm not outside, I'm in my living room (with the fire on!) but once my fingers get cold it takes an awful lot to bring them back to life.  For every ten minutes I sit here writing, I feel like I need to spend five minutes huffing on them.  But enough about my rubbish circulation...

Yesterday was the final day of NaNoWriMo and as you can see from my little blue box on the left, I did not make it to the 50,000 finish line.  I'm very happy with just over 10k though as it's much more than I've ever been able to produce in such a relatively short space of time before now.  The feeling that all you need to do is just sit and write whatever comes out of your head is really liberating and on the sessions I was able to sit and do it, I did get quite swept up in it.  Now I have eleven months to think of an idea that I can use for next year's NaNo...  ;o)

Today I've been catching up with some studying.  I got the mark back from that last essay that I was stressing about - 72%!  Hopefully for the next one I'll have a bit more confidence, given that my tutor obviously thinks I'm better at this than I do.  We've moved on from Homer now to fifth century BCE Athens - the foundations of democracy and all that kind of thing.  I've been reading about Athenian theatre and listened to a play called Persians by Aeschylus.  It's not a cheery way to spend an hour, I can tell you - there's a lot of wailing and lamenting and 'aiaiai'-ing!  I'm sure that once I get a bit further into the study block it will become more apparent how this links to Greek society and so forth. 

Persians and the associated coursebook reading has taken up most of the day, but I've also been doing some tweaking to the blog, trying to make it more what I would want to see if I were a reader.  I hope it doesn't feel too cluttered, I don't know how (or if it's even possible) to make the main section wider so that things would be more spread out.  Hmm, maybe I need to add Blogger for Dummies to my collection...

Lastly I just want to share two links with you.  I saw them while browsing some other blogs today and they just made me laugh, hopefully you will too! 

Nine Circles (credit to Nathan Bransford as it's his blog)

Awesome Bookshelf System (credit to John Baker as it's his blog)

Best wishes - stay warm!

Picture from here

.

10k Day

'10k?' I hear you thinking, 'she's been running when she should be at home writing?'  There are many reasons why the answer to that is a resounding NO - 1) it's cold here and there would have to be a very good reason for me to leave the house and 2) run 10k - me?  Have you met me?  Okay, no, most of you haven't met me, but I can assure you that I couldn't even run 1k, let alone 10.  I'm not overweight but equally I am just not that fit! 

No, 10k Day is a concept thought up by my new writing buddy Milli Thornton over at Fear of Writing whereby writers commit to trying to write a whole 10,000 words in one day, checking in periodically to post updates on their progress (and what snacks are helping them get through it!).  As one of them fell on my Writing Wednesday I thought it would be silly not to at least try, so after a late start (I won't bore you with why that was) I applied the BICHOK principle (Bum in Chair, Hands on Keyboard) and began. 

I chose to work on my NaNoWriMo project, which has been sadly languishing while I've been working long days and/or studying. #shame#  Fortunately, I'd thought ahead and done some plotting last night so that I had a bit of a route map to follow today, rather than having to think of the plot AND all the words.  So I got off to a flying start...if you're a friend on Facebook then you may have noticed my status and subsequent comments keeping the world updated with how I was doing.  I also updated my 'Toyah the Writer' Facebook page (feel free to look it up and 'like' it if you wish!) which in turn automatically updated Twitter (again, 'ToyahTheWriter'...do you see the branding I'm trying to apply?).  I do so love all this social media! 

Keeping tabs on the Fear of Writing blog page, which is where we were all checking in and updating each other, I forged ahead with periodic spurts of inspiration where the words really did just flow from my mind, down my arms and out of my fingers into the laptop.  It's quite a magical feeling!  Nourished by a bacon sandwich, chocolate biscuits and numerous cups of tea and coffee I managed to get to 3576 before it was getting dark outside and my stomach was telling me it was time for dinner...not the 10,000 I'd been hoping for, but certainly better than I've managed to get down in one day before now.  Progress! 

If you have something you're working on (not necessarily NaNoWriMo, it can be anything at all) and are in need of motivation, the next 10k Day is this Saturday (27th) - check out Milli's blog for more details and to check in.  The feeling of camaraderie is quite something, it's just so nice to have people cheering you on when you feel like it's just you and your laptop struggling along! 
.

E.P.M. (?)

And breeeeeeathe...  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, yet another Wednesday has been spent in Essay Panic Mode.  How does this happen?!  I always manage to get ahead with the course work and then let the assignment slide right until a few days before the deadline.  But anyway - the positive thing is that I managed to make 1000 words out of nothing, about a relatively complex topic, in less than a day.  If I can do that then surely making up stories out of my head should be a breeze? 

I have two whole months now till the next essay is due - plenty of time to get some writing done.  NaNoWriMo is 17 days in now, over halfway, but as you can see from the blue box on the left, I'm not exactly close to halfway in terms of word count.  #shame#  I think my target is going to have to be revised down to 10,000 words this time round, maybe next year I'll be better prepared for aiming for 50k! 

I'm not unhappy with what I've written so far but I'm having to think up the plot as I go along - I know where I want to get to later but getting there isn't as straight-forward as 'he did this then he did that then they went there' etc.  Well, it could be that straight-forward, but that wouldn't be much of a challenge would it?  I might save that idea as a last resort though...
.

Booklog #2

Greetings!  So another Sunday evening is upon us and as usual I have that 'pre-Monday morning meh' feeling.  I often daydream about how liberating it would be just to jack in the day job and write full-time, but then I remember that I have bills to pay!  Still, at least I'm taking baby steps towards that day...

NaNoWriMo (see my previous post) has somewhat taken over my free time this week so there hasn't been much reading going on.  However I couldn't resist pushing on and finishing The Book of Secrets by Tom Harper.  I give it 4/5 and would definitely recommend it if you enjoy the 'race for the historical artefact' type of story.  I wouldn't say it brought anything particularly new to the genre - you could pretty much guess how things were going to end - but it was very well-paced and the interweaving of the historical story of Johann Gutenberg and his invention of the printed book with the present day story of Nick and Emily was done well.  They alternate chapters for most of the book and each one ends leaving you wanting more from that side of the story, but then as you start the next you remember the cliff-hanger that the other characters were left in and become absorbed in their story again.  All in all a very enjoyable read. 

Today I started reading Mythology for Dummies, as a supplement for my Open University course.  I'm a big fan of the Dummies series and I'll admit that I have quite a collection, from Scrapbooking to High Blood Pressure...whether that makes me a Dummy I don't know?!  I really like the format they follow, breaking a big subject down into sections and then into smaller sections, using lists and bullet points and so on.  They appeal to my obsessive sense of order and I really feel that you could learn about anything from them. 

Other than that, I'm still reading:

Angels ~ Marian Keyes
The Redbreast ~ Jo Nesbo
The Children's Book ~ A. S. Byatt (halfway through chapter 15 - I feel that the only way to bully myself into making progress with it is to hold myself accountable to you!)

Till next time - happy reading!  
.

NaNoWriMo, baby!

Image by owlbookdreams via Flickr

No, I'm not spouting gibberish - NaNoWriMo (link may not always work as the site is very busy) is short for National Novel Writing Month and I made the spur of the moment decision last night to sign up...

The idea is that you write every day during November, working towards a target word count of 50,000 words.  If you manage that then by the end you have a completed first draft of a novel.  A short novel, admittedly - they're usually more in the 90,000+ range - but a novel nonetheless, which you can then either continue to work on and make longer, or edit into something worthy of submission.  Given my problem with obsessively self-editing myself after every sentence, I figured this could be just the kick in the butt that I need to make me Just Sit And Write! 

So the proper start was on November 1st, but as I only heard about it for the first time yesterday I'm two days behind.  You update your profile with your current word count as often as you like and it gives you stats about your average words per day, words left till you hit the overall target, words till you hit today's goal and that sort of thing.  And there's a graph!  I do love a nice graph, they're so motivating!  If I'd started on time I 'should' (though there are no hard and fast rules, just suggested guidelines) be up to 5000 words by the end of today.  Of course I'm not, but I am up to 2002 (the 2 are important!) which I feel is pretty darned good - the most I've ever written in one day in fact.  And the best thing is that I'm not too displeased with what I've written - just letting it come out of my head onto the screen has not resulted in the terrible dross that I feared it would.  You can see my latest word count on the little blue gizmo thingy on the left of the screen. 

From what I can gather there is a lot of criticism of this whole idea, not least because it advertises itself as a contest and explicitly states that it's all about quantity not quality.  If you make it to 50,000 words (and you have to upload them so their gadget thingy can verify that you haven't just copy-pasted the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog 5500 times) then you are classed as a Winner and you get some goodies (I'm not sure what).  Many professional writers/people in the publishing world think this is bad - writing's not a competition (in that sense at least) or a race, and I would agree with that.  If people go through this process and then send the end product straight off to a publisher or agent, I can imagine that person would probably be pretty peeved at having to read through them all because 99% of them must be awful!  The first draft is just the foundations, not the finished house!  The site does say that the work done in November is just the first part of the overall process - once you've written it you do have to edit it - but I guess a lot of people must choose to ignore that, thinking that they've got all these words down, so that should be fine.

Anyway, I'm being honest with myself and acknowledging that it's unlikely I'll get to 50,000 words by the end of November (unless I take the entire month off work).  For me it's going to be more of a way to train myself to just let the words flow, with the added bonus that by the end of it I will at least have a substantial chunk of story to do with what I like.  Next year will be different though...next year I will be a WINNER!  ;oD