Tag Archive: National Novel Writing Month


Inktober 2021


My friend was telling me how much fun she was having with Inktober. She is not only inking illustrations but also inking a journal or story to go with the picture prompt. That sounded like fun so I’m joining seven days late.

Here’s my days 1-7 #Inktober2021 submission and then the story that goes with it. Since I wrote the story long handed I felt it too personal to take a picture of my handwriting.

Arriving proudly at the ball, Crystal, dressed in a formfitting suit, grabbed the mic. “I refuse to be a vessel for another man!” She loosened the knot at her neck, as she continued, “No wonder guys are so cross! Ties are the worst thing since high heels!” At which point she kicked those glass slippers off the stage.

The belt was next, then Crystal squirmed out of the skin-tight pants. Her jacket was long enough to cover the goods or the raven-black panties covering said goods.

The crowd was cheering her on. This wasn’t on the itinerary but none would object. Still, the spirit wasn’t in her to continue. She bowed to wild applause and then descended into the audience.

“Excuse me, Crystal,” a voice whispered behind her, “I’m you’re biggest fan.”

~~~~

In my #Inktober sketch above I made a close of Crystal’s eye a sneak peak, I think, is that she was born with a crystal in her eye and since then has developed several each gives her powers. The list of prompts is on the Inktober 2021 website. I’m hoping the writing part will spark something for NaNoWriMo some people call October Preptober. That last link was a Google search and there are so many there to help a person get ready I think I’ll keep it open and wade through them all later.

How many want to join me in either Inktober or NaNoPrep?

NaNo–Yep.


So here I am, again, crazily typing another NaNo. I have been doing this since 2001. I haven’t made a whole novel every time, but I have had success, just the same. I have those years I didn’t finish as great ideas to work on some other time. Most of my attempts have ended with meeting the 50K goal and some with much more wordage and still not a complete novel. The most fun I have had writing have been about my sentient planet called Haven. I would say I have 13 novelettes with that universe in mind.

Last year I tried to find something else to write about. I got to the goal, but I wasn’t as happy writing it. This year Haven is calling again. I have a new planet that is proving lethal to its inhabitants. It was a planet of centaur-like beings. In this case many of the scientists takeoff to find other planets. My character lands on Earth post apocalypse. She doesn’t know the language. Her people are all gone. Even those that had flown with her had died of injuries incurred before leaving their planet.

Haven hasn’t gotten involved yet, but that’s Her way. She likes to let folks figure out things as best they can. It makes people feel better if they can work their way through problems. But sometimes we need a little help. Not now, say my planet.

I’ve written 2690 words so far. I like to get ahead as I can because I know fibro will take it out of me as winter comes on. In fact, we had warnings of our first snow this weekend. It did dust the nearby mountains. So we begin. At least my story keeps my mind off the pain.

Good luck to all of you who have joined in this word cyclone!

By the way, if you don’t know what it is check out NaNoWriMo.org. There are plenty of folks to help you get started and keep you motivated. The book, No Plot, No Problem by Chris Baty was what got me going. Chris was the originator of this fun. Joining within the first week can be easily doable. Later starts can be done but are very difficult. Try it. What do you have to lose?

NaNo Excuses


NaNo Excuses

Nabbed from DreamPunk Geek

Let’s celebrate what writing we’ve been able to accomplish. Many of you have job and families that rob you of time and energy for writing (we are all thankful for jobs and families) some of us have fibro-flares or CFS keeping us from writing. Even so I am happy with my 6,031. I haven’t written today. Hoping I can bring up enough energy for this. For those who are flailing and already getting ready to quit: DON’T. Take a look at the chart above and see if any of your characters could use these. Another useful thing for me is find prompts. I have been using some I found on Writers Write. I use them to start scene or introduce curves to the characters. Just WRITE!! Then be happy your wrote! 😀


2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love
2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a quick easy book to read! I came away with a lot of little nuggets that will be quite handy as of midnight tomorrow night. I have been sitting on an idea I started on during Camp NaNo. I managed about 19K but a whole lot of the story has resided in my head. Ms. Aaron’s book helped me feel there is hope for this little book. So, NaNoWriMo here I come, ready or not!

I am not sure that even with my Dragon Naturally Speaking I will be able to get that kind of word count the title implies but I will say that prep work before starting a book and daily prep work will help me get a better, faster, tighter story.

Now, on to editing. I had hoped for more. The author uses her own books to demonstrate what works and how to edit, but if you have never read her books it leaves one flat. Actually, that can be said of the writing faster part of the book, too. I would have loved to have a clickable link to charts or spreadsheets to aid the readers and other, commonly read novels as examples.

Still in all, it is worth the read.

View all my reviews

Creative Crafting: How To Zen Doodle


Zendoodle 4Creative Crafting: How To Zen Doodle.

My first distraction for NaNoWriMo. I may have to set up a page of my own doodles (inspired by Zentangle.com)


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With NaNoWriMo lurking on the calendar I have been busy getting ready. I want to have a working outline. I have plenty of ideas for my characters but not enough yet to feel I can get 50k words. So I have been playing with programs to go through what I have already written during Camp NaNo. In the process I have deleted over a thousand words bring the total there from nearly 21k to 19k. Either way I need to come up with enough story to bake a 70k+.

snipyWriter5

yWriter is my go-to program to write in. It is writer friendly. Simon Hayes has quite a great program and so far between yesterday and today it seems to be a winner. What it has that other programs do not is the read to me feature so I can hear how the scene sounds. I pick up many mistakes by listening. I can highlight in multiple colors to quickly cue me to things that need research, uncomfortable sentence structure to work with later, mark ideas that need to be elaborated, etc.I can grow the population of characters in one book and into a series should I choose, same with locations and items. The biggest feature of yWriter is the ability to send wordage directly to NaNoWriMo’s wordcounter without a chance anyone reading your novel. It is so simple and I have done it so many times. Nothing beats the feeling when NaNo’s site tells you you have won!! What it doesn’t have are questionnaires to help build character and personality descriptions.

 

WriteItNowHeader         NextUpListenLearnLogoTRANS2011

WriteItNow has those questionnaires. So I build my people and places in this program. My husband uses this program extensively. He tried to help me get past the beginner’s stage on this one. He doesn’t seem to need the color coding that I do and for listening to his scenes he uses TextAloud. He picked that up quite a few years ago. Visually, WriteItNow is more exciting. You can click on the name of a person or location or ‘references’ to link items or webpages for your research.  I will keep using this program to help develop characters and see the links to make sure no thread of plot gets tangled.

 

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What confuses the life out of me is Scrivener. There are so many authors who swear by this but I can’t seem to get my story started on this one. One feature I want to use it for is the index cards on corkboard. It seems like that would help a person get better organized. But if I could have thrown it across the room today, I would have. Some people even use this one for writing their blogs. Since my IT guy (my hubby) doesn’t have it, he can’t help me figure it out. There is a lot of reading involved at the start and it is all on white screen with small font so it is hard for me to stay with it for long enough to get started. Maybe there is a Scrivener for Dummies book out there. One could only hope.

All of these programs can get your manuscript from outline to draft and to finished product to submit or send to Kindle or other readers.

What are the rest of you using for your writing?

Silence


It has been a long time since I actually wrote more than a few words over here. Let’s see if I can catch you all up to date.

No, I didn’t finish  Camp NaNo. I got to about halfway and ran out of juice? Fibro-flare? Life? happened. I can’t remember two minutes ago, so remembering that long ago is foggy. I still like my plot potential but haven’t been able to get back into it. Time travel has to be well thought out. Since this one is different than any I have ever read, I don’t want it to be NaNo-ed together. I need to step back and make a tight outline. Will it be this year’s NaNo? I haven’t decided. Nor have I decided if I want to write a NaNo this year. If I can get a tight enough outline before Halloween, I might just try to add another 50K to this 25K story. Who knows?

I have spoken about my new medicine, Gubabapentin (Neurontin), that may be helping me have a few good days now. Yes, a few. As of two week ends I could count 3 good days. On these days I felt pain in joints but not the all over pain and fatigue I have gotten used to. The doctor said it takes a while to titrate to the proper dosage that will be better for me.

Which brings me to just over a week ago.  Two  Wednesdays ago, a friend called saying she wanted me to accompany her to the GeoCaching Con in Las Vegas. At that time it seemed that it would take a perfect storm to actually pull it off. She was being gifted the trip, basically, even down to car and hotel room. Even that day (Wednesday), I felt horrible with fibro so I was afraid to think of the week end.

As it turned out, my hubby was able to help me pack, and I was able to go. I figured that even with pain I wouldn’t be doing more than I do here at home. I didn’t feel well enough to trust myself to help with the driving, but we were able to stop at rest stops along the way and even pick up a couple caches. So I was sitting in a car or in a hotel room. I still had fibro-pain, worse coming home than on the trip down but the sites I saw from where I was sitting was at least different than the four walls I see here. The bad thing? A flare I felt on the trip back got worse the whole next week. I am thinking I am better, finally, today. Hence a real blog.  🙂

 


NaNoWriMo have helped me R-TUTE. Now I have 10 novels and need to learn to edit properly to have something worth sharing. Still the journey of writing has had its own rewards. Love this author’s blogs!

Kristen Lamb's Blog

One of the benefits of attending the same conferences year after year is I get to see which writers are published and which aren’t. Which writers finished the book, and which ones haven’t. It’s staggering how many authors I know who have been working on the same manuscript for two, three, five or even ten years. As NYTBSA Bob Mayer likes to say, “They are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

I confess, I was once guilty of this behavior, too. I would absolutely edit my WIPs to DEATH, and this behavior made it impossible to finish. Thankfully, blogging and writing non-fiction has helped tremendously with my fiction. I have learned to overcome perfectionism and ship.

Just Tell the D@&% Story

I recently finished a novel, but I will confess that, as I wrote, it was sooooo tempting to go back and edit, correct, perfect every sentence. This…

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