Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo

Once more, as we speed around the sun, National Novel Writing Month AKA NaNoWriMo approaches. Yes, November is coming and coming fast. Are you ready?

Of late I have repeatedly said, I'm not going to do it this year.  And, of course, each year I plunge into extravaganza event, thrashing about, ignoring sociability and family in my pursuit to write 50K in 30 days.

Seems this year will be no different except I've decided early on to engage in wild abandon.

How many years have I entered into this pursuit?  I can proudly say I started participating in 2000. That was the 2nd year of its existence.  I'll be honest, I attempted to do a cookbook. Let me tell you a little about that - DON'T ever try to write a cookbook for this event.

The following year my father passed away in October and I considered attempting it but realized I had too many obligations to ignore... so I didn't participate.

Okay, first year I failed to complete the 50K words, but I did get 35K written.  Good attempt. The following year I skipped out for personal reasons.

Since 2002 I have participated and completed the challenge.  That's right, folks.  I have 13 novels written.  And, yes, some of them have been published... not only self-published, but also via other publishing companies.

Now for the sordid truth. Some of those novels are so bad. In fact, once of them I went back and deleted almost 35K words. There are those who would claim that the effort was an obvious waste of time if I deleted all that text. Not really. I got the story down. I know what I want it to be. I deleted what I don't want and now need to rewrite what I do want.

Call it editing. I have several of those novels that have some text deleted that I wrote just to get my 50K words in. They were finished stories. They weren't the best stories. BUT they are being edited to make them better stories. Four of them have been published. So that leaves me with 9 novels to be edited. Let's just say they are in various stages of completion at the current time.

So, how to prepare for this event?

1. Get your research out of the way. Do it now. Get it all saved, printed, stored, whatever - so you can access it quickly and not waste a lot of time. Make copious notes.

2. Prepare you mind. Going in with the proper mindset is critical. You have to know you can do this. Thinking you can will work against you. If you want to win, you have to see the finish line and that means you have to know you will do it.

3. Realize that each day you will need to write a minimum of 1667 words. I set my goal at 1700 words each day with a final word count of 51K.  That allows for some gravy on the word counting app to verify your winning at the end.  I made myself a little word counter printout that I'm willing to share, if you're interested. It is 1700 word per day. Simple to use. Know today's date? See the number of words you should have written to be on target. Get It Here! Print it out and give copies to your friends. I've had mine taped to my desk hutch upright for about 8 years now.

4. If you fall behind, apply yourself and catch up.

5. If you're having a good day writing and can actually write more than the required word count, by all means, do so. I've had days where I was able to write 5, 8, even 10 thousand words. Now, if you do have a great day like that, don't sit back on your laurels because you're ahead - stay ahead. The next day, write the required words.

6. Remember that Thanksgiving Day (that's for all U.S. residents) is during the month. The family will expect you to come out of the cave and socialize. Be sure to shower and cleanup before doing so and enjoy the day.  Of course, there is a two-fold blessing to the holiday. If you work, you most likely will have off that day and maybe the Friday, too.  Use them to your advantage - WRITE.

7. Now this is the one that really is hard. Don't edit. Don't go back and fix. Don't . Don't. Don't. I mean it. The object is to get the story down - bad or worse... uh, er, I mean, good or bad. If you need to correct something - make it a note and continue on. I changed my main character's name about half way through - I typed: (RSN-NAME CHANGE - Mark is now Daniel, go back and fix) and continued writing.

8. When stumbling for a name of a character or place that you can't remember - do as I do. Type your initials and what you want.  For me that would RSNFirstName, RSNName or RSNCity and continue on.  When it is time to edit, the first thing I look for is "RSN" and see what I need to fix.  Did you note the RSN in my #7 rule?  Whenever I need to make a note, I toss my initials out there, that way they're easy to find later on.

9. Some writers will suggest that you lock yourself in your room or designate a certain amount of time at a certain time of day. That doesn't work for me. My life is hectic and varied. I write when I have the free time and free time means sitting at the doctor's office, riding to work or home on a bus, late in the evening, early in the morning, during lunch. You'll be amazed how much writing can be accomplished in 15 or 20 minutes. When I worked in the big cities and would get caught in rush hour traffic or an accident snarl, I would dictate into a small cassette recorder. (I know, giving away my age here.) Use your cellphone and when you get home, type it into your laptop.  Of course, if you have your laptop with you, depending on the situation, you 'could' attempt to enter it direct, but I'm not really suggesting that. Much easier, safer and conscientious to dictate.  Oh, I don't recommend dictating while driving. You want 50K words, not 50K words of spoken eulogy.

10. Enjoy yourself. If you don't succeed in the event, don't beat yourself up. Remember, if you only have 18K words when November 30th arrives, that is 18K more words than you had one month earlier. If you do succeed, congratulations, you now have a novel that needs an immense amount of editing, re-editing and maybe another set of eyes to review before you edit yet again.

Now, I need to get busy on my research. I have a great story to write this year. Getting excited. In fact, I think this novel will easily reach 80K without any trouble - maybe even bigger!  I won't give all the details right now but I'll tease you - it will be somewhat historical and is based on a segment of "Aliens" I watched on the History Channel. Giorgio Tsoukalos and that gang can get my imagination jumping and then, can I write fast enough to get it all down?

Until next I ramble on...

I'm Back.

I know I've been remiss in doing my weekly blog but I had to take care of a few things and to be quite honest, I just didn't feel I could be fair to my readership.  Here's a little of what has happened in the interim...

1) NaNoWriMo.  Yes, I attempted and succeeded once again with this program.  This year I couldn't decide if I wanted to slap-write my 2nd Amish novel or do the writing book that was buzzing around in my head.  A friend suggested both.  That's what I did.  I accomplished over 52k words by the end of the month, completing my writing book and actually accomplishing quite a bit on my Amish novel.  So, hang in there, I've got some books coming out soon.  More later...

2) Health.  Remember my New Year's resolutions to lose some weight - okay, at least 25 pounds?  I actually accomplished that back in June, losing almost 30.  I got so sick, I couldn't eat and basically was on a liquid diet.  Yeah, I lost weight.  But to be honest, it just lingered around the corner and when I wasn't looking, most of it jumped back on board.  Not good.  I went to my doctor back in November and well, he tried to sugar-coat the results of my latest blood test.  "Get your diabetes under control or die."  WOW!  He said he couldn't sugar coat it because I'm a diabetic, which is true for the last 15 years.  Seems my A1C went from a not-so-great 7.3 to a Holy Crap! 10.4.  For those not in the know, an A1C in the range of 4.5 to 5.9 is consider good.  My diabetes was totally out of control with high blood results averaging 243 for the past 6 months.  I have since taken active steps to correct the situation.  He had changed my meds - I had him put me back on the old meds which were working.  Since then, my sugar has dropped drastically into more acceptable numbers.  I'm watching my food intake and exercising more.  My doctor said if I can get my sugar under 130 on a regular basis, he will be happy (and surprised!)  Last night, before supper, my sugar was 126.  I'm eating my healthier right now and from what I could tell - I went to the Medical Center with my wife and stopped at my doctor to get weighed in - my weight is down 6 pounds in one week.  I will allow a little variance since it wasn't the same scale, but still, those scales are checked often throughout the year - so there shouldn't be too much change.  But, we'll keep tabs on it.

3) I mentioned publishing a book back in item #1.  That's right, hopefully, sometime this coming week, I will release "CRACKED! The Writing Mystique" which is a book to help a new writer understand some of the secrets of good writing and aide those seasoned writers with their writing.  I figure the e-book will be released at $.99 - at least for a few days.  There will be the paperback but I'm unsure exactly how much it will be since I need to have CreateSpace calculate all the expenses. My New Year's resolution goal was to publish 3 books - I got two books out with this one.  Hmm?  Last year I wanted to publish 4 books and only got out 3, so this year I decided on 3 and only got out 2 books.  Maybe next year I should consider 11 books and publish 10.  Whoo-hoo!!

4) On the home front, I was able to get a lot of landscaping done before the winter chills came in. We had this home built in 2006 and now, finally, after almost 10 years, I have a sidewalk to be somewhat proud of.  Prior, it was some mud, grass, a couple of rubber mats and a short length of carpet remnant.  Now it is an attractive angled walk of bricks with an edging of mulch.  In fact, there is matching mulch in front of the low brick wall and a large expanse of ground (heavy clay) that wouldn't even grow weeds. Oh, and the angled ground which had irises and day lilies, it is now a lovely stretch of mulch.  I will be guarding it against weeds with a self-made concoction of weed-killer including dish soap and vinegar plus some other stuff.  It's not as harsh as RoundUp and therefore will take quite a few hits to finally exhaust the plant's growth and kill it.  Still, if it gets on my good plants, it won't kill them and I can spray with water to rinse it off.  Not so with RoundUp.

5) Hoarding. We've all seen those shows were people hoard and hoard. My wife and I have started to hoard, too.  Slightly different.  The local grocery had 8 weeks of specials where you could get certain items at a very low price in limited quantities.  We also had a couple of friends who got those mailers and didn't want the items.  Guess who got them?  Then they decided to also have a 10 for $10 sale and other amounts.  Imagine - 10 1 pound packages of Butterball turkey bacon for $10.  Around here, that stuff usually sells for the cheap side at $3.99/pkg.  Need I say we bulked up?  They had 80/20 hamburger for $1.99/lb.  Yup!  We bought in 3+ lb packages and re-packaged into 1 lb bags and put it in the freezer.  They had all sorts of stuff on sale and we bought and bought to stock up.  Our big freezer is packed and the smaller one is also full.  We did a lot of canning and freezing of our garden goodies, too.  I kid you not, we can eat very well for the next 2 or 3 months and not leave the house except for milk which we don't drink that much of, anyway.  Oh, I forgot to mention, my grandson hunts and has gotten 2 deer so far this year.  He can only get one more.  The 2nd deer is still being processed and I have NO idea where we will put it.  What's nice, I can take a little venison and some of that 80/20 hamburger and get a very lean mixture which is even better for me.

6) Weather-wise - I'm not going to complain one bit.  I'm basically still running around outside in shorts and t-shirts in NW Ohio.  Okay, when I go into town, I put on bluejeans and sometimes a light jacket.  There has been only a couple of days that I've actually had to put on my leather jacket because it was so cold.  My wife, on the other hand, thinks it is chilly - but then again, I'm the guy who runs around in shorts all winter in the house, putting on a shirt when company comes. LOL.  I can handle extremes of heat and cold.  I'll be honest, I prefer 70 for a temperature year round but we keep our house a little warmer if we use air-conditioning - meaning it is too hot outside with no breeze and the windows can't be open.  In the winter, we keep it a little cooler, about 68.  Just had a thought!  Maybe that's why we don't get a lot of company. LOL.  Just kidding, this house should have a revolving door for the way people come and go here with 4 sons and 10 grandchildren, 4 of which are on their own, some with families.  It's a mob when the family gathers here.

Hopefully things will get better in my life.  I intend to get my blog out in a timely manner each week and, once again, I apologize for my absence.

Until next I ramble on...
















2.

Updates to Updates

As we go into the third tri-mester of the year (the last four months), I thought I'd give a little update to what is happening.

Weight.  Good news, bad news.  Remember the 28 pounds I lost back in June when I was sick?  As a friend said, I found some of them. The good news is: Only half of them - so I'm still 14 pounds down which makes my target of 25 pounds by the end of the year - well, it is something I can possibly attain.  At least, I plan to make it.

Overall Health.  I'm not up to par.  I bought into the "you can't do this and that" and my sons have tried to make sure I don't do this or that.  So... now I can't do this or that without getting totally winded.  As stated last week, I bought a lot of mulch to put down.  Of course, having temperatures up into the high eighties and low nineties isn't helping, but I do a little and then need to rest.  I mean, like work for maybe 15-20 minutes and then break for 40 minutes.  It is all about bending over - pushing the gut into the lungs.  Still, I think it might be why the weight hasn't all come back... all that bending.

Mulch.  By the way, the mulch is looking good.  Of course, I didn't buy enough while it was on sale so the one area that I wanted to do probably won't get done - the swing set area.  Just as well.  I think I should put ALL rubber mulch there rather than a mixture of wood mulch with a light sprinkling of rubber mulch.  Since the rubber mulch wasn't on sale, I'll keep an eye open for it to better priced in the next few weeks.

Camping. Took the grand kids camping and now my wife and I can go alone and enjoy some quiet time at the campgrounds during the week since most families have their kids back in school.  OH! Went shopping for a new RV.  We own a 28 foot 1998 Allegro motor home.  Yes, a land-yacht. I'd like to get a "wider" motor home - not necessarily a bigger one.  Let me explain.  I want slide outs in the living area.  If my current motor home had a slide out, I'd keep it since I'm more than thrilled with the mileage I get with it.  Uh, we're talking 10 mpg and up to 14 mpg on flat interstates on cruise.  The new one I looked at would get "maybe" up to 7 mpg, possibly 9 mpg.  LOL. Sure.  I think we're going to hold off on it until maybe next year... unless the salesman comes back with a deal I just can't pass up.  (Like that's going to happen!)

Writing.  Has been stalled.  I've been doing a lot of editing for clients, so I don't have a lot of time for writing.  I've done some - a little - on my second Amish novel.  Was stumped for a while but with a little brain-storming with another writer (thanks, Elyse!), I've now got some great ideas to weave into the tale and give it depth.  With NaNoWriMo coming up in November, I have to decide if I want to attempt it yet again.  I  mean, I've competed 14 years, accomplishing 50K+ words 13 of those times. I've done NaNoWriMo since it's 2nd year of inception and only failing to complete the word count when I attempted a cookbook and my dad passed the month before.  Hint: Don't attempt a cookbook.

Gardening. The garden is coming to an end - sort of.  The corn is done and I've removed all the stalks from the raised bed.  My wife finally agreed that the green pole beans were finished, as were the wax bean plants.  Unfortunately I didn't tie-up my tomato plants - so they've sprawled all over but are doing fine.  We've canned a lot of salsa, diced, and stewed tomatoes - with more to come.  The shelves are filled with beans for the winter.  Still growing are the beets and carrots which appear might be a good crop this year.

Publishing.  I wanted to publish 3 books this year.  So far, only one book out. My Amish novel which has been selling like hotcakes at signings and shows.  On Amazon?  Not so well.  It would seem that the book hasn't sold well at all.  I've order copies twice now and figure I might have to order again before then end of the year - maybe twice!!  If you haven't checked it out - http://amzn.to/1ynQnzQ - you won't be sorry.  But, back to publishing.  Maybe with a little luck I'll be able to get out book 2 of my writing tips and book 1 in my Jewyl adventures is complete, for the most part, just some minor edits and a book cover design.  It's all about time.

Do you remember your New Year's Resolutions?  How are they coming along?  Given up?  Have you accomplished them?  Share.

Until next I ramble on...

Pre-Year End Evaluation

Today is the last day of November. Tomorrow is December 1st.  In a mere 31 days, not only will December be gone, but also the year 2011.  Where did it go?

Rather than focus on the "where" of the year, let's focus on the "what" of the year. 

WHAT did you accomplish?

There are 365 days in a year and in my working days (retired now) I would say that each new day was a whole new chance to screw up.  Sort of a lame excuse to face a new day, wouldn't you say?

I'm retired and each day I now realize that I'm moving closer to my final reward but until that day, I want to make the days actually mean something.  So again, there are 365 days and how did I use them?

In November I used 30 days to write a whole new novel.  Yes, I participated in National Novel Writing Month and wrote 50 thousand words in 30 days.  Well, actually I wrote over 53k words and have at my fingertips a great story with absolutely crappy writing.  I will let it rest until after the New Year and then decide to address the poor grammar, spelling, plot, etc. and edit the project.

Only 335 days more to cover.  I can't be accurate since I didn't timecard myself during the year but I know I spent time editing a book to publish and got "Three Steps: The Journeys of Ayrold" done in both paperback and ebook format.  Between edits and learning curve on Amazon's Kindle and CreateSpace, I figure I spent at least 4 to 5 months on that.  I also did some editing on another novel which I hope to release after the first of the year -- "The Legend of Pangea" which took another 2 months.

There!  That is definitely a half year squandered.  Only another 155 days left to go.

All work and no play makes for a boring life.  I mowed the yard, worked a garden, weeded flower beds, traveled to Texas for Mardi Gras, went camping a couple of weeks, did some days of gambling at the casinos and visited with family.

And during that time, three anthologies that I'd submitted to got published -- "Shadow Street," "Guide to Writing Paranormal Novels," and "Mother Goose Is Dead."  

Oh, wow, I forgot I also e-published a short story in book format entitled "Coleen" which is a little ditty about how Ayrold and Queen Arienne met and introduces some of the main characters from my novel "Three Steps: The Journeys of Ayrold."  That endeavor took about a month.

I also wrote stories for other anthologies which weren't released this year (yet) and might be coming out right after the first of the year -- a zombie anthology, a forsaken anthology, and a how-to-write horror book.

There, the year wasn't wasted and I think it had a pretty good return. So, overall, I'd say it was a pretty good year and seems to have the beginnings of a new year already being processed.

In case you didn't realize it yet - I love writing.

Until next I blog...

NaNoWriMo...

Are you in or just watching the panic from a safe distance?

Me?  I'm in.  Today is day one of the thirty day marathon.  I have participated ... counting this time ... a total of 11 yrs.  I did it the 2nd year of existence on a lark with a friend and there was 8 of us in the group.  Since there was only something like 140 people participating that year -- that makes us more than 5% of the participants.  Wow.  Our group was basically me, in Ohio and them in parts of Oregon and California.

Unfortunately I didn't complete it that year due to my father passing away in October.  I thought it would be a good thing to help me think about other stuff but my mom was in need of help.  PLUS, of all the things to attempt to write -- a cookbook?  Really?  I got so wrapped up with formatting recipes and making sure it looked right and well...  Okay, I got over 35k written on my pecan cookbook and it has languished in cyberspace ever since.  Really should pull that puppy out -- it has some super great recipes.  Something to consider in 2012...

Anyway, I skipped  2001 and then was sucked back into it in 2002 with a totally different friend who was local.  Needless to say, I completed the marathon and had a complete, but rough, novel.  I've been doing it every year since, always saying I won't do it again and yet finding a story screaming inside my head and wanting to be free.  So I relent and jump on the chaotic merry-go-round of National Novel Writing Month.  I'm really psyched about this year's story.  You can read the first chapter and what my novel is about at http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/lore/novels/the-voice

So, how many of you are attempting it?  Share with me your anguish, your sorrow, your fears, your joy, your tears and anything you think will help all of us finish this craziness we've joined.

Hmm?  Wonder if I can count this as part of my 50k?  Probably not, so I'll keep it short.

Be sure to share and by all means, let me know if you cross the finish line with 50k whether you're done with the novel or not.  My one buddy usually does upwards of 100k... I think last year he did even more.  He's such an overachiever. LOL.

Until next I ramble on...