Finishing NaNoWriMo and Editing

I won NaNoWriMo in 2013. At my lowest point, I was 13,000 words behind. The stresses of real life, extracurriculars, and more homework left my word-count lagging far behind. On the last day, a Saturday, I knew I was going to finish. I was 11,000 words behind, which would require 5.5 hours of solid writing. I was out all day doing family stuff, but I finally got to write at 9 PM.


I crammed, using Write or Die, and switched my time-zone so I could write past midnight without the server recognizing that and making me not a winner. (Tricky, I know. I can't take credit for this idea. A guy in my region helped me with it.) Finally, at about 2 AM, I validated and was victorious. My characters were messy, and my plot was basically nonexistent, as usual, but I wrote about 20,000 words more than I thought I'd be able to, so it's still a success. My reward for myself was these brownies. (Seriously, if you love chocolate, you have to try them. Store-bought will never be the same again.)


Since taking a break from my mostly-finished first-draft of BILC, I've been editing: creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. I'm submitting all of the above to the Scholastic Writing Awards, so that should be fun. I think I'll do well and, if I don't, there's always next year.


  When not writing novels, I've also had the pleasure to read Zara Hoffman's debut, The Belgrave Daughter. I'll be reviewing that tomorrow.

NaNoWriMo

It's that time of year again, where thousands of people try to write 50,000 words in a month. Again, I am one of them, with my YA semi-Christian novel, Before I Liked Converse. Cue the confetti! (No, save that for the end of the month.)

(As evidenced by the lightbulb thought-bubble, NaNo participants are just too awesome for words.)

This year, working on my novel hasn't been easy. I'm much busier, with extracurriculars several days a week, and several honors classes. It's the second day, and as of writing this, I'm 2,500 words behind. I'm just going to try to persevere the best that I can.

When I woke up this morning, I went downstairs and just wrote for about 30 minutes, writing 1,000 words in the process. Contemporary isn't easy for me, neither is writing pieces that take place in high-schools, so this has been a piece of cake. Even so, I forgot how freeing and incredibly fulfilling working on a long work of fiction can be. I'll be keeping track of my word-count with the word meter on the side in blue, cleverly titled "Before I Liked Converse." Because, you know, why not be original?

To novelling (or novelizing, as it may be) success!

Procrastination, Poetry, and Prose

Note: I'm rather proud that I created that alliteration. It was going to be Procrastination, Poetry, and Parsley, but then I realized that everyone who loves parsley and sees this post was going to be disappointed. And I wouldn't want to wish that fate on anyone.

In the past week, my novel has reached 30,000 words. I've been working on it for several months now and I'm pleased to say that it is halfway done. I'm going to finish it with the help of Camp NaNo.
However, I have been procrastinating a lot lately. I've discovered that the root of procrastination is the luxury of time--you only procrastinate when you have enough time and can afford to do so. With my school's weird spring break, I've had lots of time to wander around my house and read and go on the Internet. While my daily 500 words usually takes me about a half-hour, recently it's taken me over an hour.

Last night, I decided to take action. (That sounds so official, doesn't it?) I sat down at my desk, and used Write or Die for a while. Forty-five minutes later, I had 1,800 more words. I'm planning on using it much more often, as I'd forgotten about it in the aftermath of NaNoWriMo.

  Here's a poem I wrote a few months ago, called The Silence of a Tree:

A tree stands alone,
weathered color, pockmarked
skin waiting
for a slow, silent death
his hollows have been forgotten,
his achievements erased,
Holding tired branches
dragging memories
still clinging to his sorry bark,
as the world around him
crumbles, ricocheting, melting
into dust,
still the tree stands tall
waiting for the spark-colored sky to end

the silence of a tree
remains

Lessons from NaNoWriMo

                I had an actual plan for a blog post, for once, but as usual, I forgot about blogging until the last minute, so another list it will be. Well, and I don’t have anything drastically important to say this week.

                What I learned from NaNoWriMo:

·         Save your document, unless you want to spend precious hours madly retyping from memory (not like I’ve done that, or anything . . . )

·         Sometimes, it’s helpful to know who your main character will be before you start (who’d a thunk? I know, I know—it sounds so crazy, doesn’t it? Well, it’s true. Take my word for it.)

·         Eat lots of chocolate, or drink coffee or tea, if you like that sort of thing

·         Write or Die is immensely helpful, although at times, I cheated, I’ll admit

·         Write. Whenever you have time. I routinely crammed on the weekends, averaging 3.5k for Friday-Sunday, because that was the only time I could write

·         Bask in your family and friends’ amazement, and remember you’re a writer

·         Don’t care if you have no clue where you’re going; somehow, it will be resolved, albeit it may be full of plot holes

·         Forego turkey and relatives until you’ve gotten your daily word-count done (at least, if you’re in the US)

·         You can always catch up. I never got behind, but I saw people who wrote so much in the last few days

·         Always add more conflict. Make up high-stakes scenarios. I put my MC captured, locked in a bathroom with a guy outside who wanted to kill her or something, but you don’t have to go that high. By the way, she got out by crawling out the window.

·         Word-count is important, but autocorrect is not your friend (read: guess who had an awful autocorrect mistake a few days ago? Yep, that’s me!)

·         Have fun. And eat more chocolate. Sleeping’s always an added bonus too

For now, I think that’s about it!

Some of my favorite NaNo quotes from family and friends include:

-“Katia’s writing a novel. (To me) Why are you writing a novel? If I was writing a novel, I’d fall asleep while I was writing it.”

-“Wow, I heard you’re getting published . . . ,”

I’m sorry, but I am so not getting published right now. I’m 14, with relatively little experience, and this is a bad first draft. Nobody would want to buy that, and I haven’t even mentioned to you that I’d want to get published.

-(I was complaining to my grandma about how I was having novel trouble and I didn’t have a plot, really)

My grandma: “Well, that’s okay. You’ll figure it out once you write six or seven!” Meaning, six or seven novels. I have at this point written two. She has never written a novel, as far as I know.

                Nothing much is new, really. I wrote like a fiend this past weekend, and sent my spell-checked first-draft out to my critique partners. It will get torn apart, so I’m going to have to deflate my glowing opinions. Of course, in time it’ll be better, I just know that for a certain amount of time, I will hate the anonymous beta readers. After that, I’ll get over it, though. I’m also going to do the Year of Writing Continuously, which I know little about. The most meager of details have been provided to me, but other than that, I’m not sure. I think it’ll be very fun, though. My personal goal for myself is 1,000 words per day, or 365,000 in the next year, starting from March 1^st.

Katia,

The writer girl

NaNoWriMo Journal: The End (also known as Week 5)

            My first draft is finished at last! I finished NaNoWriMo at 10:00 on Friday after typing the remaining 2,000 words to reach my goal.

            Here are more stats about the novel:

·         3: characters change names   

·         1: completed first draft                                           

The NaNo winner's badge for this year

·         100 (or more): typos that I need to fix     

·         2,013: my daily average 

·         1: average amount of hours I wrote per day 

·         0: all-nighters (I’m not that crazy . . . yet!) 

·         3: critique partners

·         346: average words above the minimum per day

·         22: pages where I’ve corrected spelling errors

·         118: pages total, without chapter breaks

·         20: chapters I hope to have

·         60, 500: words I have right now, before editing it

My plan for editing and revising my novel is to correct all of my spelling errors, send it to my critique partners, and edit it myself over Christmas break, and continue to edit at their suggestions. After that, I may let my eager family members read it. We’ll see how it goes. I think it has a good concept; it just needs a lot of work. That should be fun, I’m sure.

For other, non-novel-related news: I’m currently working on several fiction pieces and some angst-filled poetry (which I do not write, generally), some of which I hope to submit for the Interlochen Fiction contest. I doubt I’ll make it, but I might as well try. I’m also editing my first 500 words for this contest for NaNoWiMo winners, and I’ll submit that tomorrow, so that gives me something to mull over and revise for the next day or two. I also entered the latest Go Teen Writers contest, so I’ll get my results back for that tomorrow.

For me, NaNoWriMo was incredibly awesome and fun, and I’m looking forward to at least trying to make it a tradition. Plus, my family and friends supported me, which made it all better, and helped me write “the novel I want to read,” to take a page from their book. (Wait, that was a bad pun? I . . .  can’t hear you!!)

Have fun writing this week!

Katia,

The writer girl

NaNoWriMo Journal: Week 4

My novel is almost done. I have found out so far that I’m a bit of a procrastinator, but thankfully, I’m generally focused. Of course, having pie, cookies, and brownies on hand as bribes after I finish writing helps a bit. Currently, my novel’s word-count is 57,480. I’m going to make another list, because I like lists, and this way you won’t realize that my spelling has been falling to the wayside since I started NaNoWriMo.

                My novel by the numbers:

·         2: types of grain I talk about excessively. Here you were, thinking that you might not be able to have multiple discussions on the topic of corn, but you can! See, that is the truly amazing thing about writing a story set in, while living in, the Midwest. Yep, your brain is officially blown.

·         2: people die, just because I need more drama

·         1: nice old guy

·         1: young, bitter guy who captures Kera for unknown reasons

·         2,000: NaNoWriMo words destroyed by my forgetting to save and weird software trying to take over my computer (others were destroyed from different stories I forgot to save)

·         2,000: words I had to make up the next day, therefore rewriting the scene from memory. (And it was not pretty!)

·         5,150: words I wrote on Sunday (after that fateful word-sucking "software update" that I'm convinced is trying to hack into my computer)

·         1: cryptic message

·         25 (approximately): awkward metaphors because I’d never written a dystopian (or futuristic) novel before

·         25: days which it’s taken me so far to write the first draft of my novel

·         632: average number of words I write per day, above the NaNo minimum

·         2,299: average word-count per day

·         2,520: words I have left to get to my approximate goal (of 60,000 words)

My plot has been progressing nicely, and my characters have taken direction. I love it when that happens. It’s just so freeing, you know? It makes me feel like I made great characters, which may or may not be true. I’m going to try to write some words this week, but I have a safety net in case I don’t.  I'm looking forward to writing this week, but I'm also glad that I'll get a little time off this week. Then on Friday I will write 2,000 words, or however many are left, and validate my novel, therefore being declared an official winner.

Happy writing!

Katia,

the writer girl

NaNoWriMo Journal: Week 3

            My novel is going very, very well. By that, I mean I’ve written 10,005 words in the past week. Also, there has been just enough conflict, and my characters’ relationships are good. I love my characters, and my plot has been going well enough. I don’t have many awkward, time-filling lulls that I did in my June novel. Might I add that I am 10,000 words ahead of schedule? Yes, NaNo life is very sweet now.

            My novel by the numbers (so far):

·         3: characters whom I absolutely love

·         1: start of a romance

·         2: women who are out to get Kera (my MC)

·         40,154: words so far

·         6: days ahead of schedule

·         2,230: my average  number of words per day so far

·         1: case of extreme estrangement

·         2: scenes where Kera’s in her best friend’s (and crush’s) arms

·         1: death

·         3: comments of stunned disbelief made by my friends

·         18: days of writing happiness

Good luck to everyone who’s doing NaNo, and who will be starting week 3 as of tomorrow. Happy writing, and may the traveling shovel of death enter your novel as needed!

Katia,

The writer girl

NaNoWriMo Journal: Week 2

NaNoWriMo is awesome. It may not be the highest quality writing (far from it), but I’m writing a lot, and a lot more than I would normally. I have so far a word-count of 30,140 words. I wrote 10,000 of these in the past 72-hours, and I had my first 5k day yesterday. My novel has a surprisingly active plot, considering the fact that I don’t plan at all. I have a lot of dialogue, which is nice. My characters are getting along well, and there has been a good amount of action, at least according to me. I’m just so happy while writing it, and it seems like everything’s been working out really well. It’s not so much that the story’s great, although I happen to think I have a great premise; it’s more that I’m just really enjoying the process. Writing a novel is a seriously amazing thing.

                I have told most of my family members that I’m writing a novel, so as to keep me committed to my word-count, et cetera. My aunt, upon hearing about this (and after a few email-exchanges) sent me a package in the mail. It was a big bag filled with chocolate with different types for different levels of motivation, six-word memoirs, and a nice card as well. She rocks. I did thank her for that, by the way.

                In my novel for the past 17,960 words:*

·         My MC tells her friend what she is going to attempt (her journey to find the Exiles)

·         My MC and her best friend survive on little food

·         They (MC and best friend) realize that tunics aren’t made to support hare-brained journeys where you walk for days to try to find your friends who may be dead already

·         Kera (MC) gets a heatstroke

·         They find the community

·         There’s a bit of romance

·         MC realized working in the fields is awful

·         Someone dies

·         People are sad

·         People are happy

·         They leave the Exiled Community, breaking away in the middle of the night

·         People act like scared daredevils

·         Soup spills on someone’s shoes

·         I have more stupid tree metaphors

·         I expand to include stupid sky metaphors and stupid wheat metaphors (See, I’m not just a one-trick horse, everyone! See . . . Or not.)

And more! I’m having an awesome time writing my novel and I hope everyone else is too.

Sincerely,

 

Katia, the writer girl

*What I wrote in the last week.

NaNoWriMo Journal: Week 1

Note: I apologize for any typos that I will make in the next four weeks. I have been writing madly and thus am not entirely accountable for my errors.

                I woke up last Thursday with a story burning on my lips. For months, I had thought about this story, and now it was time to write it down. By “thinking about it for months,” I mean I did think about it for months, but that I had never made a plan or outline. All I had to go from was a list of hastily-scribbled names, a bad chart, lots of strikethroughs, and a vague idea of some of the relationships in my novel. As I avoid outlining whenever possible, this wasn’t the best plan, but it’s how it went. My idea of coming up with a fantastic outline during my Spanish class that afternoon didn’t work out so well. Although I went into it with no plan whatsoever, it’s been going brilliantly so far.

                On Thursday, I wrote about 1300 words, hampered by my bedtime. On Friday, however, it was the weekend, and so my writing took off. I wrote 3,000 words and read an inspiring pep talk. It went much better than I thought. I was picturing myself crying, and spending hours trying to type out those 1,667 words. However, that hasn’t been the case . . . yet. Yesterday I wrote 4,000 words of sheer madness that may or may not have made sense, and today I wrote 3,500. Right now my novel is 20 pages, single-spaced (12,000 words) and positively filled with typos. I love my story and characters, just as I have since June, so I knew that wouldn’t be a problem. A setting took shape quickly, and now I have a plot, unlike in June. Mainly, everyone’s getting mad at the MC and she wants to leave. Still, it’s a conflict. My story has been going very well, and so I’m very happy with that aspect.

                There is, however, one aspect that I didn’t plan. (There are many aspects that I didn’t plan, due to my anti-planning nature. This is simply the one that I found the most confusing and then very amusing.) My dystopia setting is very rigid. I’m having the setting similar to The Giver. For example, everyone wears light-colored tunics, and their food is a grain that the workers in the community grow. They live on the prairie, so that’s not colorful, either, and they don’t have many animals, either. I was having a hard time describing the world, because I enjoy using similes and metaphors, and if you don’t have anything to compare something to, how do you describe it? I was confounded for a few hours, and then I found a solution. My solution was to make comparisons—just only using trees. Therefore, my manuscript is full of sentences like, "My worry dried up like a drop of water on a sun-baked leaf," and "To me, it seemed to be like resin from a tree; sticky at first, but then you grow used to it and forget about it as it seeps more and more onto your hand, leaving you covered with tree sap." Yes, these are lines from my actual manuscript, taken for your amusement. Feel free to use them if you like; I’m sure I’ll edit them out once I get to my second draft. Here’s to another week of literary abandon!

Katia

Why Anyone (and Everyone) Should Do NaNoWriMo

                NaNoWriMo is incredibly hard. You have to juggle work (or school), chores, familial obligations, particularly involving holidays focused on eating pies and roasted birds, and managing your time well enough to spend however long it takes you to write something each day. Additionally, the weather’s not very good, and who loves watching the latest season of Doctor Who? Okay, I’ve never seen it, but that’s not the point. Anyway, however hard it may be, it’s totally worth it.

                Reasons why you should do NaNoWriMo:

1.       It’s a great way to be creative after a long day. Sure, most of what you write isn’t great, but that’s not the point. Anything great you write in November is just a bonus.

2.       You’ll be joining thousands of people who are trying to write in this month.

3.       You can meet lots of new people online, and in real life, which can make you seem less loner-like, if you currently seem like a loner

4.       It’s a fun way to try something new without actually being athletic.

5.       The phrase “I’m writing a novel” will instantly make all of your friends feel like you’re either crazy or insanely impressive; either works, by the way.

6.       You have a way to skip parties you don’t care about and hours of your family talking to you too loudly all at once, by giving them . . . the perfect excuse.

7.       If you win, you get to brag about it for the rest of the year.

8.       People are really nice, and they understand like nobody else how hard it is to cram 10,000 words on the last day, and someone will cheer for you whether or not you win, I hope

9.       Because I will be involved. Also, the idea is really challenging, but it’s about adapting, and making do with imperfection, and having fun. I guarantee that, at least, even if you don’t finish.

10.   Authority has promised free shrimp dinners; what’s not to love? If you are allergic to seafood, then sorry. Never mind.

 

Right now I’m overcome with the awesomeness of NaNo. If you do choose to participate, which you can at any time, make sure you stock up on chocolate. Here’s to a month of writing dangerously!

 

The end of Camp NaNoWriMo

     The June session for Camp ended last night. I was freaking out. My parents were at a Twins game, and so they weren't there to help me and/or us. I was completely on track, but of course the day when you have a project due, it's the perfect time to make gnocchi with your sister, right? Yeah, so that took about two hours of trying to rice potatoes and yelling, and then I got to clean up some dog puke and the dishwasher started leaking all over the floor, all while I was frantically worrying about completing my novel. I had almost gotten the scene planned out in my head, and after we cleaned everything up, I got to the computer and started typing maniacally.  

      Finally, I got it done. I happily submitted my novel, and got to the winner's page. There, I was greeted by a paragraph talking about my achievements, an image of a sunset on the beach, and a printable winner's certificate. It's a pretty nice way to end the week, huh? Yeah, I thought so too. Anni didn't seem very impressed though, as she flipped through various and sundry channels with a remote. As cliché as it sounds, I kind of have a secret fantasy of . . . (wait for it . . . [it's not what you think!]) writing a really awesome novel that starts with, "It was a dark and stormy night." NaNoWriMo novel this year? Perhaps. I told my extended family and some of my friends about my writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, so I also got to blunder my way through explaining National Novel Writing Month. People should never ask me for explanations. Never. My favorite quote was from my grandma, who replied, "Well, it gets easier after six or seven [novels]!" That made me laugh (internally, though as I didn't want to hurt her feelings), especially as she has never written a novel or any prototype, at least to my knowledge. That comment really made my day, no joke. Ah, the pleasures of writing.

Script Frenzy

    I found out yesterday that Script Frenzy, bot the youth and the adult versions, would no longer exist. I was rather sad and disappointed. I had used the youth version of Script Frenzy to write my first play ever, mostly because I thought it was cool and I love writing (but also because I got bragging rights and a printable certificate). My play was only thirty-eight and a half pages of writing, but it was fun. I learned a lot more about writing plays, and I did have some good quotes from my script. I also really liked the inspirational pep talks that the YWP (Young Writers' Program) director gave us, especially as I was doing it on my own, without my peers' support. It also made me appreciate plays and play-writes a lot more, just as Camp NaNo has helped me appreciate real, published books and the authors who are able to do so. As a result, I don't look at plays -or novels- the same way again, without imagining all of the back-story and work that is put into them.  I was kind of sad that I only got to do Script Frenzy for one year, because I had wanted to do it again, but I've mostly gotten over it. However, they (at the Office of Letters and Light) doing more to support NaNo, to make "year-round content", so that should be good. I think I will do NaNo this year, and I'm already excited -and nervous-! Let's just say I will binge on chocolate for 30 days straight; it's kinder that way.

Noveling

          This month, I'm embarking (and have been embarking) on a month-long quest to write a 50,000-word novel, through Camp NaNo. This is the first time that I have written a novel, and I'm excited. My novel is about a girl named Alyssa Taylor, who moves to Columbus, Ohio because of her mother's new job. She meets several new classmates, and they begin working on the Newspaper Project. As it slowly unravels, she quickly finds out that life is more complex than it may seem. It is a literary novel, meaning that it currently has little-to-no plot and dialogue, but I have got the characters down. I'm trying to give it more dialogue, and I have more of a plot now, so that's good. As I have experienced 27 days thus far of crazy noveling, character-building, and reading blogs about noveling, I have wisdom to share with you. 
Prepare to be enlightened.

     What I have learned from Camp NaNo*:
- I procrastinate badly
- use whatever you've got
- don't discriminate against bad ideas
- being an author is way harder than it seems
- you should stock up on cookies and other sugar-filled objects
- Write or Die is the way to go
- it’s way harder to be consistently witty in a book than in real life

* It would be cool if that made an acronym about writing, but it doesn’t, unless IUDBYWI is some type of analyzing device


                                        The Plan for my Novel

     After I finish my novel in the next few days (well, technically, the first draft), then I will edit it like crazy and remove a lot of the monologues which I have inserted solely for their word-usage. I’m not looking forward to that, but I will do that. Once I don’t cringe at the thought of other people reading my heartfelt opus, then I may give it to some of my friends as beta readers, so they would give me feedback (not that I’ve found anyone for that job [who agreed to it], yet). After getting their feedback, if they give me feedback, I will ignore about half of it, because I don’t like constructive criticism. I will act sullen and mope about the house, thinking about how they ‘obviously didn’t understand what I meant by that phrase’ (or something to that effect), for several days, and then I might consider their feedback. I will make some of those changes, and then I will go over my story again, making my changes as needed. After I’m completely satisfied with that, I will look into Kindle Direct Publishing, and try to publish it for free as a Kindle book this summer, because I simply love strangers harshly judging my writing (yes, you’re right; I could stop writing stuff and putting it on the internet for others to judge mercilessly, but that would take all of the pain out of it, and who really wants that? That’s right, nobody).