Happy New Year!

I finally updated my Facebook Cover picture for my personal page and I wanted to share it with all of you first!

Here it is:

My hope for 2014 is that it is filled with all of the above and so much more!

I wish all of you a very Happy New Year and a
healthy, safe and fantastic 2014.

Until next time ~

Is it Possible?

Some people struggle with NaNoWriMo because they just can’t write every day or they don’t write enough words to make the daily word count goal of 1667 words per day. If they fall behind, they think it’s practically impossible to write like a fiend and get back on track.

Is it possible to win NaNo when you are that far behind?

Well, let me tell you about my NaNo experience last month. In previous posts, I mentioned how this year, NaNo was harder for me and I was behind in my daily word goal. At one point, I was so far behind that if I did not have marathon writing days, there would be no way that I would cross the 50K finish line by November 30. At the rate I was going, I wouldn’t hit 50K until mid-to-late December. Yikes!

My goal was to write 51,000 words, which comes out to 1700 words a day.

This is what my daily word count for the month of November looked like (brace yourself, it isn’t very pretty):

As you can see, there were 7 days out of the month that I had written no words! That’s right! That adds up to a full week of no writing. In a month of only 30 days, only writing for 23 days puts me at a great disadvantage.

Also, you can see that there were 5 days where I wrote less than 100 words. You like that day where I only wrote 13 words on November 8? Yeah, I had a holy crap moment myself. I was very productive that day.

I was only ahead of my word count 6 days out of the entire month. The highest number of words ahead of my writing goal was only 2011 words (November 11).

There was never a time where I was actually “on” target. That means that there were 24 days where I was below my writing goal.

Check out November 22. I was 9,212 words behind that day. Nine THOUSAND words behind. That’s enough to make anyone cry buckets and buckets and then quit on the spot. I just sighed, muttered about what a stupid idiot I was to let myself get that far behind and then had two marathon writing days back to back (November 23 and 24) where I wrote 12,726 words! HOLY SMOKES! I had never written that much in my life! That definitely beat out my previous record (on November 9 and 10 of this year) when I wrote 10,061 in two days.

You would have thought that I would have learned my lesson by then after that frenzied writing, but no, I wrote ZERO words the next two days (November 25 and 26). By November 28, I was 5707 words behind my goal. I was only up to 41,893 words by that day. Now that was really cutting it close. I couldn’t afford any more unproductive writing time. I only had two days to reach 51,000 words (or 50,000 if I decided I just could not write the extra 1,000).

I had to buckle down and I managed to squeeze out 5012 words on November 29 and 4931 words on November 30 (9,943 words in two days). I was thinking about adding another 164 words to make it an even 52,000 but by 11:20 that night, I was done. I had finally validated my novel and I just wanted to go to sleep. Thank goodness it ended on the weekend because I was not moving the next day.

So, look over my graph again. Do you see how many unproductive days I really had? Do you see how many days where I didn’t even make my daily word goal of 1700 words, let alone the NaNo daily word goal of 1667 words?

But I trudged along and pushed myself to finish. I had a strong motivator inside of me to hit that 51,000 word goal by November 30. And I did it!

So yes, it IS possible to fall almost 10,000 words behind and STILL win NaNo. Don’t let a few thousand words drag you down. Just sit at that computer (or with that notebook and pen/pencil) and write as if you really want it. Because if you really want it, there is nothing that should stop you from reaching that 50,000 word goal!

Until next time ~

What Type of NaNo Writer Are You?

Now that I have been able to catch up on some well deserved sleep, I wanted to write about the different writers that I have seen during NaNo this month.

There are the Naysayers: Many people think that it is practically impossible to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. These people stare at the NaNo writers with widened eyes, saying, “I don’t think I could ever do that. You have got to be crazy!”

There are the Cheaters: These people start writing days before November 1^st so that they are thousands of words ahead and then they brag about how much they have written at the end of the month (I am not going to talk about those people. Cheaters take the fun out of the competition and only make themselves look weak).

There are the Quitters: Some people start off writing 1667 words a day, miss a few days and then get so far behind that they just give up. Or they write for a few days, maybe a week or two and then just quit without ever looking back.

There are the Strugglers: Others start off writing above the 1667 daily word goal, get ahead, miss a few days and then fight to catch up. Sometimes they may just struggle with the writing, struggle with time management, struggle with the organization of writing, struggle with the plot, characters, dialogue, etc., or just struggle with the whole thing. They might make it to the end (see Motivators). Often, these people will struggle until the second week or maybe go as far as the middle of week three before they throw in the towel (see Quitters).

There are the Motivators: These people may start writing on November 1^st and then miss a few days or these people may not even start their writing on time and they fall behind very quickly. Then these people have to claw their way through the rest of the month, fighting to try and get close enough to the growing word count that they are using every free second to catch up. These people may become bumbling, mumbling idiots by the end of the month, the may be suffering from a lack of sleep or they may go temporarily blind from staring at the computer screen for so long. But, these people do make it to the 50K finish line by 11:59 pm on November 30.

There are the Capables: Other people who are able to write their daily 1667 words every day, without fail and win on time. Nothing stops them from writing. They are focused on the contest and they get their words done.

There are the Overachievers: Those who write way more than the 1667 daily words every day and exceed the 50,000 word goal. These people seem to have magic fingers that fly with lightening speed across the keyboard and time seems to freeze for them while they type madly away.

The Plotters: These people often reach their goal easier because they have spent countless of hours plotting their novel. They may have their characters already chosen, chapters and scenes mapped out and have sentences of dialogue already to go. They probably have the entire thing outlined before November 1^st. For them, NaNo is probably a piece of cake because they have their novel notes right in front of them while they are writing and can tackle their planned words without too much hesitation.

The Pantsers: These people may have a general idea as to what they want to write about but they don’t do any planning (or hardly any planning) for their novel. Or sometimes, these people have absolutely no idea as to what is going to appear on that blank page until they begin to write. Usually, there is no outlining involved (or just the bare minimum), no chapters laid out, no preplanned scenes and no dialogue worked out. But these people start on November 1^st and discover the beauty of watching their novel unfold right before their eyes. For them, NaNo might be a bit of a struggle because they don’t know where their novel is headed and they have to come up with the plot right on the spot.

There are the Conformers: These people follow the basic rule of NaNoWriMo. They begin a brand new novel on November 1^st and write only that novel during the entire month. At the end of November, they will have written 50,000 words towards a brand, spanking new novel that they can continue to work on in December and the next year.

There are the Rebels: These people do not follow the basic rule of NaNoWriMo. They do not start a brand new novel. They may continue working on an existing novel or maybe even two novels. They may even edit a novel. This does count, as long as they write 50,000 words of a novel during the thirty days of November.

This month, I was a Motivated Rebel Pantser. I fell behind and struggled the entire month to catch back up. I rebelled because I continued my NaNo 2012 novel and I was a pantser because, although I had a general idea as to what had to be added, I had no plan except to write and attempt to finish my novel.

How would you describe your NaNo self this month?
 
Until next time ~