writing
Well, as usual, I completely failed at NaNoWriMo. I only managed to write consistently for the first five days of the month, and the rest of November was filled with just a paragraph here and there. So, total, I wrote 6711 words and 35 pages. To those of you who succeeded, I congratulate you. And to those of you who are more like me, better luck next year.
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If this novel is ever published, the critics will refer to my main character as "unlikable." They won't use words like "assertive" or "motivated," but they won't hesitate to throw around the word "bitch." Why? Because my main character is a teenage girl who knows what she wants out of life and doesn't really care who she has to shove out of the way to achieve her goals. And for this, she will be deemed an unlikable character. But you know what? I like her. So I don't know that I particularly care if critics think she's the type of girl they'd avoid in a crowd. And I don't really think she would care either.
Today's Word Count: 1028 Total Word Count: 5291 Today's Page Count: 6 Total Page Count: 27 Favorite Line from Today (taken completely out of context): Lennon rolled her eyes as Lyric disappeared down the hall, rethinking her decision to hate this blue-haired, self-proclaimed asshole. Today's update will be extremely short because I can't come up with any brilliant revelations that occurred during today's writing. I did learn that, no matter how detailed your outline, you can still be surprised by some of the things that come out of your character's mouths.
Today's Word Count: 1031 Total Word Count: 4257 Today's Page Count: 5 Total Page Count: 22 Favorite Line from Today (taken completely out of context): Lennon told the kids to keep working as she crossed to open the door to admit a sulky teenage boy. He looked a little strung-out, was in desperate need of a haircut, and reeked of cigarette smoke. Today's writing went a little more slowly than the previous two days. I'm finally making major deviations from the original trilogy. In today's section, I introduced a completely new character. She didn't exist the first time around, but she's already one of my favorite characters. I haven't completely figured out how involved she'll be in the story as a whole, but she's definitely important in these first several chapters. Without her, the main character would lose about 40% of her motivation to succeed.
Sorry that today's update is so short. It's been a long day. Today's Word Count: 1140 Total Word Count: 3227 Today's Page Count: 6 Total Page Count: 17 Favorite Line from Today (taken completely out of context): The blonde brought her hand around to scratch the back of her head, though Lennon assumed she was actually directing a rude hand gesture at the girl behind her. I've discovered the most difficult aspect of my NaNoWriMo journey: editing. I usually write every story by hand, page one to the end, and then, when it's completely finished, I type it up. That way I can edit as I type. I always tend to edit as I'm writing because I'll have an idea in the shower for something I need to change back on page 15, when I'm actually on page 87. It's usually not a big deal, but with NaNoWriMo, I don't have the luxury of time. So instead of constantly going back and making changes, I just have to plow on, writing notes for myself to go back and fix things once December rolls around.
I'm also forgoing the notebook draft for this one. Transferring handwritten pages to type is incredibly time-consuming, and as I said before, time is not something I have in this situation. It's also easier to keep track of word count when I type everything from the beginning. What problems are the rest of you running into during this lovely month of writing? Today's Word Count: 971 Total Word Count: 2086 Today's Page Count: 5 Total Page Count: 11 Favorite Line from Today (taken completely out of context): Under the bleachers wasn't the most ideal place to wait for someone, and if he was being honest with himself, he found it more than a little cliche, but he wanted the privacy they guaranteed. For the fifth time, I'm attempting NaNoWriMo. For those of you who don't know about this, it's National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a novel throughout the month of November. I've never succeeded at sticking out the whole month, though, so we'll see if I can manage to get back in the habit of writing every day.
First, a little background on the novel I'm writing this month. When I was a senior in high school, I wrote a trilogy filled with characters loosely based off of my group of friends. They named their own characters, gave me brief physical descriptions, and got to choose what deep, dark secret their characters were hiding. It took me a year to write all three books. At the time, I was immensely proud of the trilogy and was positive that publishers would be lining up to offer me a contract. Rereading these books seven years later, I recognize them for what they truly are. Utter rubbish. So, I'm going back through and rewriting them. And I don't mean a few tweaks here and there; I'm talking about a total overhaul. Some characters have been combined, some deleted completely, some are brand new, and all of them are now significantly darker emotionally. Anyone who read the trilogy the first time around will (hopefully) not even recognize this as the same story. I'm going to try to post updates every day, but there's always a chance I'll forget every once in awhile. Wish me luck on this journey. Today's Word Count: 1115 Total Word Count: 1115 Today's Page Count: 7 Total Page Count: 7 Favorite Line from Today (taken completely out of context): "No, I actually became a necrophilic lesbian over the summer," Lyric replied, glancing around October's locker door. "Didn't I tell you?" |
Jacinta M. CarterProfessional Book Nerd Archives
December 2017
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