Now What?

The beginning of December always brings what some people call a Nanowrimo hangover.  It’s the feeling of “now what” that comes with having completed 50k words in 30 days.  At this point, the insanity is over.

So I’ve finished NaNoWriMo.  I’m pleased with the way that it turned out, and although I did get my 50K words, I’m still working on the story.  It’s turning out so very nicely.  I can’t wait for some of the twists that have been trying to show themselves.   I’ve just been through a difficult breakup.  I feel like I can talk about it now that it’s over and resolved “successfully”.  But that was what was so very emotionally draining for the entire second half of November.  And in some ways, it was also very motivating for my writing because pushing so hard for word count kept things from being worse than they were.   I survived Thanksgiving with a minimum of family drama (my family does not share my political or religious views that I don’t discuss here so there is always drama).

So now it’s time to answer the “now what?”

Now I finish the rest of the story.  It’ll probably end up being an 80k-word novel, when all is said and done.

Now I work on a query letter because I really need to get published soon.

Now I learn how to be lonely, and I imagine that all that time and effort I was putting into a struggling relationship might find new expression in writing and reading.

Now I start looking for new ideas, new projects that I can work on when I’m done with this one.

Now, I move forward. 

I WON

I’m sitting here crying.

Not everyone cries when they manage to complete 50,000 words of writing.  And I’m certain that between blogging and other social media, writing, and roleplaying I manage to write 50k on a regular basis.  But as I said in my last entry, winning Nanowrimo has a lot of emotional implications for me this year.   I haven’t won since 2009.  More than that, I haven’t completed anything of any real noteworthiness in the last four years.   It’s been a very difficult journey lately, and to finish something this big, that means this much to me, is a big deal.   My health forced me to drop out of college, and it has cost me a few jobs since the divorce as well. But it hasn’t stopped me from winning Nanowrimo.

Some people might say, “it’s just fifty thousand words, you don’t get any real prizes for it, and the novel isn’t even finished yet”.  Well, no.  It’s not finished yet.  There are still about fifteen thousand more words of story left.  Maybe a little less.   But it’s 50k words closer to being finished.  Edited.  Submitted.  Published.  I’ve hit a point in my life where writing is becoming truly do-or-die, and being able to stick with Nanowrimo, to be dedicated to writing a significant amount every day, is a huge step on the way to making writing do what I need it to do for me.  As far as real prizes, well, who cares? There are some little goodies that winners have access to, like discounts at Createspace and whatnot.  But the euphoric sense of accomplishment is prize enough for me, at least tonight.  Getting this project published in the next year would be an even bigger prize.

My first project for December is to get a good query letter together.  I’m not stopping here, not resting on my laurels.

So I’m sitting here crying, because I finished something that actually means something for the first time in years, something that is a huge step to greater and grander things.

I’m also sitting here eating pumpkin cheesecake in the bookstore cafe.  It is my reward to myself for a job well-done.

Victory is delicious.

Day 26

I have good NaNoWriMo news.  I just hit 45k.  This puts me ahead of the par for today (43.3k).  Not only that, but it was a 9k day yesterday catching up.  I will have won Nanowrimo for the first time since 2009 very soon.

I have some serious momentum built up behind me right now and it is possible that I will hit 50k before midnight.  And if not midnight, then it is doable before I go to sleep for sure.  And even if I should happen to get tired and a little brain-fried, by latest I think sometime tomorrow I will hit that 50k mark.

There are so many thoughts running through my head right now about what this all means to me.  But I don’t want to count my eggs before they hatch, so I’ll save them for the post I will inevitably make when I do hit that 50k mark.

For those who want to follow the last 5k words of my progress, I’ve been keeping a running commentary on Facebook, and to a lesser extent Twitter (which you can see on the right-hand side of my blog, too).

50K isn’t going to be the end of the book, though.  Which means I may just see how big a margin I can give myself by the 30th on that win.  🙂

Day 20

I’m about 3k words behind as of writing here this morning.  Right now, the fact that I am behind and need to catch up is one of the few things in my life that makes any sense to me, so it’s a good thing to focus on.  The best news is that I have all day to catch up, and that time includes a nice, quiet write-in at the local library.

I know I haven’t said much here in a few days.  Right now I am going through the worst flare-up of fibromyalgia that I have ever had, and dealing with a lot of emotional pain going on in my personal life.  I’ve been trying to conserve my spoons (see spoon theory), and so a lot of things (like blogging) have fallen by the wayside.  I’m slowly starting to feel better and getting back into the routines I’ve been trying to make for myself.   Would still like to curl up in a ball for a week and then try to deal with everything, but that would be too much like admitting defeat, I think, and I don’t have that luxury.

So wish me luck in getting through the next ten days.  Both my mental and physical health are trying to turn against me right now and I refuse to let it happen without a fight.

Day 10.

Had an odd Friday/Saturday that consisted of a bad fibromyalgia flare-up and my not remembering much or being able to think very well.  This is known as fibro fog, and it’s almost worse than the constant pain.  The pain has also very much been present, as well as the dratted sensory hypersensitivity that makes it all worse.   Needless to say, it had NOT been a very productive weekend so far.  It’s hard to sit and type for any amount of time in that condition.  I managed maybe a total of 200 words on Friday and Saturday.

Today I woke up and took a look at my word count to find that I was exactly 4k words behind of the 16,667 I need to be at by the end of today.  And although I am still very much foggy and in pain, there’s this little part of me that refused to bow down to the tyranny of the fibro.  I’m still not caught up yet but I’m getting there.

One of the biggest challenges I’m facing in the writing itself at this point is that the last few hundred words I’ve written have revealed to me that the way I had my magic system, and the way the magic system actually is in this world, are very different things indeed.  Now, I’m content to keep the new way, because it’s better and it’s awesome. But it’s requiring a shift in thought and a shift in outlining because it changes the entire course of things.  I’ve not had much brainpower for paradigm shifts these past few days, so instead of flowing the way the previous 12k words had, now it feels like every word is being extracted like a stubborn tooth without anesthesia.

I’m tempted to scrap the idea, delete the last few hundred words, and use it in a different book.  It’s got merit, but I’m not sure that it belongs in the story that I already had going.  However, I feel like I could maybe build an entire different world around a magic system like that.    I’m going to need SOMETHING to work on after I’ve finished this series, after all.   So I guess I have a decision to make today… and might need to spend more time writing than anticipated to catch up.

Thank goodness I am just awesome enough to pull it off, right?

Nanowrimo day 7

So I didn’t get much writing done yesterday (day 6) because my boyfriend was in town.  Distance relationships are hard enough to maintain without me saying “oh, you’re here, yay!  Now let me ignore you while I write.”   Was NOT going to happen that way.   It was, however, a much-needed and fabulous day where I maybe got just a little spoiled.   Some guys buy their girlfriends flowers; my boyfriend buys me gaming dice.  I think I win.  ❤

Now, it’s possible that I might have known on Monday night that I wouldn’t have much time to write on Wednesday, and that’s why I worked so hard to get ahead on Monday and Tuesday.  By the end of Tuesday (day 5) I was sitting at 12,169, which was a good two days ahead.  As of writing this, I’m at 12,486, with  all of that increase from yesterday.  (See?  I got some writing done anyway, if only 300 words or so.)   I haven’t really gotten to writing yet today, and I’m still ahead of today’s par of 11,666.

Now, I’m not going to lie.  I am tempted not to do any work at all today and to pick up in the morning.  I’m having a bad fibromyalgia day and my depression isn’t liking me much either.   I sat down to write once this morning already, and discovered  after only one sentence that my entire magic system wants to be a completely different way than I had planned.  A better way, thank goodness, but it’s still a major change that is going to require me to sit down and revise my outlines.  The question is, do I sacrifice word count for plotting time?  Or perhaps ignore them both in favor of rest because it’s one of those days where I can feel and be hurt by the weight of every hair on my body?  (Someday I need to actually WRITE about fibromyalgia here, not just talk about it.)

I haven’t decided.  Maybe this is that moment where that initial rush finally wears off and I have to settle in for an endurance race instead of a sprint.  It happens to us all (unless you’re one of the people that somehow manages all 50k words in the first few days).  Maybe it’s just hitting me.  I’ll have to think about it, see what it is, and decide from there.  The last thing I want to do is get behind.  I haven’t won since 2009 and that is changing this year.   I WILL win… even if it means writing through very bad fibro days to do it.

Now if I could just get my ribs to stop hurting long enough to live up to what I just said…

Nanowrimo Day 5

I’d forgotten how freeing it feels for me to be writing for hours on end. Anyone who has written a novel or even a story or a paper can tell you that writing is most definitely work, and quite often hard work at that. But to me, it’s the best sort of work there possibly is. Yes, my hands and shoulders and head hurt by the end of a day spent writing. Yes, I have itchy, watery eyes from staring at a computer screen all day. But I also have something tangible to show for it. I can measure my progress in words, in chapters, in stories and novels completed. THIS is what I was born to do. This is the sort of work that I can do all day and never get truly tired of it. Granted, there are times where I want to take my journals or my laptop and throw them out the window because something about the story is frustrating me, but in the end, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

(Let’s see if I’m still saying that on December 1st.)

Nanowrimo, four days in

I’m sitting at the end of day four, with a word count of 7,691.  This is ahead of the average of 6,666 for day four, but less than where I need to be by the end of day five (8,333).   I thought about pressing onward tonight, but I realized that I haven’t been keeping my readers up to date here on the blog.  Since I’m at the end of a chapter, I’m taking the time to do that now.

This is, so far, the most successful Nanowrimo push that I’ve had since 2009.   I’m continuing on with the Soldaris Saga (which was what I started for Nano in 2009, ironically enough) and it’s going very smoothly.  All the planning that I’ve been doing over the last four years has really allowed me to take the story and run like the wind.  I’d be even more ahead if I’d done anything at all on Friday after I woke up, or on Saturday.

For those who want to follow my progress, I’m updating my word count periodically on Twitter and on my Facebook page, and here’s my word count widget:

Here it comes…

Today is Halloween.  It’s an awesome time of year where I get to dress up and hand out candy (and eat plenty of it too), but what makes Halloween the best is staying up until midnight.  Yes, you guessed it.  Halloween is so awesome to me because it’s the day before Nanowrimo begins.

Now, I wish I could say that I have an outline or even a plot.  I don’t.  I didn’t know I was even going to be able to do Nanowrimo this year until a couple of days ago.   This year it matters more than ever to win, and to come out of it with something that I can sell.  I don’t feel like discussing the reasons, but it’s extremely important.   And of course, it’s all subject to change.  I might start off with one idea and end up ditching it for another in a few days.  It’s been known to happen.  I had one year where I scrapped things on the 12th and still won by starting over.   (This year if I start over, I’m including the word count from all projects that got written between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30.  Not how I like to do it, but still legit and far less stressful than starting at 0 on the 13th or something.)

I still have no idea what I’m doing.  But with just under eight hours to go until I can start writing?  Pretty sure I can come up with something.

I’ll be keeping track.  Blogging about the Nano experience.  It’s going to be a good nano year for me, I can just feel it.

 

Time to head to camp

Camp Nanowrimo, that is.  The summer event is so much more laid back than the main event in November.  I’m a few days behind, but that’s okay.  I don’t think I’m shooting for the full 50k words with everything that I have to do this month (find a new job, find a new apartment, etc.).  A good 20k goal ought to do enough to push me to write without feeling overwhelmed.

I’ve decided I’m going to work on the rewrite of the Soldaris saga this month, and probably continue it into the August session of Camp Nano as well.  I’ve finally moved past that point where I’m too sick of it to work on it and back into being excited about the project again.  This makes me happier than I can express.

If you’d like to track my progress, you can do so on my Camp Nanowrimo profile page.