My NaNo Life

So... I realized something. I'm really bad at updating the world to my writing life. I mean... I didn't even tell you all that I was doing NaNo. Much more... that I had huge, HUGE writing goals for last month.

At least they were huge for me ;) 

Plus I was traveling... while trying to write. 

Here's my apology, with an update! 

Back when I was trying to get serious about writing and started the process of building up my writing habits I joined Go Teen Writer's 100 for 100. I wrote a sci-fi novella called Silent Thoughts. It took me several months... but once I was finished I completely loved what I had. And could finally say I'd finished a story of some length. 

Here's a guest post I recently did on Go Teen Writer's that goes more in depth about that journey. 

But it didn't stop there. 

In my mind a series began to develop. 

A Series Of Thoughts. 

83,341 words, a little over four novellas! 

Three years later I finally felt ready to tackle this series. 

In a single month. 

My second time doing NaNo, and I decided to write 100k words. 

That's five 20k novellas. 

I houseclean almost full time for work. So the first couple weeks of NaNo I would get up at 5:30 and write for about three and a half hours before I had to work. If I still had a daily word count quota to fill I would do that in the evening, but normally I didn't. So I would relax with a book, music, movie, or friends. 

I survived those first few weeks with a lot of water and Oolong tea. And fresh air. I was writing 4-5 thousand words a day. 

Then the last couple weeks I was in Kentucky visiting one of my best friends. 

I set a high goal for myself that I thought I might not be able to complete. But I would try. The last two weeks of November as I traveled, visiting friends I wasn't able to write as much. I knew this starting out... and told myself it was OK to fail my goals.

But who am I kidding? I am an overachiever. I set goals that are impossible and then die trying to make them happen. 

Well... I did force myself to not die. But I didn't quite reach 100k... just a little over 83k words. the last few weeks I had to remind myself that people were more important than stories... that without people my stories are nothing. 

And so I felt happy with what I did achieve :D 

My NaNo word count.

A neat comparison. I wrote Silent Thoughts when I was 18, and learning to build good writing habits, 100 words a day. It took me over three months to write the novella.

But three years later I wrote a novella in four days, five thousand words a day.

It's amazing how building little habits slowly can really create amazing results! 

This month I will finish Final Thoughts, and then I will set aside the series to finish writing a novel I started back in August called Let Me Meet Death Dancing. After that is finished I plan to use this next year of 2018 to rewriting and polishing A Series of Thoughts. So you may hear a lot about it. ;D 

I haven't mentioned much about my novel on here either. The reason for that is my novels tend to be very personal as I write them, and I have a hard time sharing about them until after they are finished. 

Also, I do have a page for all my stories now! It is here. Or if you look through my pages you will see My Stories. 

One other thing funny... I just discovered that NaNoWriMo doesn't stand for what I thought it did. Here I was telling everyone it was National November Writing Month.

Mary, the friend I have been visiting, informed me that it actually stands for National Novel Writing Month. 

Who knew? 

If you want to know more about the series feel free to check it out on NaNo or my writing page... I have a little on both places. 

Did you do NaNo? What were your goals? What are your future writing goals? And what do you do to survive? Have any of you tried Oolong tea?