Sunday, May 17, 2015

May and the set up for JuNoWriMo

Double rainbow!

Once again, the promise of getting a novel written in one month appears in JuNoWriMo. I have signed up to do this so many times, and something always happens. Granted, I have done better in the summer than in autumn for 30 day writing challenges, so maybe by some stroke of luck, I’ll be able to get something done in June.

At least the JuNoWriMo has lots of pre-writing advice and tips on their blog to get me prepared for the actual writing process.

My main problem now is not the actual writing, it’s the time to do it. I work full time and have a long commute. I’m exhausted when I get home. I’m never alone during the day. Getting writing done is really, really tough.

Granted, we all have goals to be set, or a list in your head like I do (I really should write that list down every day - too much in my brain as is). When I do have some time to sit and write, I feel like I keep rehashing a scene, or adding only a small piece of the big puzzle. A small piece is better than none, and I did get my first sci-fi YA book in a first draft by just hit and miss writing that was fused together during early editing.

Anyway, I’m going to jump in with JuNoWriMo again this year, but I’m going to aim for 15k of the novel to be done by then. When you only have a bit of the story down, and have rewritten that ten times, there’s little hope for ever getting a decent chunk done, let alone the whole novel. What I’ve been wanting to work on for over a year now is a YA urban fantasy – something I’ve not done yet.

Then there’s that Middle Grade book I want to do – three, actually. Plus, I have the rest of my YA sci-fi books to do, there’s plenty of those. And my other New Adult books …

Time. Organization. Concentration. Coffee. That’s what I need to get everything done.

But in the meantime, I hope everyone who feels compelled to work on JuNoWriMo does. It’s helped me before because you have a set goal for each day and a set of deadlines that you can adhere to if that motivates you more. (Deadlines definitely motivate me.)

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

A rainy Tuesday morning

I'll start this post as I'm waiting on the bus. I just spent the bank holiday weekend in the best way possible.
On Saturday, Steve and I went out to breakfast then met up one of his friends for a pre May 4th Star Wars LEGO shopping spree. Then we got my new iPhone 5C to use when I ditch this Windows phone. (It likes turning itself off, resetting the date and time to whatever it feels like, and can't keep saved emails for easy retrieval.) My contract with EE is over at the beginning of May, so I'm ditching their bad signal for 3. (With EE we get repeat texts from one another, or sometimes none at all.)
At Staples we bought a new Acer monitor which we greatly needed. Now I can actually see what's on the screen. I'm excited to try this out on a writing sprint.
I've started a Teaching Student with Special Needs course online to keep up my Florida Certificate. I haven't done proper homework and educational discussion for a while, so it's nice to think in teacher terms again.