Day 6: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo & time change

Day 6 of National Novel Writing Month has come and gone and I just made it over the 10,000 words mark before midnight. The suggested goal by day 6 is 10002 words.

Did I mention in an earlier post that I’m finding my best writing seems to be happening in the evenings? I have written some of this 50,000 words challenge in the daytime but most of it has been nearer the end of the day and into the night. When we were talking about this, I commented to my husband that I’m a night owl and he said, “You always have been.” He on the other hand is the early bird and needs his sleep so that he can get up and get going in the mornings. Ever hear the Ziggy quote? or was it Charlie Brown? “I love mornings, they just start too early!” Yep! Me too. I do love early mornings and sunrises, and watching and listening to the world wake up, but all that is harder to see and fully enjoy when I have been up really late the night before – because that’s when my energy flows. 🙂 It’s not always that way, but more often true than not.

So, as I was saying, I couldn’t even squeeze many words out of my brain until late tonight. Then they just started happening so that I ended at midnight with my total being 10230 words. I am 21% of the way there, by what my widget shows.

I hope that some time tomorrow I can add the Picture Book Ideas Month badge to my blog’s side bar, maybe right under the NaNoWriMo ones.

Speaking of PiBoIdMo, this morning before I was even fully awake, I was listening to the wind and rain and an idea came to me for a picture book. Cool, huh? I love this! 🙂 The next challenge when this is all over, will be to actually DO something with my list of ideas.

Sunday will be very busy – fellowship (church), followed by dinner with my husband and grandson and anyone else who meets us for that meal, followed by Alpha, and then in the evening a private meeting. So, I don’t know how much NaNo writing I will get done, but I will be reporting either that night or on Monday night with day 7’s update.

Did you remember to set your clock back? Or did you get caught showing up at the wrong time? Any tales to tell? 🙂

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings. 🙂

Day 5: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Wow! It’s the end of day 5 already in these challenges. Today I only got around 13oo words written for NaNoWriMo, less than the 1667 I was supposed to write, but I was ahead so didn’t really lose anything. As it adds up, I’m 300 words into the next day. The weekends are going to be much harder to find writing time, I think, and I’m not sure how to keep this story going so that it makes sense, but aside from that .. it’s all good! 🙂

When only two days into the NaNoWriMo challenge, I started to talk to my husband about something that evening, then stopped, thought a moment, and said, “Oh, never mind, that isn’t here, that’s in my story!” 🙂

Even though I am already thinking in terms of my story much of the time, I also am aware of the little things going on around me. There are picture book ideas everywhere. Today I captured three for PiBoIdMo. Of course, some of those will never go anywhere, but this is all part of the brainstorming that has to happen in writing. It’s fun.

This evening I took a pause from writing to do some reading. I am still working my way through the Bible, but I also read another little book today and added it to My “have read” book list page.

It has been a very windy and rainy day here in Nova Scotia, but we are having warm days and warm nights after a cold spell. Our beautiful leaves have finally reached the end of their colourful display, I’m afraid. The wind has been plucking most off their trees and is now blowing them helter- skelter. It makes the trees bare of colour but adds variety to lawns and fields.

Don’t forget to check my new page: NaNoWriMo Updates (2010).

What do you like about Autumn/Fall?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Day 4: NaNoWriMo, PiBoIdMo & a chickadee

Today was not a great writing day, although I did manage to squeak out 1275 words, putting my word count up to 7338 before midnight. I didn’t write a thing during the day but I did a lot of thinking, musing, about the possibilities of how my story could go. It seems that evenings may be more my writing time instead of daytime hours. But then this evening I was on the phone for an hour with a friend who is going through a very difficult time and needed to talk, so that took priority for me.

Another thing I have discovered with this story is that I seem to have two very chatty characters. They are doing a lot of talking so that I don’t have to. 🙂 Tonight, though, there was more scene narration which I found slowed me down. Even so, once I put in my word count my widget showed that I have written 15% of the of 50,000 words challenge. Yay!

I also wrote down one idea for PiBoIdMo but I don’t know how good of one it is. It counts, though, and I maybe can do something with it in a picture book.

Oh, while I was baking today (turned out a blueberry pie and a blueberry apple coffee cake) I heard a thunk against the window in our back door. I knew immediately what it was, and sure enough .. there was a helpless, little chickadee lying on the deck. I went out and gently scooped him up and checked him carefully. He didn’t appear to be injured – just very stunned by the head-on collision with our door, so then I loosely wrapped the little fella in an old t-shirt and set him on a chair on the deck. This has happened before and they just need time to get their wits about them again. It wasn’t until my husband arrived home from work, maybe a half hour later, that little chickadee perked up and flew away – just as my husband was coming up the steps. I don’t know yet how to transfer images from my phone to my computer or I would insert a picture here.

Do you ever have to rescue little birds?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings. 🙂

Day 3 of NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Okay, so I said I wouldn’t be blogging every day about NaNo, and I probably won’t, but tonight I just want to say .. I am actually having fun with this! Who’da thunk? 🙂

As of today’s writing, 13% of my projected goal has been completed, so says my widget. I must admit, I was a little exasperated with myself today, though, when after writing over 1000 words I realized that in so doing I had included a scene/time frame from yesterday’s writing. That isn’t so bad in itself, but I had written the same thing but in an entirely different way and didn’t even realize until one of my characters was about to explain something. Then I go … “huh? oh nooooo!” (haha) So, I just kept on going. In the editing when this is all said and done, one of those has to be cut. But for now the words all count because we are not allowed to go back and edit anything. When you can’t read over what you did earlier, except maybe the last line or two for your starting point the next time, it pays to have a good memory. 🙂 Double the challenge for me!

I know that I accidentally changed (misspelled) my main character’s name in a few places, but that’s okay and easily remedied … later. That’s no worse than calling a young girl by the wrong name on Sunday. Called her Veronica when her name is Victoria. She looked a little puzzled but was polite about it. 🙂

So, having said all that, aren’t you just so eager to read my story when it’s done? (having a good laugh at myself here!) 🙂

Now, another thing I want to share is that for today I made note of an idea for PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) from a personal experience. Then later I was watching tweets of persons I follow on Twitter (and making occasional comments) when someone said the funniest and cutest thing. I immediately told my husband and then said, there’s a story in that! So, there are two ideas for PiBoIdMo today. Gotta love that!

By the way: the website, should you be interested in checking out the PiBoIdMo challenge just to see what it’s all about, is: Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) — http://taralazar.wordpress.com/

Are you having fun these days?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Day 2 of NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

I will not be blogging every day through NaNoWriMo, that would get old pretty quickly, I think – boring for you. But my story is coming along, a little spooky, a little mysterious, a little jumbled up. 🙂 I’m hoping it all gets sorted out eventually. So far I’m in the first part where the character shaping is happening and the story is gradually unfolding. Usually, I don’t even know ahead what’s happening until I start writing it down. The ideas are coming and I hope they keep doing so all through November.

I am writing longhand for this, too – not doing it on computer – so at the end I will have to move it all over in order to submit it to the NaNo website for verification of having met the goal of 50,000 words. (And I plan to make it!) Apparently there is a program or site that helps do that. It must work okay because I’m not the only one using the ‘old fashioned’ way to meet the challenge – you know, pen and paper. 🙂

Tonight, with a friend’s instructions, I loaded two widgets –>there on the right side of the page. These will keep a count of my words for NaNo, and I will make note on the special page I set up for that, as well.

I also came up with a second a picture book idea for the Picture Book Idea Month challenge. So I am doing okay so far. Only 28 days to go! 🙂

So, no blog posts such as this every day, but a daily count and maybe a few thoughts on the NaNoWriMo Updates (2010) page.

Thanks for your interest.

How is your Autumn shaping up? Any creative musings going on?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Day 1 of NaNoWriMo & another challenge

Shortly after midnight, not long into November, I began writing. NaNoWriMo has begun! As it was already late and I was tired, I only wrote 120 words and then turned in for the night. At least I got it started.

I had very vague ideas for a story, so when I started writing it was a surprise to me just what might come together, particularly when it is hard to write when you haven’t much to say. My beginning is sort of strange, but that doesn’t bother me. I think it is something that is going to be explained somewhere later in the story. Now two main characters are shaping up and more ideas are unfolding in my mind as I go. There is already a mystery person and my main characters are about to introduce someone else into the mesh.

I’ve read what others have had to say about their experience with NaNoWriMo, and many complain of ‘hitting a wall’ after so many thousand words, or after the first two or three weeks of writing. That is on my mind, and since this is only day one of the 30 day challenge, I somehow have to dismiss that thought. What I don’t need is a barrier in my way from the very beginning, a negative expectation that will put up a block so that I cannot complete this novel challenge.

Well, to add to all this, I learned of another challenge that started today. It is called PiBoIdMo, which stands for Picture Book Idea Month. The challenge is to come up with 30 picture book ideas in 30 days! You don’t have to write full manuscripts for them, you just write something down for in a picture book. It could be a story plot, a character name, a title for your story. Today I thought of an idea – the name of the main character which will likely be the title too, and I made a few notes for the storyline. There is no great pressure for this challenge, which is nice since I am doing NaNoWriMo at the same time. This one is more delightful.

Then I discovered there are great prizes that can be won for PiBoIdMo, but for me just getting down 30 ideas that I can use in a picture book is the reward to myself. Don’t get me wrong .. winning a signed book or having an author critique my story would be fantastic! But, I’m doing this for the inspiration that is already being generated. Woo Hoo! 🙂

So, I’m going to stop writing here and move back to my NaN o writing. Later tonight I will publish my final word count for today, day one. (It is currently over 1000.) And if I can get a word count widget for here from NaNo, then that will make it even easier to keep you posted on my progress. I’m not very good at moving and installing widgets, but I’ll try. 🙂

So, what are you doing to challenge yourself? If you are a writer do you have any goals you are working toward right now?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

NaNo Writing

It was so fun giving out awards to other bloggers earlier this week. Even more fun was receiving replies from some of them. It was so inspiring to me (thanks to Laura A. Best) that I am eager to post again so soon.

Now I am again thinking about NaNo writing. Have you ever heard about it? I learned about NaNo last year but didn’t get up the ‘courage’ to attempt it. National Novel Writing takes place the whole month of November. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days! Sounds like a huge challenge, doesn’t it? And it is – especially where the writer does not start with anything at all or simply an outline. The rule is to write, write, write .. whatever comes to mind, with NO EDITING all the way through to the end of the month or upon reaching the 50,000 word count – and the challenge has ended.

Check it out at: http://www.nanowrimo.org

I am thinking of doing this, but … can I manage it? Of course, there is no shame in not reaching the goal, and most don’t, so if I don’t get anywhere near it I at least got started. The purpose is to write and get inspiration from just finding out what you can do. It is suggested to have a support group so that you can encourage one another along.

Have you ever taken part in NaNo? What did you learn about your writing?

Are you interested in participating?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂