Category: NaNoWriMo 2015

NaNoWriMo – Day 9 – When Your Brain Gets in Your Way

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I am off to the Magic Kingdom this fair day, so I thought I’d dig up something useful from the archives. This mega-post was first published back in 2011, but I think its message will be helpful to those intrepid folks writing novels this month. Keep writing!

 

“Autopilot” by Jon McConnell…my little brother!

Now we come to the third and most difficult part of an idea’s journey to becoming a first draft story, and that is the brain. That’s right. The very thing responsible for making us capable of placing words next to each other to form epic sagas that last generations is also the very thing that prevents more masterpieces being written than we’ll ever know…or would want to know.

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NaNoWriMo – Day 8 – Starry Night

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Today I followed along with YouTuber Untamed Little Wolf in her video Watercolor Starry Night Sky Demonstration. This one was fun. I think I’m getting a better understanding of wet-on-wet technique…mostly through my mistakes. It just makes me want to do more! It’s so mesmerizing watching all the talented watercolor artists on YouTube. I just lost an hour watching paintbrushes push pigments across paper set to music. I’m starting to accumulate a list of tutorials I want to try.

Up to 12,316 words for NaNoWriMo. I’m still working through the section that I’m rewriting from First Person POV to Third Person POV…and to be honest, I’m having a little bit of a struggle with this one. It may turn out that it needs to stay in the First Person. I’ve been back and forth on this one quite a bit. Sometimes stories are like that.

But I promised I’d show you how I handle changing POVs in manuscripts. Basically, I do a split screen in Scrivener, with the guide text on one side and the working file on the other. And while my preference is to have these side-by-side, you can toggle the split-screen option to split horizontally, if that works better for you.

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We’ll see what happens with the POV. In the meantime, it’s onward and upward, right?

NaNoWriMo – Day 7 – There Be Monsters

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Had a couple of busy work days there that threw me off my game a little bit, but the work was good. Now I’m back at the NaNoWriMo-ing and arting. Got in 1,544 words today, putting me up to 11,128 words. Still way behind, but progress is progress.

I also attempted a watercolor tutorial by the incredibly talented thefrugalcrafter Lindsay Weirich. I say “attempted,” because my painting came out nowhere near hers…but it was fun nonetheless. I’ll keep practicing. I learn something new with every try.

The Kiddo opted to do a page out of Laura Numeroff’s If You Take a Mouse to School. This is the mouse sitting in his little mouse house built of wooden blocks. He looks right at home. 🙂

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I promised the other day to post a screenshot of how I’m handling the POV change from first to third in my manuscript in Scrivener…however, it is getting late over here and little children (and old folks!) need to be put to bed. So I will post that tomorrow.

In the meantime, I hope your plots are thickening and  your word counts are adding up! If you want some cheering on, add me as your buddy on NaNoWriMo. I am squishyang, and I will pump you up.

NaNoWriMo 2015 – Day 3 – Kipper!

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IMG_3639My little girl has been home sick from school the last two days, so my word count hasn’t been even close to par for a 250,000-word project…however, over the past three days, I’ve averaged 2,708 words a day for a total of 8,125 words so far.

I feel obligated to point out that the first 50,000 words are mostly a rewrite, translating/retyping a First Person POV over to a close Third Person POV. That kind of thing happens…to some of us more than others. (Seriously…I’ve got an 80,000-word novel that I’m in the process of rewriting the other way: from Third Person POV to First…que sera!) Tomorrow I’ll post a screenshot of Scrivener to show the easiest way to do a rewrite like that.

How are you guys doing out there in NaNo Land? Have you gotten past your inciting incident yet? Ooh! Maybe you’re already past the Point of No Return…or deep into a try-fail cycle! Are there monsters? There are monsters in mine. There are always monsters in mine…

Hopefully, the little one will be fit for school tomorrow and I can really knuckle down and burn down some words. Today, however, was not a day for monsters, but a day of rest, rain, and gentleness. A perfect day for Kipper! So for today’s Make Art Every Day! Challenge, the Kiddo and I practiced drawing Mike Inkpen’s wonderful Kipper. (Didn’t she do a good job?)

We love Kipper!

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