Today is the day that I start NaNoWriMo! I've actually exceeded the target of 1667 words and written 2548 instead, so I'm pretty impressed with today's effort.
Things I've learnt today
About NaNoWriMo: Word sprints - where you write for say twenty minutes and then have a break - are really useful and motivating.
About writing: Even in stories that are predominantly sad, you need some lighter scenes to vary the mood. Humour is a great way to balance out all the depressing stuff and keep your reader interested.
I'll try to keep on writing something for this blog every day, but I've got to keep my word count on target! Fellow wrimos, good luck!
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Sunday, 30 October 2011
NaNoWriMo!
I will acknowledge my complete failure to write anything on this blog for several days, but in all fairness I've taken on a lot of new things lately (clubs, prefecting, volunteering, running newsletters, etc.) and I just can't keep up! To make my life even more complicated, I'm going to be doing NaNoWriMo for the the next time, starting Tuesday.
If you don't already know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it takes place every November. The clue's in the name, really: the aim is to write a novel in a month, will the word count goal of 50,000 in 30 days, so the daily word count is about 1,667 words. And that's every - single - day.
I did NaNoWriMo last year and, while I did manage to reach 50,000 words, few of those words did anything to move the plot along, enhance characterisation or...umm...well, basically, I wrote a load of crap. This year, I have a plan that's been in the making since July, so I'm a lot more prepared. At least two-thirds of my novel is planned out scene-by-scene, so there's no room for me to go astray and repeat the exact same scene three times in different locations (ahem, not that I did that last year).
To summarise, my novel is about death - this isn't surprising, as everything I write has a death at some point. In fact, last year I got to about 30,000 words and had so few ideas that I killed of a couple of characters just for something to do. If I'd been writing an zombie apocalypse novel, that would've been acceptable, but in your everyday school there just aren't that many deaths in the space of half a year.
But anyway, my main character - Erin - is in the car with her boyfriend, Oscar, when their car crashes into another. Oscar dies, as does the driver of the other car, who was the mother of a little girl named Faye. Faye and Erin meet and basically help each other to deal with their losses. I'm terrible at summarising, but there you go.
I'll warn you now that this blog is likely to turn into a place for me to update on NaNoWriMo and complain about how awful it is (but don't worry, I DO love it really). However, I'll try to be constructive and give you a few tips on writing while I'm doing so much of it. This could end up being in the form of me giving an example of what I've just written, and telling you why it's so awful, but I'll at least try to be positive.
I'm so, so, so excited about NaNoWriMo right now, and I can't wait to get started!
If you don't already know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it takes place every November. The clue's in the name, really: the aim is to write a novel in a month, will the word count goal of 50,000 in 30 days, so the daily word count is about 1,667 words. And that's every - single - day.
I did NaNoWriMo last year and, while I did manage to reach 50,000 words, few of those words did anything to move the plot along, enhance characterisation or...umm...well, basically, I wrote a load of crap. This year, I have a plan that's been in the making since July, so I'm a lot more prepared. At least two-thirds of my novel is planned out scene-by-scene, so there's no room for me to go astray and repeat the exact same scene three times in different locations (ahem, not that I did that last year).
To summarise, my novel is about death - this isn't surprising, as everything I write has a death at some point. In fact, last year I got to about 30,000 words and had so few ideas that I killed of a couple of characters just for something to do. If I'd been writing an zombie apocalypse novel, that would've been acceptable, but in your everyday school there just aren't that many deaths in the space of half a year.
But anyway, my main character - Erin - is in the car with her boyfriend, Oscar, when their car crashes into another. Oscar dies, as does the driver of the other car, who was the mother of a little girl named Faye. Faye and Erin meet and basically help each other to deal with their losses. I'm terrible at summarising, but there you go.
I'll warn you now that this blog is likely to turn into a place for me to update on NaNoWriMo and complain about how awful it is (but don't worry, I DO love it really). However, I'll try to be constructive and give you a few tips on writing while I'm doing so much of it. This could end up being in the form of me giving an example of what I've just written, and telling you why it's so awful, but I'll at least try to be positive.
I'm so, so, so excited about NaNoWriMo right now, and I can't wait to get started!
Sunday, 2 October 2011
Begin
Blog: A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts.
My blog will be based around the topics of writing, editing, books and other general stuff that I want to share with you.
Word: A single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.
I want to convey the power of words and the ways in which they can be used.
Life: The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.
I don't like the description of life as a "condition", nor do I think this covers what life truly is. Life is emotion, experience, and our own perseption of the world around us.
Story: An account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment.
A story can be fact or fiction, but, just as with life, we experience it in a different way to any other person.
I'll introduce myself, shall I? My name is Alexandra, but only exam boards and distant relatives call me that; assuming you don't fall into either of those categories, you can call me Alex, Lex or Lexical (I dare you to find a more nerdy nickname). I'm sixteen, currently studying maths, English lit & lang, physics and psychology at A level.
Some people are probably thinking "She's just a teenager, she doesn't know a thing about writing". Well, in an area where there are very fews rules and an abundance of opinions, nobody can really say whether you know more than I do. I'll probably say a fair few things you disagree with, and I don't mind you disagreeing with me (though I tend to argue my point pretty passionately). It's more than likely that at some point I'll say something that is undeniably wrong but, to borrow a lyric from Hank Green, "making a mistake is just a chance you've got to take", so if I delve into a topic without doing the proper research, just gently break the news to me that I got something wrong.
I'll post something more related to writing soon, and possibly an actual piece of original fiction (but only if you're lucky).
For now I'll say goodbye, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, dasvidaniya, allons-y Alonso* and thanks for all the fish!
(I realise this means "let's go" rather than "goodbye", but I couldn't resist.)
My blog will be based around the topics of writing, editing, books and other general stuff that I want to share with you.
Word: A single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.
I want to convey the power of words and the ways in which they can be used.
Life: The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.
I don't like the description of life as a "condition", nor do I think this covers what life truly is. Life is emotion, experience, and our own perseption of the world around us.
Story: An account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment.
A story can be fact or fiction, but, just as with life, we experience it in a different way to any other person.
I'll introduce myself, shall I? My name is Alexandra, but only exam boards and distant relatives call me that; assuming you don't fall into either of those categories, you can call me Alex, Lex or Lexical (I dare you to find a more nerdy nickname). I'm sixteen, currently studying maths, English lit & lang, physics and psychology at A level.
Some people are probably thinking "She's just a teenager, she doesn't know a thing about writing". Well, in an area where there are very fews rules and an abundance of opinions, nobody can really say whether you know more than I do. I'll probably say a fair few things you disagree with, and I don't mind you disagreeing with me (though I tend to argue my point pretty passionately). It's more than likely that at some point I'll say something that is undeniably wrong but, to borrow a lyric from Hank Green, "making a mistake is just a chance you've got to take", so if I delve into a topic without doing the proper research, just gently break the news to me that I got something wrong.
I'll post something more related to writing soon, and possibly an actual piece of original fiction (but only if you're lucky).
For now I'll say goodbye, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, dasvidaniya, allons-y Alonso* and thanks for all the fish!
(I realise this means "let's go" rather than "goodbye", but I couldn't resist.)
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