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

Christmas Book Haul...

Merry christmas! I hope you all had an awesome day, and if you don't celebrate this day, then I hope it was just another ordinary, but awesome, Tuesday!

So all in all I got 8 books, but 7 of them were in a box set, so yeah...you can go figure which books they were *wink, wink*.

But I will share them with you anyway! Because That is what I like to do!

"A song of Ice and Fire" by George R.R. Martin complete box set with a freaking map included! I haven't started reading them yet, since there are 3 more books I need to read before I begin these bad boys. But I am so  looking forward to starting them. And since I have all of them I can just read them one after another without worrying about forgetting what happened while waiting till I get the next one in the series. It's going to be great reading a new series and invest myself in a new set of characters.

"Julemandens død" (or "The death of Santa Claus") by Kenneth Bøgh Andersen. This book is danish and have yet to have an english release. I don't know if it ever will, but it's out over here so I will enjoy it! It's split up into 24 chapters entitled December 1st, December 2nd and so on. I absolutly adore the cover art of this book. It is so beautiful and looks like leather. Also it has a really nice feel to it.

I love Kenneth Bøgh Andersen's writing style and this along side two other of his books are the ones I need to finish before starting Game of Thrones. I have heard only good things about this book, and it seems really unique so I can't wait to get to it!

Other than that I got my polaroid camera and I got my cups from Menu! It's been an awesome holiday season for me, and I got to spend it with the best of my family, which is more important than the presents. 

Oh yeah, and on December 23rd I finished my rough edits on my novel, so now I can relax and take a break from it until January 1st.

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna.

This is a weird one...

Because I don't really have anything in particular to talk about. This post is actually kind of improvised. My best friend was spending the weekend alone, but she got uncomfortable so in about an hour I'm going to her house. I know; I'm an awesome friend.

On the writing front things are going well. I have finally printed out the last chapters of my novel, and all left to do is editing, and then I can start the 2nd draft. I can't wait! January is going to be a great month for writing. And on top of starting my 2nd draft, I may also get a new computer, which is going to be awesome, because what I have now is... not good...

This is my final post before christmas, so I wanted it to be special! Damn... some times things doesn't go according to plan. I guess I could tell you my christmas wishlist...yeah I'll do that.

Books...books, books and more books! I can't remember every book I wished for, but A song of ice and fire, The Fault in Our Stars, Lord of the flies and a lot of Stephen King books were on there. I want to read all of them at some point, but I really hope I get the "A song of ice and fire"-boxset. Then I'm going to marathon them. 

Polaroid camera. Because I want to take a lot of pictures of my friends and hang them on my wall immidiently. I got this idea from the movie "new year's eve", when Anna Hatherway is taking a picture of her boyfriend, or whatever he is.... it just looked kind of cool, and I want to replicate that.

Other than that, I wish for the usual... giftcards for book stores, clothing stores....Oh! And I wish for cups. Let me show you a picture! They are so pretty!

I am soon moving out (with soon mening August/September 2015) so I need to stuck up on everything I need for my own apartment, starting with these gorgeous cups from Menu!

I guess that was everything... I'm sorry if I seem kind of all over the place, but I hope you have a merry, merry christmas! I will try to get done with editing before the 24th, so I have the rest of December to just relax before January 1st.

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna.

My writing process...

Everyone have their own way of structure. This is mine.

Pre-writing phase

In this step what I do is gather information. If my story is going to be somewhat realistic (like the one I am currently editing) I need to get my facts down. You can't have a nurse do surgery. Some people may not know the difference between a nurse and a surgeon, but the ones who does will get annoyed and will probably put the book down. In my current novel I had a lot of astronomy themed research to do. It was very important for me to get it just right, and I actually spend an entire summer doing this.

I guess outlining would also go under this step, since you aren't writing the actual story yet. So I do that. I make a very brief description of the world and characters, and then I do my chapter-by-chapter outline. What I do is I write everything that is going to happen within the given scenes in a chapter.

First drafting phase

This is where I write the actual novel. For NaNoWriMo this year it took me 20 days to finish this step, but last year it took me 44 days. I am not sure how I feel about the first drafting phase yet. I love to write and get the story down, but then again it feels so much better to have written than to write. Doing this phase I tend to follow my outline pretty strict. However, things do change. In my current novel I intended to kill off a pair of brothers, but when writing that part I decided to have one of them live. Because of this I had to change my entire outline so it would fit with this new stream of events. 

Revising phase

When the first draft is done and you've put down the lovely words "the end" it is time to revise, revise, revise! What I like to do is first make a one-sentence summary of every scene within a chapter so I can get a better understanding of what my book is about. After this I print out my chapters and go through them with a yellow marker. I mark every sentence or paragraph that needs to be changed and write the changes down on a notepad. I cross out everything that needs to be taken out of the book, which sometimes is a lot. 

Second drafting phase

Now I am still currently at the revising phase with my current novel, but this is how I plan on structuring the rest of my editing.

In the second draft I will start on a blank page and write the story from beginning to end while implying the changes I made in the revising phase.  Having already written the story and all the changes this step should not take more than half a month. Hopefully. 

Beta-reading phase

Once my second draft is done I should be comfortable enough with my book to give it to a beta-reader. So far all I have is my writing teacher and my best friend, but I will probably ask others. I plan to ask them to write down the emotional impact the book had on them; where they were bored, happy, sad, confused, etc. Things that I can take into account when doing my third (and hopefully) final draft.

Third drafting phase

Same process as the second drafting phase, however, this time I imply the feedback I got from my beta-readers, assuming the feedback was valid and usuable. If they said something like "You should have" I won't listen. This is not their book and therefore I will only listen to feedback build on the emotions felt throughout the reading of my book. In this phase I also make sure to correct all grammatical errors that may have sneaked into my book so it is ready to be sent off to a publisher.

Publication phase

Now this one is not guarenteed, but I this phase also includes the "sending the manuscript off into the sunset- phase". While I am waiting for a response from the publisher, I will start something new. That way if I get a rejection letter I will have something new to send in. At some point they will get so annoyed with me that they'll have to publish me. Simple as that.

If you write, do you have a specific process? Or do you just write for fun and see where it goes?

In any case:

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna.

Why I love revision...

You know what is really weird? Sitting alone at your friend's house, while she is out working. Whatever! I am just gonna chill with her dog!

NaNoWriMo day #24 - wordgoal 40000 - 

The big 40k! You are almost there! Only 10k more to go. That isn't so bad now is it? I mean, you have come all this way... why stop now? Because you can't. You just can't! I will not allow it. Write that novel. Finish it. And then throw it in the trash on December 1st! I won't judge you! But I will be disappointed if you stop now that we are so close to the finish line... hey! Even if you haven't started yet, you can still win. All you need to do is write 8333 words a day! It can be done!

I managed to read through... five...or six chapters of my first draft! It actually is not as bad as I thought. I mean, there is still a lot to edit, but it is readable.

NaNoWriMo day #25 - wordgoal: 41667 - 

VALIDATION DAY! Yes! the 25th is the day when you can officially validate your wordcount! But that is not the most exciting part! It is the awesome PURPLE bar and all the winner's badges! Let me share some of them with you! 

Just look at how pretty that is! I am a winner! I also got my winner's certificate, but I won't show that. Yeah I am annoying. I know.

On the progress of my novel... I decided that is was not necessary to read through all the chapters. All I needed to do was look them over and write a short synopsis for each. So I did. I wrote the final synopisis, and decided that on Tuesday I would print out my first chapter and work on that!

NaNoWriMo day #26 - wordgoal: 43333 -

I printed out the first chapter of my novel! Wauw... it really is different to hold it in a printed format... but it is even crazier how much I was able to edit! Every page is covered by yellow markings where stuff needs to be changed. I know Stephen King said in "On writing" that you need to cut 10% away, but I never imagined it would be so easy! I am deleting way more than I thought, and that is just by changing sentences. On top of that I went to my writing class and we had a substitute teacher (also an author) and she read through my 1st chapter... she could not put it down! She did give me some really good advice, but I could really feel how she believed in my writing. Aslo; she is really good friends with the man I look up to the most, Kenneth Bøgh Andersen (a danish author) and she said, that she would tell him, how much of an inspiration he has been to me... that is just awesome!

NaNoWriMo day #27 - wordgoal: 45000 - 

Less than 5k! Just a little more!

So I printed out chapter 2 today. I managed to finish my notes for chapter 1 yesterday... I ended up with 62 footnotes...and that is not even everything. I also deleted a lot of stuff. But while editing the first chapter I found out, that my favorite part of writing a book is the editing process. I love to outline, I love to write...but I am IN LOVE with polishing. What NaNoWriMo is about is quantity. Revision is about taking that 'quantity' and turn it into 'quality'. That is why I love revising. I actually sat for an hour with chapter 2 today, and I only managed to take notes to two pages! I sat for so long just wondering how to phrase certain sentences! It was awesome! And I can't wait to edit more after writing this!

Just for fun I am going to show you a random yellow marked page of chapter 1... just so you can get an idea of what I am talking about.

All the yellow is stuff that needs to be changed... yeah... pretty much all my pages look like that, but it is okay. My story is moving forward, and so should yours be!

Keep Calm and Write On.

- Nanna.