Tag Archives: NaNoWriMo

December 9, 2013

NaNoWriMo round up

Filed under: Events/appearances,Writing — Tags: Clare Writers' Festival, NaNoWriMo, Writing — PD Martin @ 1:51 pm

It’s official…NaNoWriMo is done for 2013. This was my second time attempting NaNoWriMo and I’m afraid that once again I fell short.

Instead of meeting the 50,000 word target (or my personal target of 30,000-40,000 words), this year I managed only 20,212 words.

I have excuses, of course. Who doesn’t? But the truth is there were two days I had put aside for intensive writing sessions (two full days, the only full days I get each week) and instead of putting my foot on the accelerator I went for the brake. I’m still not sure why. Yes, it’s a crazy busy time of year for me. My daughter’s birthday is on 6 December so there are always celebrations to organise. I also went to the Clare Writers’ Festival from 29 November – 1 December and was busy preparing for that in the last week of November. (The Festival was fantastic, by the way!)

Also, the writing didn’t seem to flow as easily for this book (book 2 in a YA series) as it did for the first and I even wondered if the fact that I actually did some plot planning BEFORE writing made things worse. Instead of writing free-form, I was writing the scene I had designated as the next scene in Scrivener. But surely plotting should help move my writing forward, not hinder it.

The bottom line is I hit the brakes for some reason. But the good news is I got 20,000 words done of my next novel and if I hadn’t been pushing myself with NaNoWriMo perhaps it would have been a much less productive month.

Not sure yet if I’ll sign up in 2014, but I’m determined that one of these days I will do NaNoWriMo and actually finish it. Perhaps not when I’ve got a 2yro at home though

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November 1, 2013

NaNoWriMo – take 2

Filed under: Writing — Tags: NaNoWriMo, PD Martin, Scrivener, writing craft, writing structure — PD Martin @ 1:38 pm

This year I’m trying NaNoWriMo again. For those of you who don’t know, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and it’s basically a whole community of writers (both published and aspiring) getting together with the goal of writing 50,000 words in the month of November.

I tried it for the first time in 2011 and unfortunately only made it half-way. This year, I hope to get a bit closer to the 50,000 word target, however I am trying to fit it in around fairly limited chunks of writing time.

This year, I’m working on book 2 in a new YA series. I recently finished the first book and am doing the agent/publisher rounds but I thought in the meantime I’d spend November to get a chunk of book 2 written. It’s especially important for this series, because book 1 does end on a cliff hanger. Yes, there’s some resolution, but I know if I was reading it I’d want to pick up book 2 pretty much straight away because while the lead character just avert disaster in book 1, the novel ends with her ‘going into the lion’s den’ shall we say.

In the lead up, I’ve been doing a bit of planning. I tend to be more of a plot-as-you-go writer, but I thought in honour of NaNoWriMo (and because I had no idea where the plot would go!) I might actually do a basic structure before putting pen to paper. And I’m using a new-to-me theory…I’m trying the Blake Snyder beat sheet, which includes 15 ‘beats’ in a story. It’s made for screenplays, and some beats only last one page (e.g. the Opening Image) while other beats might last 25 pages (e.g. Fun and Games).

I’m also using Scrivener (which I use for all my writing now) and so I’ve written up scenes on index cards in Scrivener and I’ve customised the ‘Status’ section so it says which type of beat the scene (index card) is. This is what part of my structure looks like.

First time using this method and obviously first time using it with Scrivener so we’ll see how I go!

So, that’s my November. I did miss last month’s blog (naughty me) but I’ll check back in with a blog on 1 December to tell you all about my NaNoWriMo progress. Or you can see it in real-time at www.facebook.com/pdmartinauthor

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November 10, 2010

NaNoWriMo – 10 days in

Filed under: Writing — Tags: NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, PD Martin, Writing — PD Martin @ 10:42 am

This year I decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. If you haven’t heard of this before, basically the idea is to write a novel (well, 50,000 words) in the month of November.

Of course, most crime fiction novels come in at around 100,000 words, but still, 50,000 words in one month is an impressive achievement and obviously half a novel in a month is mighty fine too!

It’s the first time I’ve ever done it, although last year I saw lots of status updates on Facebook about it and decided I was too late to sign up. This year, despite knowing the first five days of November were out for me, I decided to give it a go. Especially given the first book in my new series could do with the major kick start of 50,000 words!

So far, I’m not exactly prolific — 10 days in I’ve written just over 5,000 words of the new novel, giving me a total of over 41,000 words for Hit and Run (working title). Still, it’s nice to know that there are lots of other people sitting at their computers tapping away.

And I guess that’s the point of NaNoWriMo – to bring together writers around the world to inspire us all to dedicate time and space to our writing, even if only for one month.

I’ll let you know how I go at the end of November!