Well holy shit that was a lot to wake up to this morning.

I can’t stop laughing. The constant stream of memes has been a distraction but dear god didn’t we all need a laugh. Plus it amuses the hell out of me to think of some poor college student in the future trying to make sense of it all for a paper.

Anyway, I still wrote words. I must waffle or something because the gang are just in the tunnels approaching Praxis now. So no action yet but tomorrow for sure there will be soldiers with guns, and yelling and shooting, and death and resurrection, and daring escapes and stealing stuff.

That’s the plan anyway. I also think I need to start getting a little less subtle with this OT3. Maybe I’ll work in a flashback to Oxford days, I think that would go well with the whole death/resurrection thing. You know, my last thought was of you. I just got to do it. Honestly this ship is so damn tragic.

Oh! And I’m now 2 days ahead of pace. I love Sanctuary 🙂

Words Written: 2,052
Current Total: 13,452 

We’ve left Helen’s office, rejoice! Haha.

Honestly I didn’t think words were going to happen today. I woke up tired which I didn’t get because I’d had my usual amount of sleep (I was less tired yesterday after only two hours sleep!) and then I had to clean the house. That made me even more tired and the news really doesn’t help.

It got to 3pm and I opened up what I wrote yesterday. I fiddled with it for an hour and so it was even later. I mean I struggle to start things at the best of times but at 4pm? Yeah that’s a stopping time, not a starting one. However, I decided I had to a least get a few words – get out of the damn office – so I finished that. I was then only a couple of hundred away from 10k so I started the next scene, and then I was only a bit away from 1k, and anyway I managed to grow it.

I’m proud of myself for today. It would have been easy to have not bothered, I was a day ahead of pace anyway. It would have been easy to have watched TV or played Warcraft this evening, but instead I kept plugging away at it. I actually chose to do that, so yeah I’m proud of me.

Tomorrow will be a bit more action-orientated as The Five (four) break into Praxis to steal the blood. I wonder what that’ll do for my words.

Words Written: 2,454
Current Total: 11,400

Ok I got maybe 2 hours sleep last night. I felt really jittery and weird this morning but as the day went on it passed. To be honest I don’t even feel tired. I confess I’ve been refreshing the news pretty much constantly, desperate for any crumb of good news. I guess we always knew that the only way Trump would leave the white house is kicking and screaming. It’s going to be a long few weeks I think 🙁

Anyway, enough of that. My tumblr is supposed to be a safe zone. Back to the words! Bizarrely they did still happen today. I know right? I’m as shocked as you. But no we still have not left Helen’s office. In fact we weren’t actually there at all because the whole of today was spent on a flashback to 1945 Praxis.

It’s times like these that I wonder why I’m writing this because nobody but me will ever read it, as nobody would want to. I mean seriously, a couple of thousand words on a flashback? I mean it had Nikola in it but no other show characters. It’s probably a bit too plotty at the moment (I’ll get to the OT3 stuff later) but I suppose I could always try and fix that in editing.

Words Written: 2,089
Current Total: 8,946 

Today was harder. Got to be honest I had nightmares most of last night, undoubtedly triggered by the election. I know I don’t usually mention it, tumblr is for happy things as I need at least one escape in life but man it’s a real worry. Sleeping tonight is going to be interesting to say the least. Anyway, it took me forever to actually start and I wasn’t very focused.

Still, all that being said I made par so I have maintained my ‘day ahead’ buffer which is nice. But no they have not managed to leave Helen’s office yet. Nikola is still telling his story about Praxis but we are reaching the end of his tale. We’ll probably leave the office tomorrow for … I don’t think I actually decided where I should have Lania hide out. Somewhere in Europe I think, Italy maybe.

Soon The Five (or rather the four because poor Nigel didn’t make it to the 21st century) will be storming the castle metaphorically speaking. That’s a Soon™ though because Nikola needs to get slapped first. Definitely planning a “I might have deserved that but not sure I deserved that” line hehe.

Words Written: 1,788
Current Total: 6,857

So yesterday was not a fluke!

Honestly you could knock me down with a feather. I did more writing! In fact I did pretty much the same amount of writing as yesterday! I’m a day AHEAD of pace! *falls over* like what is happening here? An overuse of exclamation marks obviously but yowzer.

There be words on the page.

Awful, awful words really. I did go back today and try and put in where people are standing. I am terrible at remembering to do description. I want to break up dialogue, ok now my character can do some thinking instead. Seriously it’s bad, especially as the scene isn’t changing (they are still in Helen’s office) we’re just having breaks for flashbacks as Nikola is telling a story. So obviously people are going to forget who is in the room and where they are etc.

Honestly I’ve always been terrible with remembering to describe but this is definitely a new low. Fanfic just makes me lazy I think because you guys know what they look like already *guilt, guilt* ok let’s not focus on that too much. I mean I’m not posting it so it doesn’t matter, moving on. WORDS!

Maybe if I just keep on writing the ability to describe will come back to me somehow, I mean I don’t think I used to be quite this bad… anyway no, it’s fine, it’s fine, perhaps when they are moving around a bit and not just talking it’ll be easier. I hope. We can always hope.

Words Written: 2,532
Current Total: 5,069

Back by popular demand for an audience of one (aka me) I’m not just going to do NaNo I’m going to ramble about it too 🙂

Honestly I didn’t know what to expect out of today. Oh, I made some noises about a DORG (day one ridiculous goal) of 5k but in all honesty if I’d written absolutely nothing I wouldn’t have been surprised. I’ve been the living embodiment of “yours for the taking, and then you choked” all year long. The words have just not happened.

So the fact that I managed to write anything is cause for celebration. The fact that I wrote the daily target of 1,667 is cause for a massive dance party. The fact that I wrote a bit more than that? Man I might just break out the icecream. Talk about a red letter day.

I guess today proved my hypothesis that a non-serious project, based on my current obsession, would be the thing that did the trick. Thank you Sanctuary! 🙂

Words Written: 2,537
Current Total: 2,537 (as it’s day one)

“Measure your worth by the dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic.

Heya everyone

It’s Day Twelve, so coming up on the end of week two and the mid-point of NaNo madness, and I figured now was as good a time as any for me to pontificate on the magic of NaNo.

What NaNo is is that magical time of year where we get to be proud of being writers, we get to immerse ourselves in a supportive community and be part of something bigger. I don’t know about you but I just love how it promotes the written word and helps people fall in love with storytelling.

What NaNo isn’t is a stick to beat yourself with. Pulling out my trusty copy of No Plot? No Problem! Chris Baty says that the 50,000 word target is arbitrary. He picked up the shortest book on his shelf, thumbed through it and guesstimated. The 50k has merit, it’s long enough to be a challenge, short enough not to be intimidating but it’s a guideline only.

NaNo is a self-challenge, it is a fantastic tool, one which can walk with you no matter what stage of the journey you are on. At this point of the month we all have different word counts, and it’s possible that you aren’t where you want to be. There’s still over half the challenge to go and that’s kinda my point – the journey isn’t over yet!

“There’s always another chance, there’s always another trick, there’s always something more to learn.” – Flynn Carsen, The Librarians

If you are on pace – fantastic! If you are steaming on ahead – brilliant! If you are a little behind – don’t worry! NaNo is a self-challenge and what matters most is that you don’t give up. If you reach 50k early then go for the stars and write more. If you aren’t going to reach the 50k then keep writing anyway. No matter what you are going to end the month with more words than you started with. You will have faced the dragon of resistance and you will have won.

#had to work a Librarians quote in there somewhere it makes me happy#wrote this for my region and figured might as well share with my friends

Spent the bulk of the day on uni work, doing all the prep for my Reading Texts module on Monday. I was determined to do some writing though because *drum roll* yup it’s that 4thewords thing. There’s a streak element – 444 words a day – and I want to do it!

Having blown a few cobwebs away with fanfic yesterday I decided to dust off my original novel that has been lingering for two years. I finished off a scene that had been laying unfinished since the beginning of the year but didn’t do anything else. It was painful and it took me an hour to get started because with every fiber of my being I wanted to run away.

It’s a WIP, it’s a third in a series, I’m very invested in it and consequently I’m utterly choked by fear. Pulling teeth is an understatement. I kept repeating like a litany to myself that it’s a first draft, that I just have to finish it so I have a complete draft to work with for revision – that this isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning. It’s still damn hard though. There’s so much baggage with this book; so much hope, so much failure, so much need.

Rather than make my catchup total lower, I’ve increased it by failing to reach the daily target but /shrug some days are like that. I wrote something, I broke the ice, and I’m plodding along. There’s a quote pinned to my wall which I think is appropriate here:

“Measure your worth by the dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

I really want my 50k because I’ve been doing this NaNo thing a decade and somewhere along the way my sense of identity got wrapped up in it. It’s important to me but at the end of the day it’s the stories which matter most. I might not get them written as fast as I’d like, and I may never be satisfied with the end result, but I will still get them done.

This isn’t a joyride. It’s the rest of my life. I’m in this writing business for the long haul, wherever the journey takes me.

Words written: 736
Total count: 5,841

So this morning I said I decided it was a writing day. How did it go?

Well it went pretty damn well. There were two occasions when I had to stop (first time I was freezing, second time mum talked to me) and both times I struggled to get back into it again. However I did and my total wound up being fairly miraculous given the current state of play.

Words written: 3,417
Total count: 5,105

*falls over* I know right?!?! I mean back in the day I would probably have been less than thrilled with this after a supposed full day of writing but that just proves it’s all a matter of perspective. Yes I can technically write 1-2k an hour. Have I done that in years? Nope. So this is like the new best – actually I like that, I’m going to use this as a top benchmark rather than the old numbers because the old numbers are sooooo unreachable these days.

What did I write? Well I finished the first draft of the Celeb/Fan AU for Ripper. It’s seriously awful (I’m not at all happy with it) so that won’t be getting posted anytime soon but hey “I can fix a bad page, I can’t fix a blank page” so I’ve passed stage one on it at least!

After that I moved onto the post-season two Timeless fic, which will incorporate the two other Garcy prompts Ripper sent me. This is going to be… long /headdesk and as I want to finish it before they actually air the wrap-up movie next month I need to get my skates on.

I’m now just slightly shy of 10k off pace. I do have to actual uni work/chores tomorrow. Ideally I’ll write the new daily pace of 2250 but so long as I write at least 1667 I won’t fall any further behind. *cross fingers*