Day 16: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Tuesday, Day 16 of NaNoWriMo and PiBoIdMo, was also my birthday, although not my 16th. No, that one is long gone! 🙂 I received phone calls, cards and gifts, emails, texts, e-cards, and hugs. It’s a sweet blessing to be remembered.

My idea for Picture Book Idea Month was along the line of birthdays, rather fitting, wouldn’t you say? I’m still ahead of the game, with this idea bringing my total to 26. I really only need 4 more to win but I will continue to write at least one a day until the end of this challenge.

On the other hand, National Novel Writing Month is quickly getting away from me. I have 14 writing days left in this challenge counting today (which is already Wednesday) and I am not to the halfway point in my word count yet. 43% looks pretty good to me, though. Today I wrote 2029 words, which is not so bad. It just means that I have 28,664 more words to write to make the goal of 50,000. Think I can do it? I have to try!

A couple of times I felt that I had written myself into a corner, but then I just waited. It happened again today. Some thought had to surface eventually, which it did, and onward we forged. It is like breaking new ground since I have never done this before. My main character got angry today, and scared, panicked, jealous, annoyed .. all in one emotional day and 2000 words of story. And like me, she likes to laugh. Things strike her so funny sometimes and I find myself smiling as I’m writing it out.

My story is a bit different, unlike anything I have ever written about before. When I get stuck I just wait. The characters are always waiting to say or do something, so when it starts to happen then I start writing again. It is a mystery to me! 🙂 And actually, the story has a mystery running through it. I wonder if this will ever turn into something …

Do you write, and if so, do you think and plan it all out first? or do you write as it comes to you?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Day15: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Day 15 of writing challenges has not proven to go well for me. I spent time today (besides doing some household things) working on Valley Sunshine publication, though.

Tonight I was out to the chiropractor and while waiting, and with pleasant classical music playing, I came up with two ideas for PiBoIdMo. I had noticed on the way to my appointment that the town has its lighted decorations up on the poles — snowflakes, angels, doves, stars .. and that was working around in my mind. It turned into a picture book idea. Then I had a second idea, also to do with Christmas. I don’t now if I will actually work those up into picture book manuscripts, but they count for the challenge. Now I have 25 ideas for it in 15 days, which is good since the goal is to come up with at least one a day for the 30 days of November. I like being ahead in that because I certainly am not up to speed for NaNoWriMo!

In NaNoWriMo I am still behind. To make matters worse I am so tired tonight I kept dozing off in my chair so that I only got 541 words written increasing my % by only one point to 39%. I think I could do more but I need sleep! *yawn* Hoping I can do much better tomorrow, although … I almost forgot! Tomorrow is my birthday! but I have nothing planned so I should be able to write, write, write.

Have you seen Christmas decorations up anywhere yet?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Day 14: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Today (Sunday) was an interesting day – even a productive one.

I have been heading up Samaritan’s Purse “Operation Christmas Child” in the fellowship where I worship on Sunday’s. It is a small fellowship but we filled almost 60 shoeboxes for children, and I’m delighted to be delivering those to the drop off this week.

Today, also, I wrote as much as I could for my NaNoWriMo challenge. I’m pleased to say that I wrote 2139 words today! Sure needed those, although as I was writing along I stopped and said, “This is boring!” But I kept going, it can be edited out later. It may work in the story with some rewriting, it may have to be cut. Again my characters are very chatty.

I got one idea for PiBoIdMo today. As I was reading a writer’s blog I was inspired with an idea for a picture book. This pushes my ideas in 14 days to 23. Maybe a couple of them will make great picture books, who knows?

Do you have any special giving plans for this Christmas season?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musing! 🙂

Day 11: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo & Remembrance Day

Day 11 (Thursday) of NaNoWriMo I was able to eke out 1415 words, which took my total up to 14131. Because my word count has been low each day this week, I am behind by 4206 words. Since I am writing this post after midnight (now into Friday) my stats tell me “At this rate you will finish on Dec 12.” Judging by that, I have a lot of writing to do to catch up. The first three days of this writing challenge I was ahead but that didn’t last long. I’m up to 29% completion, though, which is encouraging.

I’m still finding that my characters are very chatty, especially my MC (main character) and her best friend. Yes they are girls, but girls are usually more expressive and use more words, are more creative in thought. So, I get girls as my main characters and much of my story is dialogue. I say “I get” because I didn’t choose them, they chose me.

Any writers out there relating to this?

For Day 11 of PiBoIdMo three ideas came to me. As picture books, one would make a child think, one would be comforting, one would be funny. I am so inspired by these challenges and finding them to be quite fun. 🙂

Today (Thursday) was Remembrance Day. Here in Nova Scotia we give honour to our war Veterans, but that same respect is not practiced in every province. That is sad and unfortunate. If our Canadian soldiers in World War II had not put forth the effort and sacrifice that they did, this world would be a lot different now as Hitler was winning the war. But, I won’t get on a tirade about that now. 😉 I’m just proud of my dad and very touched by what he and thousands of others chose to do for this country’s freedom.

Have you really thought about how different a world we could be living in?

And my question for you writers is .. do you create your characters or do they choose you?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Day 9: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Another slow NaNo writing day. I got less than 400 words written before midnight today. At midnight the new report is logged into the site and anything written after 12:00 goes onto the next day’s total. Makes sense, right? But if I keep writing and add my totals in, it changes the numbers in my widgets here on my blog, and therefore they don’t line up with the numbers I’ve told you. Usually, I like to add my number of words per page as I go, but if “the Muse” is on a roll, I keep going and add ’em up later.

I’m not proud of my small efforts today but this is all part of it, so even if I should write nothing I will still report here. Hopefully, I will always write something through this challenge.

My widget said I have 24% done, but now it is at 25% because I wrote a little more after midnight. My stats report tells me that at this rate I will finish Dec 10. 🙂 I hope to improve my words per day to finish on time.

Soon after I woke this morning, an idea came to me for PiBoIdMo challenge. I wrote it down and this afternoon I had the idea ”fleshed out’ so that I have a story planned from it. So that’s 13 ideas so far, and also I have added a little here and there to some of the first 12.

It’s been nearly a week of rain, rain, rain, with some families in Nova Scotia having to be evacuated because of serious flooding. Wednesday the rain will stop and the sun will reappear. I’m so busy that I even forgot to get depressed due to lack of sunshine! 🙂

Have you had trouble with too much water, especially along the eastern seaboard?

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. 🙂