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Hello everyone.

We’re down to the last full week of NaNoWriMo…and what a challenging week! Not only did I have two days where I was planning on really pushing myself to write, I also had to write around Thanksgiving festivities.

I’m not going to lie, at the start of this week, I didn’t know how I was going to reach my writing goal each day. Thankfully, I had a short writing day on Thanksgiving and Friday, two days that I knew I was going to be spending with family. It was the days I was going to be writing 3 and 4 pages, which was scheduled to happen twice during the week, that really had me doubting myself.

On my longer writing days, I changed my strategy for tackling my goals. Normally when I write, I sit down until I’ve written a page, then take a break from it, finding other things to do while I plan out what I want to say in my next page. It takes me on average a half hour to do this, but I always schedule an hour interval when I’m writing, just in case I get stuck on what I want to write (which has happened a lot this project). 

For this week, instead of stopping when I wrote a page, I pushed myself to write for the full hour. This was key to reaching my daily goals. Doing this helped me write a page and a half in the time I had regularly allotted for writing. Once, I even managed to write 2 pages, guaranteeing I was at least halfway toward my goal in just one hour. And because I start each off each day writing, that’s a huge confidence boost to start the morning.

I also implemented a new way of writing the chapters mid-week. I’ve been mentioning all the notes I’ve been making for revisions throughout NaNoWriMo. All these planned revisions pointed to one thing: something wasn’t working about the way I was writing the story. I didn’t feel there was an issue with the story itself, because after each writing session, I kept coming up with more ideas of ways to enhance the story and new details to include, a sign that my passion is driven to tell this story.

Already I feel that this change to the writing style is a huge improvement over the way I was forcing the narrative. I’m glad that I’d noticed something was off immediately, and although I would’ve preferred to pinpoint and address what wasn’t working, it’s encouraging to see that I finally figured out how to write this story. This will just be something to add to the list of things I’m going to need to change when I work on the next draft. I’ll be talking more about what this change was in a later post.

So I’m going to be really busy when the revisions do start.

This NaNoWriMo has been a tough ride. I think this may be the most difficult first draft I’ve ever cobbled together. I like the challenge. 

When I sent the manuscript for I’m Not My Father to my editor, she called to tell me that the chapters that took place in the bar didn’t work for her. The pacing was way off, dragging on far too long. When I was discussing it with her, I agreed with a lot of the points she made, but I also understood that to implement them meant performing a massive overhaul, not just to the chapters that took place in the bar, whittling them down dramatically, but the chapters leading up to it, as now I needed to work in details that needed to be relocated from the bar scenes because they were still relevant to the plot, and do so in a way that they still felt organic to the story.

At first, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it. To be honest, even after spending weeks on it before sending it back to my editor, I still wasn’t sure I’d done it. I felt so relieved and exhilarated when she got back to me saying I’d done it. It’d been a huge challenge for me, and I felt like I’d risen to it.

This has definitely been more challenging, but I keep looking at how my mind keeps coming up with solutions each time I spot problems with the manuscript, and believe that I can rise to meet this challenge too. I love that I’m implementing these changes going forward to start improving the manuscript, and I can’t wait to apply these ideas to the next draft.

Until next time.

Hello everyone.

Another week of NaNoWriMo is in the books, and I can confidently say I’ll be busy with revisions after I’m done with this initial draft.

I know it sounds serious, but they’re called rough drafts and sloppy copies for a reason. There’s meant to be a lot more work done before they’re considered completed.

I’ll admit that this is definitely the roughest first draft I’ve ever written. Just this week alone, I’ve considered altering the chapters I’ve written. It’s not the plot I’m having an issue with, I think that’s gotten into its rhythm, particularly when the main antagonist is introduced and they declare their goal. But leading up to that, while I feel I’m conveying information to the reader, I recognize that I want to do it crisper, make it much economical to get through.

The same thing happened on the chapter I just finished today. Again, I like what happens in the plot at this point. My main character is interacting with two key characters who’ll have an impact on his life in the story one right after the other. I even get the chapter to end on an enticing cliffhanger. I just feel it reads too long, and I run the risk that if the reader isn’t as engaged in the story as I’d like, I might lose them forever.

I also had to laugh when I looked down at my notes and saw how many things had failed to make it into the manuscript. I’d specifically focused on stating what the atmosphere should be like for each chapter, and as I re-read the notes, I thought to myself “It’s not like you don’t have ideas, why aren’t you following through on them?” I want to establish this tone so it creeps into the reader’s subconscious, and they experience what the main character is going through as the story progresses. The writing’s going to have to get better if I want to achieve that.

All of this probably comes across really negative, and in a way it is. There is a positive takeaway to all of this. I’m not only recognizing that this draft isn’t working as is, I’m already coming up with solutions to address these shortcomings. For the latest chapter, since both interactions are really important, I’m planning on splitting it up into two separate chapters. This way, not only does each character become the focus on their own chapter, neither chapter reads that long, keeping the more clipped pace that I’m after.

For the atmosphere dilemma, this is going to be my focus while I’m writing the next draft. By that point, I’ll have the framework for the story on the page. With the first draft of the manuscript as the blueprint for how the book will read, it’ll be much easier to infuse this atmosphere over what’s already been written, rather than going back while I’m in the middle of writing it and trying to fix it now.

I already expect this will take at least one extra draft during the writing process, but that’s okay. The important thing is assessing what’s working and what isn’t so that by the time I’m looking to publish, it’ll be as good as it can be. That’s always my end goal for my books.

Until next time.

Hello everyone!

Another week of NaNoWriMo is already in the books. We’re already nearly halfway through the month.

I was really pleased with the way the writing went this week. I had mentioned when I was recapping week one that it was taking me a little bit to get going, which is normal for me, but that it was starting to pick up now that I had introduced the main antagonist.

And boy, did it.

I finished three chapters this week, just like in week one, but I really feel the quality of these chapters are a dramatic improvement over the first three. When I was in chapter four, that’s when I was starting to get the sense that while the book was starting off slow, building the world and the main character, now it was really starting to take off.

I loved writing the scenes that the villain was in. The chapters didn’t become perfect when I started writing him, and that’s good because I hope I can improve and enhance them even more during revisions. But I really felt like I captured him on the page, and that the reader will feel the threat he poses.

I do have a concern about the pace of the three chapters it takes to get to this point. They serve their purpose. Jumping right into the confrontation between the two characters, while not jarring, wouldn’t express the stakes to the reader like they would once you get to know the main character. While I think the reader will be rewarded for sticking through the first chapters (as they’re currently written) I know I risk losing a portion of the audience if I don’t make changes to them.

I feel the next chapters are more than worth it, and once the antagonist and their goal are introduced, the tension doesn’t let up for chapters, even when the villain is no longer present. I’d love it if the reader kept turning pages, both to see what happens next, and also because they’re desperately searching a safe point in the narrative to catch their breath.

The time it was taking me to complete pages has shrunk back down to my average. The first week had lots of writing sessions where I was averaging between 45 minutes to an hour just to type up a page. Now that I’m getting to the good stuff, I was flying through a lot of these pages, writing them in a half hour. I don’t think I wrote any in under thirty minutes, or any that took me just above twenty, but that’s okay. That’s pretty rare for me, and tends to happen only when I’m in a really great scene or toward the end of a manuscript.

Although I’m not quite at the halfway point of the competition, I can tell already that I won’t be finishing the manuscript before the 30th. I’m still only on part one. That’s okay. I knew this was going to be longer than any of the novels I’ve published. There’s a lot to unpack in this story, and I want to make sure I get it all on the page.

There still is the goal of reaching 50,000 words by the end of the month. Currently I’m lagging behind slightly, but it’s by no means out of reach. I’m never that concerned if I don’t hit the word count goal, which is good, because I never have. My focus is on getting the first draft done, and NaNoWriMo gives me that motivation with the distraction of this writing goal. I am inclined to pick up the pace, as I’d like to actually hit this total one of these years.As we get closer to the deadline, I might start pushing myself to write more each day to try to hit that benchmark.

Until next week.

Hello everyone!

The first week of NaNoWriMo is in the books. So far, I’ve gotten the first three chapters of Between the Maws and Claws drafted, and have begun working on the fourth.

It’s been slow going most days that I’ve been writing. I’d say my average for writing a page is about thirty minutes, and my pace sometimes has been nearly double that.

This is usual for me when I’m starting any new manuscript. I’ve got pages of notes for where I want to take the story, but those are mostly bullet points, maybe a paragraph here or there serving as a reminder to myself why some aspects are going to be integral to the story, either here or down the line. Putting it all together in a cohesive narrative (that’s hopefully entertaining) still takes an effort to get going.

Day one took me about fifty minutes to write, and a lot of that was gaps just spent staring at the screen, thinking about how to incorporate the next note. I may have even cheated a little with more dialogue than I intended, so the first chapter might get hacked to bits by a machete before it ever reaches another pair of eyeballs.

A couple times, I did hit that usual pace of thirty minutes without the crutch of dialogue, and felt like I was starting to find a rhythm. But then I reached one of my long writing days, and was back to my long pauses where a roadmap of where to go would’ve been useful.

I’ve also been making lots of notes as I’ve been writing for revisions I already want to make in the second draft. Most of the notes have to do with the atmosphere I’m trying to capture within the chapters, feeling that they’re lacking and that I want to punch them up a little. There’s also the introduction of a plot point that I want to occur a little sooner than it did. This was due to me having it towards the end of my notes for one of the chapters. When I’d written the notes, I’d realized I’d wanted it in there sooner than I’d listed it, and when I started to actually write, I’d followed my notes, including the mistake in the ordering of these events. This is why you can’t just blindly follow your notes. If there’s a mistake in them, you’re just compounding it.

Although it’s a slow start, I’m not discouraged by it. The beginning of a first draft is always a hurdle for me. It’s my first time really seeing how the characters behave in the narrative, the first time polishing them from the rough ideas of who they are and their motivations so that they fit into the world I created. It’s always a feeling out process until I start to get comfortable, both with them and the world they live in.

Having already started on chapter 4, I’m starting to feel that comfort. Incidentally, this is also when the main antagonist has not only been teased, but is making his first appearance, which has already started to open up the story so that the main character doesn’t have to shoulder the entire load. Things are starting to pick up, and I can feel it in my writing as well.

I expect I’ll start to see that momentum in the next week.

Until next time.

Hello everyone!

It’s finally here! National Novel Writing Month, the writing competition to try to finish a complete book or 50,000 words within the month of November.

This is my third year participating in NaNoWriMo. My first was in 2019, and I’ve chosen NaNoWriMo as the time of year to write the first drafts of my novels ever since. It’s fit my release schedule very well, as so far all three of my books have had publication dates in January, giving me a little over a year to write the book, go through a series of edits, and get everything in line to meet my release window.

The first year was a bit of a challenge because it was the second novel I was writing in 2019. I’d started writing Lock the Doors at the start of 2019 because I’d wanted (and kind of needed) to complete a story to release in 2020, and the manuscript I’d drafted in 2018 wasn’t it. While I was going through the process of getting Lock the Doors ready for release, I was also outlining I’m Not my Father leading up to writing it for my first NaNoWriMo. I knew I was pushing myself to finish a second novel within a year, but it was worth it to me to get onto the schedule I wanted going forward.

It’s a fun challenge, and honestly, one that I’ve never been successful at, always falling short of the word count, as well as just missing finishing the first draft by a few days. It’s always okay though to me. I feel the real point of NaNoWriMo is to stimulate writing, and the fact that I’ve always finished the manuscript, even after the month ended, has always made me feel like the competition was a success.

So after months of brainstorming ideas, and then what felt like an endless outlining process, how much did I end up writing on the first day of NaNo?

One page.

500 words exactly.

It’s not much, in fact it’s less than one third of what my daily average should be to reach the 50k goal. And to me, the day was a success.

Why? When I’ve been working out the details of what’s going to happen in the story for months, to the point where I have notes to piece together the story inside and out, why is such a low page and word count a success to me?

Because despite how much time I’ve already spent working out the story in my head and in my notebooks, there is still such a long journey ahead of me. I feel a big part of writing, and a reason why so many hopefuls get discouraged is because they’re unable to keep up the momentum of the writing process. I can see aspiring authors getting off to hot starts, but once they experience a slowdown, and they’re not keeping the same quick pace, that momentum starts swinging the other way and sadly, great original ideas start to gather cobwebs.

So to battle that momentum, I always start my first day of writing with a very attainable goal. One page. Thirty to sixty minutes set aside to convert my notes into one full page. It’s an easy win, and once I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ve got this mini success I can point to when I sit down to write the next day, when I push myself to write a little bit more.

Until next week.

Hello everyone!

We’ve almost made it! We’re down to the final full week of outlining. This whole week, I’ve been thinking how crazy it is that NaNoWriMo is so close to starting and I’m about to start actually writing a new story.

I really want to move on from the outlining into actually writing, and yet this whole week, thoughts have been creeping in that I’m still not ready. My outlining sessions have been on the short side all week as I’m trying to wrap up some last details of where certain tidbits of information are going to be learned in the story, and there isn’t the need to go through an entire run down of the plot as I’ve been doing for most of the past 3 months.

I’ve also been swamped at work, which has taken up most of my attention and focus this past week. Ideally, in addition to wrapping up these last details in the outline, I’d’ve been able to keep my mind relatively clear and with as little stress as possible. While it didn’t work out that way, I think it’ll still be fine, but I do believe a positive mindset can have a beneficial impact on writing, especially when you’re in the early stages of a new project.

I also always believe there’s always a bit of trepidation before a writer starts writing a new manuscript. So, I feel this feeling of cold feet was inevitable, and that these other factors are just amplifying a feeling that’s naturally going to be there.

Despite all that, I’m confident in progressing through NaNoWriMo (still crazy it starts in TWO days!) and at the very least getting close to my goal, if not achieving it. My outlining this week was short, but I do believe I’ve got a better sense of where information is going to be teased throughout the story now. I also found more spots where I can illustrate examples of the personalities and characteristics of the main characters, and as I wrote in an earlier post, any time aspects of your story can compliment one another, its a good sign.

So in these last couple of days before November, I’m going to continue outlining, short as it may end up being, firming up the foundation of my notes for this manuscript. As with the past week, there’s not much more I’m really going to be able to add without actually writing.

And in two days….

It begins.

See you next week.