Hi writing folks!
This week has been terrible for me as I have a horrible cold and I am going through training classes with my puppy! We only lasted three classes and then we were kicked out. German Shepherds are known to bark, and my boy has a deep and super loud bark. Too much for the trainers there to handle. Nothing stops him from barking, so here I go finding another place who can help. So with that being said, to calm myself, I have been writing. I am pretty steady at 1,000 words a day, which they recommend 1,600 a day to stay on top. So, some days I go over, and some I am under. Right now I am at 14,000 words.
I have been working on this novel. I started with the idea from a short story in college, a story that most of my classmates thought was a part of novel when it wasn’t back then…not yet. But the writing idea I had was to imagine if one day you woke up with your grandmother by your side telling you to take over the family business…the business of being a grim reaper. I actually got ripped apart for that story in class, so I came back with a different version of how to become a grim reaper. I am nineteen chapters in and I am so ready for the novel to be written and over.
My tip (and struggle) is to keep writing, you can always edit later. Only stop to fix corrections of words from typing fast—because those pesky red lines are so distracting—but keep going. Just get it on paper. Get it done. You can do it.
And here’s a photo of Thunder because having him close helps too! He is as black as Grim.
So now a bit from Addey on how she has been making out (spoiler from Addey–it’s nowhere near as good as Nicole has been doing!)
Nicole challenged me to also try to write this month. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with lots of random other things on my to do list, so writing has fallen to the wayside a bit, but the idea of so many others around the world using November as their excuse to write like crazy has inspired me to at least try to write more for this month—even if it’s not 1,000 words a day.
I have also been working on an idea for a novel that I have written and re-written again and again. It’s an idea that came from a German movie I watched in a class in college. It’s a source of pretty random inspiration, but so far everyone I have talked to about the plot line and story idea think it’s a great idea, and something unique. That’s part of the battle in and of itself when it comes to writing—getting the idea just perfect—so I am rolling with it.
My issue was that when I have had the first several chapters critiqued I have been told time and time again that the beginning just wasn’t grabbing the reader. I didn’t have a good beginning. So I think I was putting off working on the idea anymore because I didn’t know where to start. But I decided to tackle a new beginning—to start of a chapter or two into what I had before. It meant cutting out a lot of already written work, but the book will be better because of it. I think I’ve come up with a killer first line, too, if I do say so myself.
So that’s where I’m at. Only a few chapters into my new version of the same idea, but better off than I was in October.
Are you taking on NaNoWriMo to the full extent like Nicole, or using it as inspiration to set aside more time for writing without an end goal in mind like Addey? Let us know by commenting below!
