2nd NaNoWriMo within a year?!

... Naaah, not exactly.

So, for those of you unaware, I participated in JanNoWriMo. This was not an official event, but something that me and other people did on Facebook, just for fun. You set a goal for yourself and throughout the month we were going to try to achieve that. 

Though the month is still not over, I would like to share my results, since Saturday is story-time!

My goal for the month of January was to do the 2nd draft of my current novel.

So I had things going great for me at the start of the month. Had the first 10k down within the first week, which is slower than what I managed in November, but still good. And from there things moved on in a steady pace. However... When I hit about 25k I slowed down. I was scared that I had deleted too much in my revising process and that my novel would end up being less than 50k words long. So I did not feel motivated to write at all.

I felt hopeless and actually had a minor depression. Didn't wanna do anything at all. And having trouble in my Social Science class only made things worse. And I didn't have anyone to turn to. I don't know about you all, but I am not a very touchy-feely person, and I hate sharing how I feel with others. When I have a problem, I like that problem to stay with me. Because of this I felt alone.

Writing is not as easy as some people may think. It takes dedication. And a heck of a lot of it. When you have school, writing classes, a social life and free time writing interferring with each other... things get kind of crazy. 

So for a while I couldn't even rewrite a whole chapter in a day, which was really slow progress for me. However, then something amazing happened to me. I went online and found a website where I found out that some of my favorite authors' books weren't even that long in wordcount terms. If we take Cathy Hopkins as an example; Her series "Mates, dates and..." has 12 books. Some of those books aren't even over 30k words. 

This brought back my desire to write. I thought to myself "If she could get published with that wordcount, so can I. And I'm not even done yet!"

That ended up working out for me, and by now I have a little over 52k on my 2nd draft. What does this mean? Well it means that I basically did my 2nd NaNoWriMo within a year. My 2nd draft is still not done, and I think it will be around 60-80k words... maybe 75k. Something like that. 

Now this wasn't as dificult to achieve as the goal in November, since I already had everything written down this time around and all I really had to do was type it into the computer. But that process was way more time consuming than I expected when I set the goal for myself.

I can't wait for this draft to be done. Then all I need to do is read it through, send it off to beta-readers, get their feedback, imply their feedback and then send it off. I don't even care if I get rejected. All I care is to know that I have what it takes to put this much work in one project. And I am proud of myself for that.

Keep Calm and Write on.

- Nanna

Words...

Are just that... words.

NaNoWriMo day #28 - wordgoal: 46666 -

Now the thing is; Since I finished my novel, I do not keep track of what I do each day of the month... Yes, I actually did that. But I know I was still working on revising chapter 2, so yeah. That happened. What have you been up to? Writing? I hope so. Because only two days remain.

NaNoWriMo day #29 - wordgoal: 48333 -

We are nearing the end. Only one day until the finale. Even though I finished my novel nine days ago, I can still feel the butterflies in my stomach. It's like I can feel the excitment from everyone who is still getting to 50k. Oh on that note; Editing is going great. I finally finished revisions on chapter 2 and started on chapter 3. Chapter two took a little longer than I hoped it would, but that's okay. It is my first time every revising a novel, so of course it is going to be a struggle. I am still having fun with it though, so I got that going for me.

NaNoWriMo day #30 - wordgoal: 50000 -

WE DID IT! Confetti and champaign for everyone! I know I have been real hard on you throughout this month. I yelled at you a couple of times, but that was only because I wanted you to succeed. And even though I have been saying how important it is to hit the 50k mark... it really isn't. Whether you hit 50k, 30k or 168 words... you still did something that a lot of people fear. You wrote. You sat down and wrote. Starting something new is scary. But the only way of getting ahead is getting started. If you did NaNo, in some way or another, you started. If it wasn't for NaNo I don't think I would have been able to start my novel. Having this end goal of 50k words and...the graf...ohhh the graf... it motivates me to write. That is why I keep doing it. This has only been my second year doing (and winning) NaNo, but I am going to keep at it. It is an amazing project that challenge people to take quantity over quality. That is pretty damn hard. We are forced to keep going and finish the project before we are allowed to edit and perfect.

Now, writing is what I want to do for a living, I literally can't go a day without working on my novel. And even if I don't see the shadow of NaNo until the summer camps, I will still be writing. I finished editing chapter 3 and that means there is only 22 chapters to go before I can work on my 2nd draft. It is going to take a lot of hard work, but in the end I know it will be worth it.

The real journey starts now. I hope you will join me. Until we see each other again;

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna. 

The end? Of course not...

Week one of NaNoWriMo is officially over. If you have survived; Congratulaiton! You are one of the lucky few with your sanity intact...or not. 

NaNoWriMo day #7 - wordgoal: 11667 -

So this was actually one of my lowest wordcounts so far doing NaNo. I only wrote a little over 3k words, but for some reason I just did not care that much. My totalt wordcount for November 7th was 48.800 words. This meant that I knew, I would be able to finish on November 8th! I was so excited that I put the words into a Word-document to see, how many pages I had written. 107 pages. It really got me pumped to write even more on the 8th. But The main reason why I think I did not care about my wordcount for the day was; I really love my story. Everything I just love. I love to write it, and if I have to be honest, it is the kind of story I would love to read.

NaNoWriMo day #8 - wordgoal: 13333 - 

So I had 1½ hours of free time doing school, so I decided to write. And you guessed it. I hit 50k! On November 8th I won NaNoWriMo 2013! I wrote 50k in one week, which at the beginning of the month was my unrealistic goal. I ended up writing about 3k more words that day which left me with a wordcount of 53.846 words. However, even though I have won NaNoWriMo, I am not even half way done with my novel. Last year I only aimed to write 50k, but this year I want to actually finish a novel. I want the first draft to be 100 % complete by November 30th. Now I am positive it is going to happen, but I am not going to be writing another 50k this coming week. With NaNo and school, it just got so stressful. So I am from now on just going to write as much as I can manage every day. I will no longer let it interfere with my school work. And maybe I will be able to get some sleep.

NaNoWriMo day #9 - wordgoal: 15000 -

So now we have come to today; I wrote from when I woke till now, and I managed to cross the 60k mark. Now I did have 20 minutes breaks between each of my 1k words, and I could have easily written 10k today, but I am happy with my 8.275 words. This brought my total to 62.118 words, which in a Word-document is the same as 136 pages.

Here is my graf:

Please notice all the green bars. They make me feel good about myself. Never in a million years did I imagine myself writing 50k in one week. Next year; 50k weekend, and the year after that 50k on day one. Yeah...right. I would be dead.

No matter how far above or behind of the wordgoal you are, I believe that you can make it to that 50k finish line! Hell, if I can, ANYone can. Trust me. Writing takes dedication, and if you are willing to put enough of it into your work, you will have a novel by the 30th.

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna.

And thus it has begun...

I have just finished my wordcount for the day. NaNoWriMo has defiently started. But before I could start writing, I needed motivation! So I hung up my noticeboard and filled it with inspirational quotes!

NaNoWriMo day #1 - wordgoal: 1667 -

When the clock stroke midnight I started writing like a mad person. It was really stupid of me to stay up that late, since I had school the same day and had to get up at 6am. But none the less I wanted to kick off NaNoWriMo at midnight on November 1st. And so I did. I had already written the first chaper of my novel a few months back, but I decided to re-write it at the start of NaNoWriMo, just so the words would count in the final product. So I wrote for 1 hour total, and when the clock hit 1am I had written 2021 words! That was the fastest I had ever written 2000 words, so within the 1st hour of NaNoWriMo, I had completed the wordcount of the day.

After having written the 2000 words, I decided to get some sleep and write again when I got home from school. Let us say that I was very tired when I woke 4½ hours later and had to get up. I do not think I have ever been that exhausted in my life. But I pulled myself together and went to school. Luckily, with only three modules, I was home at about 2pm. This meant I had lots of time to write. Which was really, all I did that day.

I did a lot of sprints on Twitter with my fellow Wrimos, and at about 11.45pm I hit my goal of 10k words...to be more exact: 10.115 words. The most I had ever written before in a day was 7k words, and I beat that by 3k on day #1 of  NaNo2013.

Afterwards I was so exhausted, that I just passed out on my bed. 

NaNoWriMo day #2 - wordgoal: 3333 - 

Would you look at that? It is today!

I did not start writing as early, as I had planned. I think I started at 10am. And all I did since I started were sprints on Twitter. After a couple of hours I had written 5k words, and about one hour ago, I finished my second 10k day, which brought me to a total of 21.024 words.

I checked that in Word, and it is about 45 pages. In 2 days I have written 45 pages. I have almost hit the halfway point of NaNoWriMo, which is 50k. Am I excited? Yes. Am I surprised? Aw, Hell yeah! 

I never in my wildest dreams imagined, that I would be able to write 21k words in just 2 days!

Now, I am not going to be writing any more for today, since I have just ended chaper six, and I like to start my day with a fresh chapter. But what I am going to do is all my homework for Monday, and if I have the time, Tuesday as well. That way I can focus on writing and not worry about making time for homework and such. 

To end this off, I would like to show you my graf, so you can see I am not messing around with you.

It just feels so good seeing how far I am ahead. And having less than 30k left to win is not half-bad either!

If you have tackled on NaNoWriMo this year; Don't give up! Get ahead from the beginning while you are excited and pumped to write. Trust me, it is going to benefit you in the end.

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna.

It is slowly but surely getting to me...

I turned 18 today. Yes I am now of legal age over here in Denmark. But that means I just got rid of a couple of quest, and on top of that I had to do so much homework. It is pretty late right now, so if this post suffer from that I apologize. I will try to fix it tomorrow when my brain is working again.

NaNoWriMo preperation #3

I finished my outline. It is finally done, but tomorrow - which is the last day before NaNo starts - I will have to go over the last 10 chapters again, since all I did was a VERY brief summary of what is going to happen. And I am not really sure I like the direction it went at the end.
But one thing I do enjoy is that I am positive, I have more than enough material to make it 50k words. It will probably be longer, but I am aiming for 90k - 100k this year anyway.
I have also pre-november-cleaned my room. I needed to do it anyway, but having NaNoWriMo come up was just a good excuse to get it done. I cannot work when my room is a mess, so now I will not have to worry about it while writing. And my room is clean. It is a win-win situation!
All I have left to do now is fix my outline and decorate my room in inspiring quotes, and put up some of my sketches as references. 
I seriously cannot wait to get started on my novel. In less than 2 days I will be writing the novel, I want to - one day - publish as my debut novel. I love the characters, I love the setting, but most importantly; I love the story.

Get in the mood

NaNoWriMo is less than 2 days away. The stress is getting to me, but for every passing second I am getting more and more excited.

Some of the ways I get myself motivated and in the mood to write is:

1. Reading lots of forum threads on the NaNoWriMo website.
2. Talking to friends - who could not care less about my NaNoWriMo freakout - about my novel.
3. Watching videos from NaNoWriMo vloggers, fx; Katytastic - I am pretty sure she will be vlogging every day for NaNo this year as well - 
4. Reading inspiring qoutes.
5. Having the story come together in a way that makes sense!

I do not know about you, but I will defiently stay up till midnight tomorrow and write when the clock strikes 00.00.

Next stop: NaNoLand.

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna.