I took advantage of a quiet, lazy Sunday afternoon to do several word sprints with @NaNoWordSprints on Twitter. I almost stopped at 3200 words, which was enough for the day anyway, but decided to push it for one more sprint.
The Story: Things are not looking good for the prisoner, who has been locked up for a few months now. Now he’s questioning his sanity and the benevolence of someone he met in prison.
This storyline is almost done–I’m guessing I’ll finish it tomorrow or Tuesday, at the latest. Today is the halfway point of the month, but I’m sure I’m more than halfway through the story, since the last 2 storylines will be closer to the length of this one (which is just under 12,000 words right now) than the first storyline (which ended with 30,000 words). So it may be time to cap my word counts at a lower number from now on.
Total word count: 43,070
If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 15, 2010!
Though today was Saturday, I wrote less than normal. One of the reasons for this was because my daughter wasn’t pushing for us to do sprints as much as she has been lately (she started about a week late, so maybe she’s hitting the week-2 blues now). We did a couple this afternoon and then stopped so I could get some other things done. We never got back to it together.
After she went to bed, I was approaching my own bedtime, since I have to get up really early tomorrow, but I only had 900 words. So I did a couple of short sprints to at least be above normal par for the day and am calling it a night.
The Story: A bit of time has passed for the prisoner (weeks, maybe months, I’m not sure myself, because I’m not paying attention to my timeline as I write) and he’s just about had enough of this place. He’s not so sure about the wisdom of talking to the person in the adjoining cell anymore either. And in today’s words, he had a few unnerving conversations with the antagonist (of the whole book, not just this storyline).
Total word count: 39,211
If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 14, 2010!
I didn’t have a chance to write until after supper, but fortunately, my daughter was ready to write then too. We did 2 15-minute sprints and a 5-minute, then got her ready for bed. Then we did 2 more 15-minute sprints with the @NaNoWordSprints Twitter feed.
The Story: In another perfect example of how terrible I am at estimating word counts in advance of writing, I was really thrown off today. Yesterday, I finished storyline 1 (of 4) for this book, and it came out to a total of 30k words. I knew I’d be slimming it down a decent amount in revision, but still, I’d expected about 18k per storyline for the other three.
Today I started writing in storyline, which I already had written 2500 words of back on day 2. And in adding 3500 words to it, I’m already halfway through the outline for that storyline. So…hmm… I guess 12k words won’t be too bad, since I always knew storyline 1 was going to be longer…I’m curious to see how the other 2 storylines come out though.
As far as the story goes, I really enjoyed writing about this character, who is basically a prisoner of war, and a connection he’s making with someone in an adjoining cell. (Sort of strange to say I enjoyed writing about a prisoner, though.)
Total word count: 37,222
If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 13, 2010!
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!
My daughter and I did some more sprints today, which got me about 300 words shy of my daily goal of 3000 words. Later in the evening, I caught a 20-minute sprint with the @NaNoWordSprints Twitter feed and wrote 948 more to get the total you see above.
My daughter decided to make her participation official today, so we signed her up for the Young Writers Program. She set her goal at 20,000 words and at right about par right now.
The Story: One character got some major catharsis today. Then there was a big celebration and some fun (for me) additions of characters from some of the other books, which was followed immediately by the unpleasant news of a looming battle. That’s where I’ll pick up tomorrow.
Total word count: 30,731
If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 11, 2010!
The Words: 3347 words total for the day, and I passed the halfway point!
This is clearly going to be looked back on as the year I did NaNo with my 10-year-old daughter, because all of these words were done in sprints between 10 and 20 minutes, alongside my daughter. It certainly keeps me from slacking off!
The Story: There was some romance today, which slowed me down (it always does), and then the character I’ve been writing the most about got a chance to confront her dad. Things got pretty heated right at the end of my writing today.
I also decided today that I am going to need to seriously pare down this storyline if the 4-part story is going to work. But I think one way I can do that is by telling the story from a different POV. Because of how this storyline came about, I’m more connected to the main woman whose perspective I’ve been mostly telling the story from, but really, the main guy is supposed to be the MC of this storyline. And his POV, I think, will cut down on explanation anyway (hard to explain, but I think it will work that way). So as much as I’m itching to start over and see how it goes, I’ve already spent more words on this storyline than I thought, and just want to get through it. Another big task for the next draft!
Total word count: 26,997
If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 10, 2010!
I wrote all of this doing sprints with my daughter today. She’s really excited about how her story is going and has gotten a little faster with her writing during sprints as we’ve gone.
Also, I decided to up my personal daily goal, since the first of 4 storylines is taking a lot more words than I’d allotted. I don’t anticipate the other 3 being this involved, but this one could cause me to run out of month before I finish the entire draft, so I’ll shoot for more like 3000 words per day for now.
The Story: Things got really fun today as one of the main characters from storyline #1 got to meet one of the most ridiculous and fun characters to write from my book series. I may be writing him a bit over the top right now, but I can’t help it. I can always fix it in editing.
Total word count: 23,650
If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 9, 2010!
Half of this was written alongside my 10-year-old daughter, doing word sprints. She really spurs me on! The other half was written in a couple of solo sprints earlier in the day.
The Story: Today’s writing was mostly a long conversation between this storyline’s two major characters, in an attempt to avoid cliched miscommunications. A friendship deepened as they were able to celebrate a big event in one of their lives. Then, just as I was about to go on to bring in the one Main Event all of the storylines revolve around, I realized I needed to stop to explain how one of the characters left things with her dad. It will probably be ordered a little differently when I revise this draft, because it’s a bit awkward right now, on the cusp of a big intrigue, but then wait, let’s get domestic first.
Total word count: 20,262
If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 8, 2010!
The Words: 2635 words total for the day. I’m now caught back up to where I should be with my personal goal of 2500 words per day.
All of my words today were written alongside my 10-year-old daughter, dong word sprints. We did a few with the @NaNoWordSprints feed on Twitter, and a few of our own when the timing didn’t work out with the feed. We prefer 10-minute sprints, because her hands start to hurt if we go much longer than that without a break.
The Story: The plot took a big step forward today as the main character in this storyline made a huge decision and executed it. I’d just gotten to the beginning of the fallout from that decision, and will continue with that tomorrow.
Total word count: 17,596
If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 7, 2010!
The Words: 3531 words total for the day. Because of how I’ve been pushing to get words in last-minute recently, I made sure to do some writing this afternoon, getting about 800 words.
My 10-year-old daughter has been saying she wants to write when I write, but hadn’t up to today. She started a story about a birthday party last year, got about a page done, and stopped. Today, she insisted that she wanted to do some sprints with me. So after supper, we both joined in on a couple of sprints with the @NaNoWordSprints feed on Twitter. Then right before she went to bed, we did a few more sprints.
She loves doing them and wants to keep writing with me this month. She even said that she’s glad she realized how much she loves it now, when there’s still so much time left. And I read her story so far. It’s got some really funny moments in it!
The Story: I feel like I kind of rambled a bit as I tried to get the story back on track after the characters had some conversations that can’t be in the story yesterday. Then suddenly, I had an idea about how to insert some drama, which will make the person who’s basically been the MC so far seem a lot more interesting. Though I may have to make some tweaks to her personality earlier in the story to make this work. This wasn’t in my outline, which is fine, but I am a little worried it will derail things in a way I do not want. We’ll see where it goes, though.
Total word count: 14,961
If you want to join me in my journey through the first year of NaNoToons (with a storyline), check out the NaNoToon from November 6, 2010! And in case you need some extra inspiration, check out the 2nd episode of the NaNoMusical!
A Journey of Words 