NaNoWriMo or No?

  

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. The awesome co-hosts for the November 1 posting of the IWSG are PJ Colando, Jean Davis, Lisa Buie Collard, and Diedre Knight!

October 4 question: November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

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Yes! I have made use of NaNoWriMo. I've participated 9 times, and "won" (as in: wrote 50,000 words in the allotted time) 4 times. 

One of my NaNoWriMo projects became the third novel in my Menopausal Superhero series, Face the Change, so I've even used to bring a project towards publication.

Several of the other projects are still on my back-burners and I plan to go back and finish them and see them through to publication--after I finish the fifth and final novel in this series and fulfill my contract (with a publisher, not the devil, in case you were wondering). 

John Hartness, of Falstaff Books in my driveway

I don't regret the other times I participated, even if I didn't make the goal word count. It was still more words than I likely would have gotten on those projects without the extra impetus and it helped me focus my attention on a single project, which his often one of my struggles. 

But sometimes, my November has too much family or day-job work in it to be able to buckle down for a 50K run. 

I'm not participating this year. 

I'm in the final stretches of a Menopausal Superheroes #5 (still untitled, but I'm narrowing it down), but we're also in the middle of a lot of family things, so I don't think I can do 50K in one month next month. I'm being realistic. 

I also know that I've had the best experience with NaNoWriMo when I'm starting a new project and can use the structure to push me past overthinking and into progress. So maybe next year I'll be ready to start a shiny new project and will use NaNoWriMo for a good jumpstart, but this year, I'll be slogging along at my own pace, working my way to those magic words: THE END. 

How about you? Have you used NaNoWriMo or other productivity challenges to push you in your creative life and projects? I'd love to hear about it in the comments! And don't forget to check out the larger blog hop. I always find a lot of inspiration in the posts produced for IWSG. 

What's so great about NaNoWriMo anyway?

 

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. This month's co-hosts are: Diedre Knight, Douglas Thomas Greening, Nick Wilford, and Diane Burton!

November 2's optional question - November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

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NaNoWriMo has been helping me since 2013. I'm an eight time player, and four time winner. One of the books I wrote for NaNoWriMo is now a published novel--the third in the Menopausal Superhero series. 

I've written about it before on this blog:

• Why I NaNoWriMo, November 2019
• On Being Okay with Not Making It: My NaNoWriMo Failure, November 2017
• NaNoWriMo and Me, November 2017
• On Not Winning, December 2015
• Of Turkeys and Word Counts, November 2015
• The Valley After NaNoWriMo, December 2014
• NaNoWriMo 2014: Week Two, November 2014
• Post NoNo Blues: PPD for Writers, December 2014
• NaNoWriMo 2013: I Won!, November 2013

I last participated in 2021, working on the novel that I'm still working on now. I'm strongly considering participating (it's still October as I write this--I have a few more days to decide) this year again to give myself some pressure and impetus to finish a draft. 

What I love about NaNoWriMo is the sense of accountability and community. Sometimes I need a little outside pressure, a feeling that someone is watching and I need to make a good showing. 

No one has ever been mean about it when I didn't make my goal--that's not the vibe of the event at all. I even threw my hat in some years in the full knowledge that it was impossible that year, where my secret goal was just more words than I would have written otherwise, maybe 30K when I'd been averaging 20K a month for a while. 

It helps me stop overthinking, because I have to work fast to make that word count. There isn't time to dither too long over details that maybe won't even matter in the final draft. 

It helps me carve out the time from all my other responsibilities and to make sure my novel takes the priority in my limited writing time each day--protecting it from marketing and social media work, for example. 

If I'm participating in a challenge that I know is short term, there's a sharpness of focus and purpose that comes. I feel less guilty about the stuff I'm NOT doing so I can do NaNoWriMo, precisely because it is "only for a month." 

How about you writer friends? Do you NaNoWriMo? And reader friends, do you have challenges you participate in to boost your productivity or give focus to something you love? I'd love to hear about it all in the comments. 

A Good Day Off, Samantha-style

I've got a day off today. Thank you Veterans! Generally, I take one particular veteran to lunch, but my sister just moved to the opposite coast, so that's a little harder than usual to do, so I donated to a couple of veteran-related charities instead. 

My work-life balance is a mess again--tilted way too far over on the work side, and leaving the life side flapping feebly in the wind, so today is about trying to rebalance that a little, and getting to enjoy the small pleasures of life that get trampled in the hurry-hurry pressure cooker I call a day job. 

So, first I went to breakfast with Sweetman. As a middle school teacher, my day starts hella stupid early, so generally, I've left for work without even seeing his face or hearing his voice.

Starting with coffee and hot bar breakfast at Weaver Street Market, surrounding by trees at the height of fall color was perfect. We talked and just enjoyed seeing each other before five o'clock at night. 

Then, I took the boys for an extra-long walk. We went to Riverwalk and included the extra loop around Gold Park. There was a brisk fall wind, and I was wearing a flannel shirt my dad left here the last time he visited (there's still something special about wearing your dad's shirt, even at age 50) and it felt so good to take time to get out into the air and light. 

Daylight savings time has been leaving me in the dark most of the time and making it much harder to get a walk, since it's already getting dark when I get home from school now and I cannot get up early enough to walk before school--I'm not naturally a morning person at all, though I've learned to manage because I have to, as a teacher. Walks are the number one thing I do for my health: physical and mental, so it's painful when I can't get enough of them. 

Home from that, I spent some time on my computer, writing this post, responding to emails, and checking in on social media. 

Yes, I probably should have devoted that time to working on my novel (I'm drafting the fifth Menopausal Superhero novel for NaNoWriMo), but I craved a slow start to my day, and this balanced "productivity" with relaxation in a way that works for me. 

Next, I'm on lunch duty, followed by early afternoon errands: taking the kiddo to two appointments. We try hard to avoid missing school both for the kid and for me, but we still need get to all the health care people that matter to our lives. So generally a day off school has a couple of appointments in it. 

Today it's the orthodontist and the eye doctor because the poor kid has two parents with glasses who needed braces. There were no good eyes or teeth to inherit. 

I'll lug my laptop with me and squeeze some words in while I'm sitting in waiting rooms. This evening, I'll work in a little more writing alongside dinner time, dog care, and maybe a little TV watching with my family. 

Of course, since I'm the mom, there will also be some dishwashing, laundry, etc., but it's all made a little easier by having room for it in the day instead of shoving EVERYTHING I do besides teach into 3-4 waking hours at home after school. 

Maybe it's not exciting, but it's a very good sort of day off for me. When you get a single day off from your daily grind, how do you use it? 

Why I NaNoWriMo

A writer friend asked me the other day why I would bother with NaNoWriMo. She meant it as a compliment since I'm a "real writer" now. "Isn't every month novel-writing month for you?" she asked. 

She has a point. I write every day, come hell or high water. My daily writing chain is now over six years long and along the way I've seen three novels through to publication and written three others that I hope to publish someday. 

So, in that sense, I don't "need" NaNoWriMo. 

I'm going to write, regardless of what month it is, and I generally write 50, 000 or more words per month. But there is something special about participation, something that pushes me to regard the work differently, at least short term and that shift of perspective can be refreshing and reinvigorating. What it's doing for me this year is keeping my energy focused on my novel, rather than spread between the novel, blogposts, articles, short stories, proposals, promotional work, and other kinds of writing. This month, at least, I'll neglect all the rest of my writing life in favor or writing words on one novel. 

The first time I did NaNoWriMo was 2013. I was working on a historical women's fiction novel, working title Cold Spring. As I remember it, I kept getting bogged down in research details, which made it hard to move the story forward. 

A challenge of writing historical fiction is having enough detail to capture the era believably, but not forget that the thrust of the story is the characters and what happens to them. I actually really enjoy research and it was easy to let all my writing time slip by in research and not actually add anything to the story. 

So NaNoWriMo was good for me in that way, letting me get down the story and trust to the revision process for the details. I often found that the detail I longed to go research didn't matter in the end and all that time would have been wasted. 

The next year, I wrote something I intended to be a Middle Grades novel, Rat Jones and the Lacrosse Zombies. It was a brand new idea, begun on the first day of the challenge. 

I still found that NaNoWriMo was good for keeping me from overthinking, but I'm not pleased with what I ended up with. 

It's the wrong tone for the age group and genre and rewriting it will not be simple, which is why it keeps getting back-burnered even though I really love Rat and want to tell her story. 

I used the challenge in 2015 and 2016 to work on Face the Change, the third of the Menopausal Superhero novels, losing once and winning once, but ending up with a novel that has since been published and received good reviews. So, definitely a win overall!

In 2017, I used to get a chunk of work done on a new novel, Thursday's Children (currently shelved, because I don't have the heart to write dystopian right now). The nice thing about failing NaNoWriMo is that even a writer who doesn't write 50,000 words still wrote words, so they still win. I have some 80,000 words on that project waiting for me when I can find the heart for it again. 

I didn't play along in 2018. But I'm back in 2019, with The Architect and The Heir, a gothic romance. As I write this, I'm seventeen days in, which means that I should have written 28,399 words, to stay "on track." I haven't. I've written 18,204. But they're good words, ones I'll likely keep. The story is finding its footing. It feels good and right and the daily focus is helping me sort out some of the issues and work out the intrigue. 

In past NaNoWriMo outings, I've felt a little like I was tumbling downhill, barely able to keep my feet under me. It's exciting, but it's not sustainable. That's why it's National Novel Writing Month…once a year, not a technique to undertake as the day to day method of operations. At least not for me. A breakneck pace all the time would eventually…well, break my neck. 

But for one month? I can handle being a little breathless for the life it brings to the work. 

BackBurner Projects

I'm in a slow period at the moment, so far as writer productivity. But I can see relief on the horizon. It's only a month or so now until school breaks for summer and I can be a full time writer for a few blessed weeks.

In the meantime, I'm letting a few projects simmer on the back burner, hoping to turn them into something yummy to read in the next few months.

My main project, a young adult dystopian romance (working title Thursday's Children) has been moved to the slowcooker so that it keeps warm even though I don't have enough mental energy to finish it right now. It's about two thirds written, but it's patchwork. It has a beginning and a late middle, but no early middle and no ending. To make sure it doesn't go stale on me, I stir the pot at least weekly, revising an old scene or working on a new one. I'm feeling good about finishing in that first month after school ends.

On the back burner though are a BUNCH of other projects and I'm enjoying trying to decide what to work on next (as soon as I finish Thursday's Children).

Cold Spring is book one of a historical fiction trilogy. I still love Lena and Freda, the sisters at the center of the story, but finishing their story is going to require a LOT of research if I'm to do it justice. I feel solid in the first of the planned three books, but I'm holding off doing anything with it (as in seeking publication) until I've written all of it. That could end up being work that spreads out over the next decade or so.

Rat Jones and the Lacrosse Zombies, a NaNoWriMo project from a couple of years back, wants to be a middle grades or young adult novel about bullying and witchcraft. I've got a full draft of that one, but I think it's needs restructuring and to remember that it's a kids' book.

His Other Mother, the first novel I ever finished writing, is percolating back there, too. I'd really like to give it a once-over, now that I know more about writing and structure than I did back then. It's issues-driven women's fiction, and I still think it's a powerful story that could find a publishing home with another comb through to smooth out tangles and snags.

A few short stories are pulling at me as well. "The H.O.A." will fit into a collection I've been working on called Shadowhill, which are all weird tales that take place in a suburban subdivision suspiciously like the one I live in. A few of those stories have been published, and I'd love to collect them into a single publication. Another one from that collection, "Suburban Blight" is begging me to turn it into a novel, but I keep telling it to wait its turn.

Two other short stories are jumping up and down in the background, too, one called "Frankenstein in Savoonga" and another called "Another Turn of the Screw," each riffing on the classic literature they reference. Oh yeah, there's also that suffragette story I started at a writing workshop that I've been promising myself I'd finish: "Tiger Lily."

The fourth and fifth books in the Menopausal Superhero series await my attention, but I think they're going to wait for 2019. Taking 2018 to write other things has been rejuvenating so far, and I want to keep letting that energy build.

Of course, there's a new novel idea tugging on my skirt hem, too, this one a gothic mystery novel, featuring a female architect named Devon. She's persistent about wanting her story told, and I've been dying to write a gothic novel since I was about nine years old.

If I can write even a third of this stuff this summer, I'll feel like a powerhouse. How about you? Got anything on your back burners you're anxious to get back to?

On Being Okay with Not Making It: My NaNoWriMo Failure

It was clear pretty early on in November that I wasn't going to make 50,000 words this month. Once that would have broken my heart and filled me with ugly angst. But I'm taking it, well maybe not exactly in stride, but in step, without stumbling.

Fitting my writing in around a full time job and family responsibilities, I usually write about 35, 000 words a month (though they may not be ALL on a single project). An extra fifteen doesn't sound so terrible…and I've done it before. So, I thought I could do it this year, too.

But there are two things I rely on to get the extra time that I didn't get this year: Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving weekend.

I mean, I still *got* those things, obviously--the holidays still happened--but I didn't get them for writing. I spent Veteran's Day taking my favorite veteran out to lunch, then taking my quickly growing daughter shopping to replace all the vital things she'd outgrown. Also valuable uses of my time, but not uses that add chapters to my novel.

And my parents came in for Thanksgiving weekend. Visitors are not conducive to writing large word counts. They are conducive though, to happy memories and shared laughter.

Couple that with going to a fan convention (three days of more interaction than writing time) and doing a Book Fair, and I actually had less writing time than is average despite it being a month with four extra days off of school.

So, that's all the reasons. And looking at them, I feel good about what I did get done this month, while still making progress on my new novel.

But that doesn't change feeling like I failed. I'm mean to myself that way sometimes, not cutting myself the slack that I would readily offer others. I ask a *lot* of myself. Still, I am *way* more okay with have a NaNoWriMo fail than I ever would have been in the past.

My 2017 has been all about trying to find the balance, after all. After pushing hard to put out three

novels in three years, I decided it was time to take a step back and breathe a little. I was burning out and losing the joy. So, I didn't write the fourth novel in my likely five novel series. Instead, I wrote a lot of short pieces, accepted a lot of engagements and opportunities to network and promote my work, and wrote a completely different novel (well, I'm not quite done yet, but I'm hopeful of finishing before I run out 2017).

And I'm getting there. Having fun without driving myself crazy.

So, I failed at NaNoWriMo. What have we learned?

I'm learning to say no…to myself.

#IWSG: NaNoWriMo and Me

It's the first Wednesday! Which means IWSG Day. Today's question: Win or not, do you usually finish your NaNo project? Have any of them gone on to be published?

After you see what I have to say, be sure to check out other posts and our lovely and generous co-hosts:  Tonja Drecker, Diane Burton, MJ Fifield, and Rebecca Douglass!

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I love NaNoWriMo. One of my struggles as a writer is persevering when I hit a wall. I can dither FAR too long over small details and stall moving forward on the big picture. In fact, that's what I did for the first forty-two years of my life (okay, I probably wasn't writing much in the first six to ten years): I started things. But finished none. My daily writing habit, my critique group, and NaNoWriMo have all been a part of helping me start finishing things and see them into print.

I'm a four-time participant and three-time winner of National Novel Writing Month. Every year I think I can't do it in November: 50, 000 words during a school month? But then we hit upon the idea of ordering our Thanksgiving dinner from Weaver Street Market and suddenly, I had Veteran's Day, and a four day weekend full of writing time. I can do a lot with a day off school.

In 2013, I wrote the first draft of Cold Spring, a historical women's fiction book which will, someday when I finish it, become a historical fiction trilogy.  Though I feel good about the first book, I'm going to need to devote some serious time to historical research before I can finish this set of novels and I feel like I can't really send it out there for publication consideration until I've finished all three.

In 2014, I wrote the first draft of a middle grade novel: Rat Jones and the Lacrosse Zombies, which I also plan to return to and whip into publishing shape. I still really love Rat, my main character. She just hasn't won the fight to the top of my to-do list again yet.

In 2015 I didn't win, but I wrote 30,000 words towards the book I finished as my 2016 project: Face the Change: Book 3 of the Menopausal Superhero series, which was published in summer 2017!

This year, I'm working on Thursday's Children, a new project (YA dystopian romance). I began the project his summer, hoping to submit it a novella into a book bundle some friends were putting out in September. But the story stalled, and clearly wants to be a longer, fully realized novel and not a novella. I've spent October thinking and planning and seeking feedback on the parts I've already written and I'm going in confident that I can finish this sucker in November. I'm a little nervous since my parents are coming to visit, which will leave me with less time, but my attitude is that even if I don't "win," I'll have more words than I would have gotten otherwise. I'll be that much closer to those magical words: THE END.

So, I don't know if four times qualifies me to speak to what I "usually" do. But I am a finisher, and I do plan to see all these books onto shelves and into digital readers.

What NaNoWriMo does for me is apply some external pressure to move faster, even when the project doesn't have a publisher waiting. It makes me write through, over, and around things rather than just closing the computer for the night when I get stuck. It shuts down my internal editor and charges forward, jumping canyon sized plot holes and knocking down doubts. The camaraderie of knowing that others are sharing the struggle at the same time as me helps. It's all over social media all month which builds excitement and a feeling of being a part of something larger.

What it doesn't do is give me a publishable draft. But revision is my friend. In fact, I LOVE revision (most of the time). I love taking my bare passionate lines and shaping and polishing them into fully realized stories with flow, pacing, and arcs. Now that I've traveled this road a few times, I understand how to revise my work effectively, and faster than I used to.

So, once more into the breach, my friends! See you on the other side!

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If you're not already following #IWSG (Insecure Writer's Support Group), you should really check it out. The monthly blog hop is a panoply of insight into the writing life at all stages of hobby and career. Search the hashtag in your favorite social media venue and you'll find something interesting on the first Wednesday of every month.

Of Turkeys and Word Counts

November means two things at my house: NaNoWriMo and Thanksgiving. Both are a little different this year.

I'm thankful to be able to say that it's been a good year for writing. My debut novel, Going Through the Change, came out in April. The sequel is in editing now, and I'm trying to draft the three-quel for National Novel Writing Month. I've also had some short stories accepted for anthologies, that should all pop here in the next few months. Of course, since it has been a good year for writing, I've had new things to fit into my calendar like promotions, sales, author events, and Atomacon!

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This means I'm seriously behind on my word count. In fact, I have substantial doubts that I'll make my 50K this year. That makes me a little sad, but it doesn't feel as bad as it might have another year. I know I'll finish the novel regardless of the timing, and it's not worth driving myself crazy just to fit the words into this particular month. After all, every month is novel-writing month for me, though I don't usually produce 50K in one month. I still have a day job, kids, a dog, and a love life to consider, not to mention a need to read and play video games once in a while.

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Often I catch up on the word count over Thanksgiving (this is my third NaNoWriMo, and I won both other years), but I haven't been this far behind before. So we'll see what we see.

Thanksgiving is going to be smaller this year with only my own family of four gathered around the table. I am both grateful for this and a little sad. Thanksgiving can be a great time to get together with your loved ones, but most of mine live pretty far away and none of us want to spend our precious holiday hours in the car all day.

So, I'll be having a quiet holiday in comparison to other years. I think I'm most thankful of all for that. Quiet can be a lovely lovely thing.

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