Nano follow-up and The Warrior Writer

As my neat little widget says, I managed to beat National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) last month. It was pretty dang close, too. I slacked off toward the middle of the month and ended up having to do a few intense, high word count days. Thankfully, I didn't mess myself up too much by slacking. I think the high word count days helped me to get a renewed "ummph" toward the novel though. Woo! I've recovered from the push of Nano and now I'm going at a slower steadier pace of at least 1k words per day, which I've made my current goal thanks to Bob Mayer's The Warrior Writer workshop that he's been presenting to my RWA chapter, Fantasy, Futuristic & Paranormal. Bob Mayer is an excellent teacher, and I'm learning a lot from the workshop. We've covered tons including Fears and Goals. I have definitely put his Who Dares Wins book on my "to buy" list.

Nano update

Wow, this month has been flying by pretty quickly. I'm at 18,349 words for the evening, so that's exciting. The novel has been coming relatively painlessly. This year, I'm pantsing (writing without an outline). I had a general idea of the characters and a few scenes, but that was it. Usually, I prefer to have at least a general outline when I write, especially when doing National Novel Writing since it's got a pretty brisk pace, but sometimes it's fun to just let the characters lead and direct the story to where it needs to go.

Nano begins!

Once again, it's been quite a while since I've posted a blog. Yikes. And it's been something of a year since the last blog I did. Today was the beginning of National Novel Writing Month! Hooray!

Up until last night, I didn't really have any idea what I'd be writing about, but as I got myself in my chair started, things started flowing. The novel I'm working on was inspired by a short story I wrote back in college that I'd always wanted to turn into a novel. Now it's finally getting its chance to bloom. =)