NaNoWriMo: Getting to 65 Thousand by 11.24
Up Before Sunrise Writing
Embarking upon an adventure. My team is ready. The cupboards and garage refrigerator are full. Who else is doing Nanowrimo?
I have my plans, my note cards of research, the composition book full, the white story board – well it is waiting for all the information to unfold.
I would label myself a very organized “pantser” as I do not know the ending until I am done. I allow the story to direct me in the first draft.
Here is my plan: 65000 words by November 24th.
I will have not a full first draft but a rough without an ending, or perhaps three ending ideas. That is over three thousand words a day, a pace I have managed daily but I include blog posts as warm ups, poetry and shorts in my count. I will only work on the novel. I have a couple titles in my head, and this too is subject to shift.
Author Caroline Gerardo
My children have agreed to take on the feeding of the pets (in Laguna Niguel we have two dogs, two turtles, an elderly flop eared bunny and yes the hummingbird feeders need attention). They agreed to split up a couple of my chores so I can get up at five and start my quiet hours of writing at the kitchen table. It is in the morning I get the most productive writing done.
I don’t have the luxury of a silent space to work in. Yes I have a room of my own, (several) but being a single mom with no relief I can’t lock myself away. My team has come upon the settlement that we don’t watch television, mom writes with her gnarly baseball hat and they read or complete homework. We play games and are intensely competitive to work for goals. Nannowritmo is just as serious as when my son and I had the month long chin up challenge. I build up to eleven, and I felt really strong about it until I suffered tendonitis, but that’s another story.
So who else is doing Nano?
What challenges do you find ahead? What will you do if the laptop fails or there is a power outage for days?
Let us share our triumphs and cheer each other on to the finish.
How will you balance your home life, your day job and will you remember to pay the cell phone bill? I will be limiting my online reading, less blogging, but I will chat about progress and check on you by twitter.
@ cgbarbeau is my twitter handle. We can talk about how you are getting your brain and fingers in shape to write a whole draft of a novel in November
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Check out Caroline Gerardo’s blog. Visit Caroline Gerardo’s website. See Caroline’s author page on Amazon.com.
Caroline Gerardo © copyright 2011
Category: US American Women Writers, Women Writing Fiction
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I’m at 52,289 this morningat 6 AM.
I haven’t posted online, nor watched TV or cut flowers in my garden.
Fortunately the friends who noticed I was pretty silent sent emails of encouragement, I don’t follow any particular shows and the news just rolls on and it rained so the pots with fuschias, orchids and plumerias look fine in the hot house and the yard.
I did endulge in a few luxuries- hiking every day with a notebook and my camera. Will share a picture of a local mountain lion, the rain in Sycamore Canyon and ideas for a poem in honor of Nano- all unfinished and not downloaded.
My children have been wonderful, doing their homework for extra hours, they gave the dogs a bath and fed them and picked up (all the deals they made in exchange for getting puppies but seem to require nagging to normally happen) my daughter made a big turkey lasagna last night and shared with my sister (who lives up the street), her husband and the nephews as my brother in law the fireman who just had surgery.
A team effort, a journey that I’m happy to almost be close to the end.
Convinced my work not to send me to Toronto to work with the digital team there until after Thanksgiving. Boyfriend decided to date someone else (kinda found out about that mid stream) ugh.
Go see my post about melodramas and hangings
http://carolinegerardo.blogspot.com/2011/11/showtimes-for-novel.html
Didn’t blog much, just couldn’t
Didn’t keep my, what I call, “maintain and grow the platform”, so my Klout score is way down.
Priorities.
The novel changed half way through from first person narrative in the eyes of my heroine, Natalie the retired MI5 (Military Intelligence Section 5) to second person over the shoulder of the eco-terrorists who are quite evil. I sent the first half of the story to three people – the FBI agent who advised, my Mom the super beta reader, and a friend who is retired MI5. I asked them not to give input until after the 24th when I will, come hell or high water ( the novel is called THE RIVER), have a first draft.
Caroline, Thank you so much for sharing how you prepared for the month long endeavor to write a novel, while still taking care of yourself and your family as a single mother. Probably everyone participating is reducing their online conversations to keep all their writing for their novels, explaining the quiet here. We hope you’ll let us know how it went when it’s done. – Anora