Posts Tagged ‘Novel’
Mad cheering erupts!
I managed to stay up until midnight to start NaNoWriMo off the second it was legal to do so. I quickly discovered I have more planning to do than I thought. It is very disruptive to get to a sentence and realize you don’t know what your city or kingdom is called. This morning, I ironed out all those details rather well.
NaNoWriMo is a very inspirational time for me. The past three years have given me three quality first drafts. Two of them have moved beyond first draft and one is nearing its final polish. I can track my improvement through the years. This NaNo novel (NaNovel) will require fewer edits after the first draft is complete.
Best of luck to everyone taking part in NaNoWriMo this year. Don’t worry about how many words you still have to do and just keep writing.
Just write!
More than any other lesson writers need to learn is that: just write.
Michy has put forth a challenge on the Accentuate Writer’s Forum in conjunction with the Boundelss Living Challenge. Somewhat similar to NaNoWriMo, she has challenged us to write or complete a novel in the next 45 days.
Since I have six novels in varying stages of completion sitting on my hard drive, and a fervent desire to be a published novelist, I took on the challenge readily.
You can follow my progress on my page below, or join the challenge yourself (and the forum!) for support and a truly positive writing experience.
Novel Challenge - Check out my page here.
Instead of working on a new project last night, I opened up the beginning of a work in progress novel and reread the first few chapters. It felt like visiting a old friend from high school, even though I wrote it long after I left public education. The sentiment was still there. I still loved the story. It was the writing that threw me for a loop.
As I read through, enjoying the story, I had to fight the urge to edit it extensively. That wasn’t in my plans for the evening and I don’t intend to work on that novel for a while anyway. The deep-seated urge taught me something however.
I know I’m becoming a better writer. I can tell easily because I used to suck.
The writing in this vampire novel that I was working on a year or two ago was sophomoric and clumsy. Adverbs danced with speech tags that made no sense and descriptions that went nowhere. It was frankly embarrassing.
Finding out that my writing is getting a lot better was bittersweet. Of course, I am very glad that I write better now than I did two years ago. On the other hand, it only shows me how much work I have to do in order to get any of my novels or short stories ready for publication. It also scares me a bit that, if I get much better in the next two years, I will have to rewrite everything again.
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