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. 

Point of no return...

When you have been working on a project for a while, you start to wonder; is this really what I am meant to write? If the answer is 'yes' then you know that you have found it. If the answer is 'no' then you got to keep looking. For the novel I am currently writing my answer is a safe and sound 'yes'.

NaNoWriMo day #10 - wordgoal: 16667 - 

Day ten. Only twenty short days left to go until we reach that dreaded 30th day mark. It seemed as though it was just yesterday NaNo started. You would think I would celebrate that we were one third of the way through, but no! Of course my grandpa was celebrating his 70th birthday that day. So I did not get to write all that much! But I did write a little over 2k words before we left for the birthday "party". Even though I did not get to write a whole lot, I still passed 64k total. Last year over the entire month I only wrote 63k-something on my NaNo-novel. So by the 10th of this year, I have already written more than I had ever done before in one month. My current novel is still not at the final length of last year's novel, which was 90k, but it is getting up there!

NaNoWriMo day #11 - wordgoal: 18333 -

How I managed to write this much on a monday, I have no idea. Maybe it was because I had an hour and a half at school where I did not have a module, so I wrote about 2k there, and then another 3k when I got home. Those 5k words were enough to finish chapter 17 and 18. And speaking of chapter 18, it is probably one of my favorite chapters. Things really start to go down in that one, and I love the end line of the chapter. But other than that the 5k words were enough to get me over 69k...the magic number, if you know what I mean...sorry about that...

NaNoWriMo day #12 - wordgoal: 20000 -

So like every other Tuesday I had to go to my writing class. It was actually kind of fun. Last week we made an outline for a christmas carol, and this week we had to write it. Now we are four girls in the class, so that was six days for each. We wrote it so people would get a bit of the story ever single day. I had to do day 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 and 24, which meant I had to finish it. If was suprisingly fun. But most suprising of all was that, when we were done the story actually made sense, even though we were four people writing it without knowing where the last person stopped. But I was really busy with my school work. I had an assignment for the 13th and I had a presentation on the 13th so, I was really stressed out. I still managed to write about 3k though, so now my total was at 72.736 words. Yes I crossed that 70k mark!

NaNoWriMo day #13 - wordgoal: 21667 -

Today was an okay day for writing. Defiently not my best, but not the worst either. I am at chapter 20 and have just crossed the 75k mark!! Still very proud of myself. The chapter I am currently writing is, and if it isn't it is going to be build up to the point of no return. You know, where shit goes down real fast. My novel is coming to an end soon, which is really overwhelming. My outline is only 29 chapters long, which means after chapter 20 is done, I only have nine to go. And once it is done, I think editing it is going to be rather hard. So far there is not one chapter my story can do without. Everything is relevant, but I do not want it to be over 100k words. I kind of want to stop at 90-95k, just so it is not too long or too short. But I will figure that out, when I have to deal with it, which is not until December where the re-reading starts...damn...

As always I will show you my progress in my beautiful graf:

I know week two can be really harsh on some people, but you can still win! You just have to get down to business and write. Even if you think what you are writing trash, all you need to do is believe more in the scissors than in the paper.

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.