Up in the sky, middle
The theme for day seven of #ABookishHoliday is “books & socks.” I’m not really a “socks” person, so I struggled a bit with this assignment until I realized that stockings are basically socks. So, tonight’s picture is of our Christmas stockings, and the books I picked out to give my niece and nephew as part of their Christmas present this year. (They’re too young to read this blog, so I’m pretty sure I won’t be giving away any secrets by sharing this with you.)
On the sixth day of #ABookishHoliday, for the “blue & white” theme, I give you a book of short stories that I have been slowly working my way through for over a year, and a Kindle book that my cousin just finished and LOVED. I purchased The Selection back in March, but haven’t had a chance to read it yet (because I gave myself too many reading projects this year). But, based on my cousin’s Goodread’s review, it’s moving to the top of my TBR.
On day five of #ABookishHoliday, to celebrate the “holiday read” theme, I bring you a sweet holiday romance that I just finished this week and the first Christmas present to arrive for me this year. In case you can’t tell from the photo, it’s a snitch locket that has a little clock inside. It’s a little bigger then I thought it would be, but it’s so pretty. Thanks, Santa Mom!
On the fourth day of #ABookishHoliday, I’ll post a photo of my current read, which is pretty fitting match for the “Book & Ribbon” theme.
It’s Day 3 of #ABookishHoliday and the theme is “true love.” As far as I’m concerned, in the world of books, no one writes about love as well as Rainbow Rowell. So, today’s photo is of my hardback copies of my two favorite books by her… along with a little coloring I’m doing with my fancy new markers.
For my Day 2 #ABookishHoliday (or as my hubby prefers “A Book is a Holiday”) post, I’ll “Read Harder” with a book in translation and my Book Riot mug.
NaNoWriMo 2015 is over. Phew. This one was a doozy. But I did it. I’m a “winner.”
I finished the challenge. I “won” by the skin of my teeth in nearly the final hour, and only by including all my notes on backstory and future chapters, all of which I wrote in November, but aren’t actually part of the book. So, yeah… I resorted to a tiny bit of “cheating.”
The problem this year was that I fell behind almost immediately after I posted that mid-point check-in update where I was so excited because for once I wasn’t behind. Life got in the way and I was stuck at almost 31k for almost a week.
I did a frantic amount of writing over the Thanksgiving weekend, but we made a last minute decision to travel and visit family. So, I was distracted and stressed out. But I wrote anyway. I am too stubborn to fail.
The problem is that, just like the past two years, NaNoWriMo is over and my novel isn’t finished. The difference this year is that I’m not stopping until I write “the end” at the end of the last chapter. I’m all in and I’m going to finish it. I actually REALLY like my story this year, even though I think it’s going to need some serious tinkering to get it exactly right.
I’m on track for this story to be about 61k words, total. So, my current plan is to take some of the writing pressure off and commit to about 1k words per day until I finish it. At that rate I should be done by mid-December. Then I’ll be looking for some beta readers. So, if you’re interested, let me know.
This year I gave myself way too many book projects, and now it’s December and I have a “guilt list” of books I need to finish before the end of this year. Not fun.
My list has eight books on it. Six of these are books I need to read to finish the Book Riot “Read Harder” challenge. The other two are books I need to read so that I can meet my “diverse books” goal of reading at least twelve books by non-American and/or non-white authors this year.
The thing is, I actually want to read (almost) all of those books. So, it’s not like I’m making myself read things that I don’t want to read. It’s just that there are so many books that I want to read MORE than those books.
When I was voting for the Goodreads Choice Award nominees, I realized that I’d only read a handful of the books nominated. Many of them were on my TBR, some of them I even owned, but I didn’t get to read them this year because I was so busy trying to check all the boxes on my various reading projects. This made me sad.
I was all set to do another reading challenge next year. I had this great idea planned and I’d already made a list. I wanted to read all the Hugo and Nebula best novel award winners from this century. But now I’m reconsidering. This “required reading” thing is making me grumpy. I don’t want to be grumpy. I don’t want reading to feel like work when I read (mostly) for fun.
So that’s it. I’m calling it. No reading projects in 2016. I’m not going to push it. I’m just going to read what I want, when I want to, and not worry about it.
I saw some folks posting about this today:
And I decided that what this blog needs for the last month of the year is more photos!
On the first day of December, I give to you a lovely photo of the physical books in my December TBR, along with the Kindle book I just started this morning as a mini “TGIO” NaNoWriMo celebration.
Stay tuned for a NaNoWriMo wrap-up later today, or maybe tomorrow.
Well, we’re just over half-way through this year’s NaNoWriMo. So, I thought I might check in and let you know how things are going. This year, unlike last year, I am staying just at or slightly behind daily “par” word count (1667 words per day).
I “won” the past two years (“win” = wrote 50k words in 30 days). But, both years I fell behind early and then had to pull some major writing days over Thanksgiving weekend just to get caught up. To compare: at this point last year I had 21.8k words, and the year before that I had 24.3k words. Right now I have 29.1k, and I need to be at 30k to be at “par” for the 18th of the month.
I think having more of an outline going in this year is helping. I also have a little more practice now at sitting down and getting the writing done. It’s great that I’m on track to finish 50k by the end of the month. But, according to my outline, I think this book is going to be more like 60-65k when it’s done. I promised myself I wouldn’t stop writing until I got to “the end.” So, I’m either going to have to keep writing for the first ten days of December, or I’m going to have to pick up the pace a bit.
Right now I’m bridging a gap between two events that set up my ending. This gap appears to involve a bunch of kissing. It’s sort of the calm before the storm. I have a feeling that once I get past the middle bits and start writing the “crisis” and “climax” sections of my outline, the writing will go faster. Unfortunately, I sort of stopped outlining when I got to the “crisis” point in the book. By my calculations, that should start somewhere after 38k words (~2/3 thru the book). So, I have about 10k more words to write before I am going to be switching to full on “panster” mode for the last ~22k of the book. I know, more or less, how I want it to end. So, it just depends on whether I think I need a map to get there, or not.
Overall, the writing has been going pretty smoothly so far. There have definitely been a few days were I just did not want to write. And, for the most part, I didn’t push it. To recharge, I’ve been taking some time to watch TV shows (mostly Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the new Supergirl show, and Last Week Tonight). I haven’t had time to get into any new books. Last month, when I had time to read whatever I wanted to, I was in a bit of a reading slump, but now, when all my spare time is writing, I miss books like crazy. I’m dying to get lost in a good book, or even a trashy book. Any book. But the books will still be there in December. November is for writing.
I’m mostly happy with how things are going so far with the story. I already know I’m going to have to go back and add more description and maybe flesh out a few scenes more. And I’m not entirely sure if my romance is believable enough, yet. But, I’m definitely making a story that I would want to read, and that makes me happy. Right now it feels like the rough sketch you might make before creating a painting. It feels like I’m only hinting at the color and the atmosphere. But all that can be dealt with in revisions. The point of NaNo is to just get the story out on the page.
I should quit procrastinating with the blog and get back to novel writing. If you’re curious, you can check out my “author page” on the NaNoWriMo website for a little blurb about my book and the first few paragraphs of the story.
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