Archive for the 'NaNoWriMo' Category

Journal Crack

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006

I could spend all of November just researching my NaNo novel, and now that I’ve discovered the Boston Public Library has online JSTOR access I may do just that. I think JSTOR will let you search and read the first page of articles even without access.

And yes, I really do need to know about A Sequence of Vowel Shifts in Phoenician and Other Languages in order to meet today’s NaNo quota. Really.

Botwulf’s Stone

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006

I followed a NaNo forum post to this article on inventing your own naming language, and discovered to my surprise that the origin of the name “Boston” is Botwulf’s Stone. Who knew?

Technical Difficulties

Wednesday, November 1st, 2006

No, not here at Jemima’s Chevron. After our migrant summer, ficml.org is back up for good. No, it’s NaNoWriMo difficulties that have the spinning Safari spinner (not the rainbow pizza pie, but the daisy spinner on the tab) spinning in vain.

The load of new novelists is always an early-November stress on the NaNo back end. Maybe Google will buy them out and devote some high-powered servers to the cause of updating one’s word count every 15 minutes…

Nanoween

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

Two hours remain until National Novel Writing Month. It’s not too late to sign up! I’ll be off to a frightfully unprepared start as usual this year. My characters don’t even have names yet…

You May Already Be A Winner

Wednesday, November 30th, 2005

Another year, another NaNo, another graphic to prove my insanity:

2005 Winner!

The novel went pretty well, partly because I ignored everything else for most of the month. But looking over it now, I think I see a short story in there waiting to be freed from the mounds of manure with which I padded my word count nightly. I’ll save the plot and one subplot for a novella, and try to get the novel thing right next November…again.

My First NaNo Dilemma

Monday, October 31st, 2005

It’s that time of year again, when the sun grows cold and the little madfen write novels. My dilemma is: do I start at the crack of midnight, or do I get a good night’s sleep for the last time in the foreseeable future?

The Post-NaNo Blues

Wednesday, December 1st, 2004

It’s strange to wake up without 2,000 words hanging over my head. I didn’t write a thing today, but maybe tomorrow I’ll start in on the short story that I’ve wanted to write for a few weeks now.

I don’t hate the characters as much as I thought I would after spending four weeks with them. On the other hand, I think I’d have trouble writing fluff after 50,000 words of Serious Plot. I could write something short, gen, and episode-like, like “Revisions.” I enjoyed the Twilight Zone plot of that episode.

100% NaNo

Tuesday, November 30th, 2004

Official NaNoWriMo 2004 Winner!

There’s nothing like a little gratuitous introspection to fill out those last 1000 words.

85% NaNo

Friday, November 26th, 2004

The management apologizes for the lack of content due to the twin distractions of turkey and NaNo. Today is approximately the 85% point of NaNoWriMo,

I’ve added more scenes to the novel for filler, since editing wasn’t increasing my word count quickly enough. So far I have a new opening scene, two alien sports events, and some Jack adventure (because the novel was low on Jack content). I’m hoping to finish early over the weekend, but I’ll probably be desperately typing until the last minute.

66% NaNo

Sunday, November 21st, 2004

Yesterday was the 66% point (33,333 words) for NaNoWriMo, but since I’ve been slacking this weekend I just got there today. That means I’m still days behind on my special take-Thanksgiving-off NaNo schedule, but there’s still hope for the novel. Many apologies to Jerie for slipping into the NaNo category. I’ll try to blog about something not restricted to NaNo:

Here’s some advice from 43folders on how to hack your way out of writer’s block. Under his category of Do something important that’s very easy, I highly recommend writing a synopsis of your novel. Mine has helped me to see where my characters are being passive or running around in circles.