Alright so

Current word count: 33,413
Words left:16,587
Pages Written: 103
Words per day needed to finish on time: 1843

Writing outlook:
Wed- Work 10am-2pm- Aim for another 3,000 words
Thurs- Thanksgiving- Hopefully wake up early enough to write in the morning. Will try to squeeze in words before going to bed early.
Fri- Work 7am-4pm Am praying I'll be alive enough to write. Long bath should do it and lots of coffee.
Sat- Not sure if scheduled to work. if not WRITE
Sun- Again not sure if schedule to work. Must read all of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , finish The Life of Christina of Markayte and write paper on the significance of scenes of non-recognition in Medieval Romance. Finish writing damn scene for Movement for Actors. *sigh*
Mon- School again. Bleh!
Tues- Work? who knows. WRITE, WRITE, WRITE.
(Those numbers look simply amazing!)
Wed- Movement for Actors- WRITE, WRITE, WRITE. Stay up as late as necessary to reach 50,000 words
Thurs- Survive class triumphant winner of NanoWriMo.
Fri- Dec. 1. Start word count over again. Aim for 100,000 or end of novel by the end of Dec. Which ever happens first. (100k)

It's so close I can taste it. I need to make it. I just HAVE to. I'm not going to fail now. If I was going to fail I should have stopped at 15K not 33K+!!! I MUST MAKE IT!!! I'm only one day behind on my word count, so I can easily make that up. I only hope that my working doesn't really hurt my ability to write. We shall see. My goal is 45k by the end of the long weekend. Although I'll bet you money that if I can get that much done I'll reach 50k with no problem. *sigh*

GAH! I need to win

Current Mood: apprehensive

So I've been stricken with the second week slump for most of this week. I just simply didn't want to write. My brain told me that I should but everything inside me screamed "I DON'T WANNA!!!!!" so for a good two days I barely added to my word count. So then I start freaking out. OMG I'm behind, I have so much I need to write. etc. etc.

So I write 2480 words yesterday before I give up because word was messing up the formatting like crazy and I wanted to strangle it.

So today I try to get up early with the intention of getting an early start. (That doesn't happen) Then I laze around and watch Richie Rich on TBS. Then Ella Enchanted comes on, so I watch that. (Glad I did, Loved it.) So then I'm in a happy mood because my desire to act is coming back in slow increments and it's nice to get that feeling back. So I'm singing and dancing around the house and waste a whole bunch of time. So then my Aunt and cousins decide to show up and waste 2 hours that were officially devoted to my writing. GRRR. So then I have dinner with mom and dad. Steak was DELICIOUS. Mom tried to get me to pick up my brother in Mahopac but manage to get out of that by pointint out that I would lose an hour of writing time.

Head to Barnes and Nobles and bam...the words are flying out of me All of a sudden I pass the 17,000 mark which had been my modified goal to catch up. Next thing I know I've not only surpassed 18,000 which put me back on schedule but made it to 19,000. I continued writing until I could say I wrote 5,000 words in one day. It made me amazingly happy. I'm now slightly ahead again. yay! Plus another 2 hours of writing tomorrow will push me ahead even further.

The relationship between Garrett and Kira is forming in ways I never fully saw in my head. Poor Garrett...Kira is just so moody, he's gonna have his hands full with her....not to mention how hurt Kira is going to be when she finds out he's already engaged! hehe. Nefyn..well she's still weird. She's not undefined, she's just doing her own thing.....and really those are the only main characters at the moment.

*does happy dance* Good BYE second week slump! Can't wait to reach the half way mark. Who knows? Maybe I'll even reach it tomorrow. hehehe. GAH this is way too much fun.

Current Location: Bed
Current Mood: excited
Current Music: The refridgerator humming

Oh boy. Almost a full week gone...Do I have 25% of my story written. No! I have around 20%. I had class all day yesterday so I only got around 45 minutes of writing time in. I should be writing now but I simply don't want to. I want to be wanting to. But I feel like a petulant child who resists the more they are told do something. Thus I am complaining on my LJ and on the the message boards and searching the Nano boards for some inspiration.

Please just let me get 11,000 by tonight. I think I'm gonna try going to Purchase early tomorrow and working in Ritazza. That's where I did my writing yesterday for 45 minutes and my muse was just on fire. Then later on I'll go to a write in around here. That will give me four hours of assigned writing time in the best environments. *crosses fingers*


I WANT TO WANT TO WRITE AGAIN!

Current Location: Kitchen Table
Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: The damned TV

Daily Word Count: 2051
Total Word Count: 7131
Words Left: 42869

Alright, so I didn't get the 3,000 I had hoped for today, BUT I still did more than the daily minimum. So Yay. I've already started with the self tricks to get myself to write more....Before the day ended I told NaNoWriMo that my word count was 500 words more than it actually was, this way I would feel guilted into writing those 500 words instead of just stopping. hehe. It worked.

I'm having a lot of trouble with my scenes going stale in my brain after a while. I don't think the scenes themselves go stale because after I take a short break I can go back and I have no trouble writing. This is starting to present a slight problem since sometimes I need to know the outcome of one scene to start writing the next, but I'm finding ways around it.

I took the advice of another experienced NaNoWriMo participant who said to write a love scene, or a back story, or just some scene involving your characters when the writing gets tough. This way you're still exercising your brain and the characters and boosting up your word count. I took their advice and just wrote a little back story on Garrett and Wynne (his childhood love/betrothed) who has of course, disappeared. *rubs hands together* I haven't decided if Wynne still exists or not, but even if she still does exist and Garrett sees her, it doesn't matter because by that time he will have fallen in live with Kira, who I'm quite happy to say is shaping up quiet nicely character wise. She's not the typical perfect heroine. HOORAY. Poor Garrett....if he hadn't pulled such a stunt he wouldn't be bound and beaten up by Kira's guards....I'm sure she'll make it up to him later. hehehehe.

Nefyn (Kira's magical mentor) is doing weird things. I don't know where she is going to go. Decided today that Nefyn and Kira can talk to each other mind to mind. Takes a lot of effort and it can only occur over short distances but when Garrett comes into his powers he'll be able to do the same thing. Magic is such fun!

Today was actually a really hard day for writing....partly because I got a late start. I didn't even really sit down to write until after dinner and that's when I get ansy. I think it's also partly because after my exciting run yesterday and being all caught up I am running on slightly less steam....There's definitely less pressure to get ahead than to know I'm behind and have time to work to catch up. It's insane that some people are already more than halfway through their novels and some have even reached the finish line. *shakes head* Crazy people.

I keep cracking myself up with my writing. Since I'm leaving all research for the rewrite, anything that I am not absolutely sure about is placed in CAPS. So I end up with sentences such as these:

“Silence!” one of the guards yelled, jabbing him with the butt of his WHAT?

Other than that I'm going to go reward myself with some fanfic and I'll be going to a write-in with fellow NanoWriMos in Croton tomorrow. Yay!

Current Location: Kitchen Table
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: New Cd: Celtic Circle

Yes, I'm writing this entry on November 4, but twenty minutes in hardly counts as Day 4. Today was an extremely productive day. Wrote 3,230 words today bringing my total word count to 5,080, right on schedule! I wasn't able to write at all yesterday as it turned out to be a horrible day, but such is life. I made up for it today. My goal is to write another 3,000 words tomorrow and another 3,000 words on Sunday.

I really love this rollercoaster ride. This morning it felt like such a daunting task. I was having trouble moving forward in the scene I was writing and I was spending way too much time thinking about best to say things. I wrote a bit this afternoon, but I think I was most productive in Barnes and Noble.Right now I'm totally pumped. Part of me wants to keep writing (even though I've been writing for hours) but I'm a bit on the tired side and I think it would be better to save it for tomorrow.

I've realized that I'm not going to be able to write my novel from beginning to end. I'm going to have to skip around. Granted I'll probably only skip from one chapter to the next, but every so often I find scenes going stale on me and it really helps to switch it up.

What I really love is that in my outline I have things like. "Garrett tells Kira that magic is failing to blah blah blah" But how is magic failing? Even I don't know! Of course I sort of need to know this. But oh well. I'm sure I'll figure it out.

I can't tell you how much I am loving writing right now. I almost feel like I could be a writer. I love creating/discovering the story. My characters are constantly saying things and doing things I didn't preconceive of them and I love it. This is already turning out to be an extremely interesting journey.

On a side note, the amount of research I'm going to have to do during the Rewrite is turning out to be daunting. I also need some place names....if anyone wants to throw out some fantasy-ish names they would be more than welcome. Just for example, Kira's kingdom is called Kaeth and Garrett's town is called Sheldon (Sheldon being under the protection of Bere the Earth God doesn't belong to a Kingdom)

I also need last names for Garrett and Kira. Of course Kira's full name is Kira-Leh, so she probably needs at least a two-syllable last name. I absolutely hate giving my characters last names. But they are needed.

*sigh* I'm tired and I want to go reward myself for a hard day's work with some really good fanfic. I earned it!

Total WC:5,080
Daily WC: 3,230
Words left: 44,920

Current Location: Home
Current Mood: accomplished

A day which will live in infamy: This morning an event took place that has not occurred in the memory of Elyse's human existence. It was a momentous occassion filling many a person with great surprise. Elyse woke up, without an alarm clock, without a nudge from a family member, without an intruding noise and without a standardized routine and completely on her own volition before 8 AM. She managed this with less than 5 hours of sleep in her system. Many are astounded at this amazing feat. Her mother, rounding the corner to find her awake exclaimed "You scared the sh** out of me!" Elyse replied "I scared the sh** out of myself."

She found herself in the process of waking up this morning with the sun beating down into her face. Slowly coming into consciousness, Elyse started cursing her mother for not waking her as she had asked. Surely she should have been up hours ago. A glance at her watch told her it was 7:55. Elyse ignored this, believing her watch to have died. She quickly looked at the time on her computer. She panicked quickly as the screen awoke and showed 2:54 (the time her computer had last been awake) and thought quickly "OH NO! I missed class" however, the time soon changed to 7:57 and Elyse was saved from massive heart attack.

Authorities are unsure of the cause of such abnormal behavior. Perhaps it was the sun, perhaps it was the excitement of NaNo. Who knows? Nevertheless, what was once thought impossible, has happened.

Current Mood: surprised

Word Count at the end of first writing session: 1850. I'll definitely be able to put in at least another two hours tomorrow if not more, so hopefully I'll be able to double that number. I want to get as far ahead in the beginning as possible to make up for the times when it's going to slow down. My biggest fear is that I'll get so far that I won't have anything outlined and won't know what to write.

It's interesting how much one can accomplish when the goal is simply to write and not to write well. I'm not analyzing every word choice, I'm not worrying about perfect sentence structure and phrasing that is nice to the tongue. I'm just writing. I just spent two hours with Garret and Bella (his horse). They already went places I didn't know they were going to go, feel things I didn't know they were going to feel. I love this feeling....It feels...it feels as if the story is there and I just have to write it....I wish I knew that damn quote.

I can't help but constantly look at the word count. I think (and hope) that obsession will change as time goes on. Both my mom and my Aunt Marian are depending on me to get to 50,000 words now. (They made plans to travel to London when I go over there) I still need to find a buddy who will go to the HP con with me. hehe. But I have plenty of time, I'm sure.


Gah I love this feeling. Can't wait to write tomorrow. Of course I'm going to have to write a stupid script tomorrow before anything else. Told mom to get me up at 9:30. perhaps I can get all my homework done for Thursday completed before class at 2:30 and then I'll have all the time after class to write. *grins* I wonder how long this excitement will last....anyone want to take bets?

Latest Writing Session WC: 1850
Total WC: 1850
Words still needed: 48150

Current Location: Old bed
Current Mood: excited
Current Music: The creaking of my hose

AHHHHHHHH!

I'm so excited. Alright so I was gonna try to use a story idea that I'm not really attached to, but that didn't pan out. I was kind of scared to use me epic fantasy novel idea which is like my baby and has been sitting around in my head and outlined on paper for far too long. So I remembered something that the NaNo founder wrote in his book "No Plot, No Problem" He talked about how a bunch of people wrote to him, telling him they dropped out of Nano because they fell in love with their novels...and guess what? The novels never got finished...they were too busy worrying about it becoming a masterpiece that it never went anymore. So I'm throwing all caution to the wind and I will be butchering my love over the next 30 days.

My only friends will be Garret and Kira for a long time now. Good thing I like them. I can't wait to write the gods in my story...especially the emo god of fire and the people hating god of humanity. I don't know what tone this story is going to take...I think in the end I want it to have a fresh new tone, as opposed to the typical tone of the epic fantasies...think that will probably be work for the rewrite though.

As far as incentives go, dad is serious that if I make it to 50,000 words he will fly me to london. w00t. HP Convention July 2007 here I come!!! It shall be great. Anyone want to come with me?!

I told myself that at 9 I would get off the internet and try to get some more outlining done before the writing cram begins. I was *going* to write part of my one-person play that I need for tomorrow when I practice it in movement for actors, but I"ll just get up early to do that tomorrow. (Early being 10:00) hehe.

Happy Halloween everybody, btw! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Current Location: My old bedroom
Current Music: sound of the tv in the backgound

So I went to Barnes and Noble and while I was there I was reading parts of the book by the founder of NaNoWriMo. He talked about how people have helped to create incentives to reach the 50,000 word line. I've started by setting myself up for general mockery by posting to my livejournal, AIM profile and facebook my intentions to do NaNoWriMo. I've also alerted my family. But, seeing as I couldn't even meet my 10,000 word deadline for this month (which I suppose I could be working on instead of making this entry) I think i need something more. I tried asking my family for some incentives/punishments for failure but they aren't being very helpful.

Jean-Marc said that if I didn't make 50,000 I would give him my ipod. (Just horrific enough to work, although this just doesn't seem right.)

Dad (I believe jokingly) said he would pay for a plane ticket to London if I made 50,000 words. (Just enticing enough to work *eyes gleam at the thought of the HP convention the weekend of my birthday*)

Austin was sleeping. And Mom said the incentive should be for myself. *Rolls eyes* What person in their right mind is going to try to write 50,000 words in a month without some sort of prize/threat of punishment at the end?! I mean come on. We might want to do extraordinary things, but I'm a full believer in the idea that humans are reward based creatures. If I'm just doing it for myself I'm going to fail, and I can tell you that right now because honestly I don't care if I fail or not and that is the problem. I keep setting myself deadlines but nothing happens with it. I think I need both a punishment of I lose and a reward if I complete it. Any ideas from the masses?

As the discussion progressed Mom continued and got on her hight horse and thought I shouldn't get anything if I didn't make out a plan and follow it completely on schedule. Are you kidding me? It's a gigantic task to write 50,000 words in a month, wtf does it matter HOW it gets done as long as it does? Sheesh. Thus I need some help. I really want to accomplish this, but I know how quickly I can lose steam. Any ideas would be highly appreciated.

Days until beginning of NaNoWriMo: 7
Word Count: ZERO!

Well I totally forgot about NaNoWriMo until I got an email from Absynthe Muse. I don't really know that I have the time, but heck, if it makes the month of November go faster than it can't be a bad thing. I know a lot of people think it is cheating to write fanfiction, but I think I'm going to do it anyway. I don't have any original ideas at the moment and I don't want to use NaNoWriMo to work on my fantasy novel idea as I really want that to work and I think it deserves my full attention. Plus I've always wanted to write a Harry Potter fanfiction and I already have a great idea in my head that will help me teach me to deal with writing action and complicated plots. So we'll see how it goes.

Hope you join me for the ride. Yell at me whenever you talk to me (I'm sure I'll always be behind) And demand to know my current word count. And if you're crazy enough join NaNoWriMo yourself!

Current Location: Home