The Words: 2977 words total for the day.
I did a 20-minute sprint with my daughter this afternoon, which gave me 1/3 of the words I needed for my daily goal (3000) and also tipped me over to saying that I write the most between 3pm and 4pm.
That’s definitely new for me, because for years, I’ve written mostly at night, somewhere between 9pm and midnight. But this reflects how much I’ve been doing sprints with my daughter, which we’re most likely to do in the afternoon or in the evening before she goes to bed.
Then she went to go play a board game with her dad, and I did a couple of sprints with the @NaNoWordSprints Twitter feed, the second of which I stopped at the halfway point, because I had finished the first storyline of the draft and didn’t want to dive into the next one mid-sprint.
The Story: The rest of the first storyline (of 4) in this draft went by in a whoosh today. That’s because I finally got to the big battle that the book centers around, but the battle isn’t shown in any detail for this storyline. It’s really only shown through a few letters between some of the main characters.
Then I came up to the final scene of the storyline. I’ve had this scene in my head for around 11 years, and I finally got to write it. And it was perfect. Not that it won’t need any revising, but the experience of writing it was just incredible.
I never used to be one for music while I was writing, as much because I didn’t know what kind of music to listen to as anything. In recent years, though, I’ve found that I like having music playing while I write. These days it’s usually some sort of World of Warcraft music, because let’s face it, it has music for every mood. But earlier this month, I realized that there was much better music for this particular quarter of the story–music from the BBC miniseries North and South. I specifically chose to play Northbound Train during that scene, and it was perfect. It even swelled at the exact right time. I honestly don’t know if I’d have had the same feelings if the music hadn’t been there, but all of it together had me in tears while I wrote the scene. I love those moments in writing.
I had to take a break after that, figuring I’d start into storyline #2 later in the evening. But now I’ve decided to just let it rest for today and start new tomorrow.
Total word count: 33,708
If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 12, 2010!
And if the week 2 blahs have got you down (or even if they don’t), it’s a good time to check out the 3rd episode of the NaNoMusical!
A Journey of Words 
It’s really sweet that you do word sprints with your daughter. I think it’s great that you both can bond over doing the things you both enjoy!
I completely understand that feeling of finally writing that one scene you’ve had in your head for years. I have also just recently reached that part too, and the satisfaction is absolutely immense. So congratulations to you! I’m very glad writing that part was perfect for you — I hope it would be the same for me, too.
After seeing lots of writers share how they always write with music, it’s a nice surprise to see someone who doesn’t really do that. It’s also a really neat coincidence that you found music to write with, because that was exactly what happened to me too quite recently! I also used a video game soundtrack (Breath of the Wild) to write a combat scene, which was pretty epic too.
All the best with the start of your second storyline!
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I homeschool, and in the past have struggled when getting my daughter (10) or my son (now 18 and done with school) to do writing assignments without a lot of frustration and often some fighting. Suddenly she wants to sprint with me any time I’m doing it, and even does some on her own, so I’m thinking the next time she has to write a story for school, she won’t balk at it so much. It’s pretty awesome that she’s enjoying it so much!
It’s not the first time I’ve finally written something I’ve had in mind for a long time, but I don’t always come out feeling so good about it, so it was definitely nice. I hope yours goes well too!!
I played through Breath of the Wild a little while ago, and now that you mention it, I can see the music working well for some of my writing too! It’s so cool when you hit on something that works really well for you.
Best of luck on your NaNo this month as well!
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That’s amazing! Hopefully she’ll grow to enjoy storytelling and writing as well.
I see. Then in that case, I’m glad you’re feeling good about it. Thank you!
You should try it out sometime, then! And yes, it’s incredible especially after all this time of being hesitant about the idea of writing with music. (In my case, it simply gets too distracting unless it really, really matches what I’m writing or have long associated a particular song with a scene.)
Thank you very much!
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My son, who is a huge World of Warcraft fan, took it upon himself last year to create playlists for me centered around different moods. So he made one for “melancholy” and one for “somber,” “epic,” and some for fighting scenes. That’s about the point I started putting music on during revising my books, because I didn’t have to go find something that worked–he’d done the work for me. Sadly, he got a new laptop during a writing slump for me, so by the time I got back to it and wanted that music again, it was locked away on an old laptop. We’ll retrieve it someday, but for now, I’m having to improvise.
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