Box of Chocolates

Some people will start NaNoWriMo at midnight tonight. I will not stay up for those kind of shenanigans. I did write on my calendar NaNoWriMo Eve. My kids think it should say Halloween. Bah! Here it is less than 24 hours until NaNoWriMo and I am going to be honest. I don't feel like I have 50,000 words to write. My mind is working overtime on life situations, you know that crazy phone call I got yesterday. I woke up at 6:30 AM thinking about that and not my novel. I have to change my mindset today.  Not to exclude one or the other but make allowances for both.   I am having second thoughts, as always. The devil on my shoulder is telling me I don't have good ideas or any at all. To that I say, "HUSH!" NaNoWriMo believes everyone has a story to tell. I have to write to find that story. I will start a novel tomorrow. I will get 50,000 words. How do I know? First drafts are for me. It will be awful, ugly and flow like a rip tide at times but I know from last year it ...

I am so glad the day I had today happened on October 30th and not November 1st.  I have a simple life so there is no excuse to not write but today was a little out of control.  Today was a freaky Friday.  It was a perfect example of expect the unexpected I talked about this week.   I am going to try and sum it up as fast as possible.   I had lots of things I had to do today because well, I procrastinate sometimes. Not intentionally. Time gets away from me fast some weeks. I think it is part of the simple life. I sometimes have too much time on my hands so I tend to be too flexible with how I spend some of my time which leads me to trouble. Just being honest. Having a kid home of Tuesday didn't help the need to get things done.  Hard to shop when you have a sick kid home from school.   My husband last night said, "What is wrong with the dog's eye?" I looked at it and didn't think much until this morning when there was clearly something wrong....

As you can tell I love the NaNoWriMo. Last year an opportunity came up to become an ambassador for NaNoWriMo. It really didn't take much to apply. They just need help to spread the word about them and what it is they do. I try to help this non-profit because as a former educator I see the importance of writing with a purpose. Even if the purpose is a crazy challenge that makes you wonder if you are insane for signing up. I know that writing scores are the worst at my kids school. The scores are not bad overall but the writing portion of standardized testing scores are lower than math, science and reading. Kids need a purpose to write other than test taking. When I first learned about NaNoWriMo I looked into why I had not heard of them while I was in the classroom. It was all about timing.  They were starting up when I was leaving the classroom to raise my 2.5 kids.  I hope one day to be the classroom teacher that as a class we do NaNoWriMo. Another reason why I wanted to...

I have to admit. I am getting anxious for NaNoWriMo.  Less than four whole days left and I am starting to panic. I am going to share some inspiration for you in hopes to calm me down and keep my eye on the prize (50,000 words) and not focused on everything I have failed to do to get ready for November.  Like planning a novel. That pretty much is all the inspiration I needed.  No need to kill the magic that is NaNoWriMo.

Today's post brought to you by a sick kid home from school. I really don't have a plan for if the family gets sick in November. Today I am hoping it is just her allergies and that a day of rest will get her on her feet again and off to school tomorrow. I will be hand washing a little extra today in hopes that if she is sick I don't get it. Some of you might not be a parent but life happens to everyone. Even if you are not a parent a sick pet, your car breaks down, unexpected homework, or a project that gets tossed your way is something to write around. I try to plan very little in November but things are going to come up that will have to be dealt with before December. Expect the unexpected is my new rule for November. When things are going good get those words down. I think it would be better to get done early if times are good than to wait. Don't let a good hour or two of writing time be wasted.  Expect the unexpected this November.  Write more words when time is ...

My friend on the last day of September wrote on Facebook that she was doing a 31 day blog challenge. I know signing up for a challenge the day before was doomed but I thought why no try. Everyone likes a challenge. I tried to write a daily post in October with NaNoWriMo as the theme. It was all part of a 31 day challenge that I failed in week one but on the other hand I really didn't fail. Oxymoron right? Failed but didn't. How do you fail but succeed? Here is why I feel like I succeeded even though on October 31st I will not have 31 entries. My 16 post so far in October are more than 5x's the amount I had in September. It isn't all about word count in NaNoWriMo. Any word counts. 50,000 is a goal but not the whole goal of NaNoWriMo. The goal of 50,000 is there to get you to have a number to focus on, a number to lead you in November.  The goal is writing. Here is the way I approach writing. Every word I write is success because it equals more writing. The first year...

What do you really need for NaNoWriMo?  I like using my Mac and Microsoft Word.  It is that plain and simple. A computer, text editing program and time will get you 50,000 words. Some people do hand write their novel during NaNoWriMo, or so I hear.  I know I will not hand write my novel. Then you have to count all those words. My fingers and hands can't do it.  It is painful to type at times but hand writing is more painful to me.  Plus, my procrastination side will never count handwritten words.  I started to write this blog many hours ago (now yesterday).  It also happens to be the weekend and my computer guy (by computer guy I mean my husband) decided to help me find some storage space on my hard drive today.  I would love a new Mac Book Pro but that is not in the budget and I really don't have time to learn a new computer days before NaNoWriMo. About a week ago I started to get start up memory warnings on my computer. Not what a girl...

If you have not already signed up for NaNoWriMo, now is the time.  NaNoWriMo.org is free fun.  There are 8 days until NaNoWriMo starts.  Don't wait until day one to make an account.  They are an active community of writers (and writers-in-waiting). I am starting to get anxious. I feel like I am not prepared. I don't have enough time to finish the little planning I have done or have the time to finish planning. The months have turned into weeks, weeks are shortly going to become days. Now it the time to own it. Go public. Tell your FB world, your twitter nest, blog, Instagram or all your social media outlets what you are going to do in November. Tell everyone how crazy you are.  Some people will rally behind you in this endeavor you are about to take on. You need those people! It is great to post on twitter your word count goals and your cheerleaders will be there to say good job.  You will quickly find the people you can count on to cheer you on to 50...

Goals are good to have.  Even better if you get to the goal you set. It is also not the end of the world if you don't.  If you are doing NaNoWriMo you already know your daily word count is 1,667 words a day. For me I want to be a day ahead come November 20th.  My daily goal will be 1,750 words a day.  All so I can go to a movie.  The Hunger Games, Mocking Jay Part 2.  Yes, that is my goal.  I normally don't go to the theatre so going to a movie will be a special treat for me.  If I get to my goal I get to see a movie. If not I can wait until December 1st or 50,000 words.  Hopefully the 50,000 come before the 1st. There are many motivators for writing.  No Plot, No Problem suggested you give a friend money and if you don't meet the goal that week your friend gets to keep the money.  That would motivate me if it was enough money but I will not be handing money over to any of my friends this year. Make goals realistic.  You ...

If you haven't gone to the Young Writers NaNoWriMo site I would suggest you go and look around.  They have a fun countdown clock counting the days until NaNoWriMo. Eek! Just 10 more days to get ready for NaNoWriMo. Deep breath, it will be okay. I found the workbooks under resources to be a fun way to prepare for NaNoWriMo. I have not done the whole workbook but I did do activities with my kids last year.  I really had fun with the inner editor page in the elementary workbook.  They have three workbooks elementary, middle and high school. In the elementary workbook is an inner editor worksheet. It was a fun way to write all your fears down and lock our inner editor away. My son had a little lock box and we put our inner editors in the box and locked them up the the month.  Plus you can color your editor it is always fun to color and therapeutic. I hear adult coloring is all the rage lately so don't look at this as a childish activity. The goal of NaNoWriMo is t...

I can not listen to music with words while writing. I love music and can't help but sing along. I sing along even though I can not sing. I seriously can not sing. I had a dog once that also let me know I couldn't sing. When my oldest was a newborn I would sing to my daughter and my dog would howl.  Yes, howl.  I would like to think she was singing along too but I am pretty sure she didn't like me singing. Music is a good way for me to block out the world and focus on writing but it takes a special mix for me. Pandora is my go too music radio. My writing station was found by recommendation, Classical for Studying radio. I gave it a try and fell in love. It isn't all classical Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven. It has a modern twist. My favorite is the Dallas String Quartet. They play top 20 music but all strings no words. This is tricky when I know the words to the song though. I have learned a lot about my classical music likes. I love cello solos, string quartets and pian...

Here it is 10:39 PM and I am just getting to what I normally do at before 10 AM. Writing. Somedays are easier than others. Todays blog just wasn't going to happen before 10 PM. I want to go to bed. I don't want to write a blog when I want to be in bed. I really want to be in bed but I am writing instead. These are the times that you have to just open up word and get down a few words to help tomorrows "make up"word count. Every word I don't write tonight is added to tomorrow (if it was November). I really don't want to be blogging right now but I want to keep up my daily post until NaNoWriMo. Tonight the words are few but they are words written. Even a few words in one night will get me closer to 50,000. I can not do a few words every night but when you don't want to write, some words  are better than nothing. Take a moment to force yourself to do even a few words. It might be complete and utter nonsense but NaNoWriMo is about quantity and not quali...

Waking up sick during NaNoWriMo is a bummer. The first year I attempted NaNoWriMo I got sick at about my 9,000 word count and it was hateful. I didn't write much after that because I feel pretty bad and I lost momentum.  It was a head cold. I couldn't concentrate. I had no plan and was writing by the seat of my pants. That is what NaNoWriMo calls a Pantser. I have tried to plan and I get stuck on details that it just works better for me to not plan or have a very little plan. I am not sure if my lack of planning had something to do with my demise in year one or just poor planning on the physical side of writing.   I think I hit a brick wall and quit because it was my first year. I didn't know me as a writer. I didn't know how many words I could write in X amount of time. When the word count gap got higher and higher I could no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel. I also didn't know what it would take to finish and gave up.   Last year I used ext...

This blog brought to you by Saturday and endorsed by Sunday. Ahh, the weekend. A time to relax for many of us. It can also be a time to get things done around the house or run errands because the week is busy. The weekend can quickly get away from you. Today I woke up later than my normal 6:30 am. That is my latest get up time in order to get the kids to school on time. I am not a morning person. I slept in until 8 am today.  Which is "sleeping in" when you have kids. It is only an hour and a half later but that is a long writing time.  I could do a day and a half of word goals in an hour and a half. So my point is proven just as I type this blog. Here it is 12:09 PM already.  I spent most of the morning in PJ's drinking my coffee on this much cooler October morning. I showered and did a craft project with my middle child. When we were done I started to blog. She asked if we could go to the library. Since the other two kids and my husband went on a walk in the the woo...

I want to tell you how I use Pinterest to help me write.  I am going to be honest, Pinterest usually doesn't help a ton but it is a fun place to go when I am having writers block or discouraged. Everyone has secrets. I have secret boards. Pinterest has a secret board option and I have a few. I only pin things there that pertain to a story line I am working on at the time. For example, a few years back I had an elaborate party to plan for my fictional characters 16th birthday. I created a special board and pinned everything I could that was related to the theme. It helped me describe what the room looked like, food idea, invites, etc. You may not use the details from what you find but it is fun to plan a fictional party via Pinterest.   With this fictional party planning I must warn you of something you already know,  Pinterest is a time warp. It can be a cyber blackhole where you are engulfed in pretty pictures and time vanishes. Time that you need to be writing n...

Larry is my little writing totem. Yes, Larry the Lego mini figure from the Lego Movie. I love coffee, I love Legos and we had three Larry's.  I might has well take one for me. He sits on my desk in a lego chair made by my oldest daughter. I gave one of the Larry Lego mini figures to a coffee loving friend of mine. We kind of treat him like the garden gnome. He has a more adventurous life with my friend. Larry keeps thing light, fun and has bought silliness to my life. He is my silent writing partner. I may or may not talk to Larry on occasion. I also might have had a much longer photo shoot with Larry today than a grown woman should have with a Lego mini figure. I might cry if I ever loose Larry. Larry sells expensive coffee but it never spills on my work. He does need to shave and we may or may not have had a conversation on the stubble. He never loses his name tag which is amazing because he can never find a razor.       Pick something to have in your p...

First things first, if you have not signed on NaNoWriMo  take the plunge. I took a few days back a few years ago and came up with a pseudonym when I signed up. Another way to dodge the fear is to hide behind a fictitious name. I wish I would have done it the year before because a whole new world opens up for you when you sign up. It is a great online community where everyone is cheering for you but they want the same thing, 50,000 words by the end of November. Last year was the first year I followed NaNoWriMo on Twitter. Err confession, I actually had to create a twitter account to follow them. I like my Facebook and I feel like all the different social media sites is redundancy. Unless, one is used different than the other. NaNoWriMo uses social media sites differently. They don't post these same things on all the media sites all the time. My Favorite is @NaNoWordSprints on Twitter.  Most of the year they are quite little mice but come November it is a very useful tool fo...

Fear is not a new topic for me.  As I brainstormed for NaNoWriMo I found myself creating a main character (MC) around experiences of my life. With that comes somethings I am afraid to face. I start to think if I write this story and my mother reads it, what will she think?  How can I write a story throwing caution to the wind?  How would she feel about what I have written starts to cross my mind. This story is going to be fiction but I have to draw on my experiences in life. I struggle with letting it all hang out. I want to write with total abandon without fear and angst. Time and time again I self edit before words even are written. I stray away from some topics because the reality of them might be too hard for me to write about. I am learning that these are the things I have to get over and just write. It is hard to write with total abandon. I have yet to have a day where I just write and not self edit before the words are even typed. I have three kids that I want ...

peeps pēps/ noun  informal people (often used to refer to a person's friends or associates). "thanks for the feedback, peeps!" If you choose to do NaNoWriMo you have got to explain to the ones you love and cherish what you are doing in November. The more warnings the better. I told my husband a year before I started NaNoWriMo that I wanted to   do a month writing challange and explained the details. I didn’t talk about it all year but once October came around I started to talk more about NaNoWriMo. I talked about it so much my second year that my kids wanted to do NaNoWriMo too.   It was fun to do some writing prep with my kids.   My oldest has already set a goal for this year.  If you have kids you should check out the  Young Writers Program .  They can set word goals. I like encouraging my kids to write with me. It might even help me justify writing on Saturday and Sunday when I have a kid or two a...

Just like that 10 days are gone. I agreed to the 31 challenge and coaxed a blogging friend into the challenge and failed to remember that the condo where we were going for fall break didn't have internet. Also, you can not blog from your iPhone. I have been in a limbo for over a week. It is all good though. I did write while I was gone. That is what really matters. I thought about back posting but that seems silly to post 10 days of ramblings in one day so I will just continue from today. Travel? What does NaNoWriMo and travel have to do with each other. I am a firm believer in being there experiences. Sit on the beach and listen, watch, and gather great material for writing. I happen to live in North Alabama but I was born and raised in the deeper south, Florida. Ahhh Florida. Why would anyone leave? I can list many reasons; traffic, traffic and more traffic. I have been spoiled by "small" town living. I will take less than 500,000 people to a billion any day. Okay not...

I have a dear friend that is a writer that posted on Facebook yesterday that she was going to do a 31 day blog challenge. I want to do it too! I have signed up the the challenge just yesterday but I am stuck on making a button. I think I have a few days to figure it all out so instead of procrastinating on a button I am going to actually write.  I am not a published author or even a NaNoWriMo guru (National Novel Writing Month) but I thought my theme for the next 31 days would be NaNoWriMo Prep. What I am doing this month to prepare for my novel writing in November. I thought this challenge might get my creative juices flowing and maybe help someone out there that has just stumbled on NaNoWriMo this year and wants to know more.   NaNoWriMo is a non profit organization I found a few years ago. I am not sure how or why I found them but I instantly fell in love with the idea of 31 days of writing a novel. The goal is 50,000 words in the month of November. 1,667 words a day. Th...