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Where Did I Put My Glasses

 The things you find when you go looking for something else! Not my glasses; they're on my face where I can keep an eye on the elusive buggers. Musing about starting to write again, I've spent several days trying to decide where to ACTUALLY start, whether pen to paper in a notebook - which ultimately has to be transcribed anyway, to various word processors I have on my laptop. Or on the laptop itself. Or the Chromebook, which could be shared with the laptop... I checked into Writing.com , of which I've been a member since avian dinosaurs escaped the Great Extinction. I was wondering if their word processing system might suit - it didn't, but it's a good system - and I discovered a long-ago-written romance. I'd posted it on the site years ago and forgot it was there. If it's not too embarrassing, I might work on it here. Here? Yes, I decided to write my blog and incorporate my novel efforts... here. On Blogspot. After all, I paid for the domain so I should da
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I've Won NaNoWriMo!

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 Yep, I tipped the 50,000 word scale this morning around 10h30 and am actually a little over the required count at 50,250 words as of today. I plugged it into the Nano website and the crowd went wild! Actually, I got an exploding badge of Congratulations and that was good too. Not Actually Finished As expected, I think I'm only about half way through my novel. My characters are only just coming together now (Looking For Group) with quite a few adventures left on the storyboard. I'm optimistically estimating the halfway mark because I'm desperately trying to get the protagonists and antagonists together for a good 'ol Donnybrook and the arch-demon just sent my major villain to a complete 'nother country ffs. It's like herding cats. Keep Writing And that's the biggest lesson I've learned this month is to keep on writing no matter what.  Also, I've learned to just mindlessly write the story as it comes to me (or not) and not worry about editing as I go
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Plot Has Left The Building

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 As we approach mid-November and I find myself almost halfway through NaNoWriMo without a severe hitch, I want to lift my head for a moment and say, "Hi". I'm getting into a routine, although it was a bit rough at the start. I have managed to get my word-count in every day but sometimes it was by the skin of my teeth and, one evening, I had to literally sit myself down around 8pm or so, and scribble out those last 100 to 150 words. Then trouble hit, in the form of appointments; spouse's appointments and a couple of my own. Nothing unmanageable but he gets up early for them and when he's up and about, it's nearly impossible to write; he's a bit of a conversationalist. Pre-planning and mindfulness got me through. What Plot? Yep. I lost the Plot somewhere in the third chapter, I think; it was getting up to leave during the second one so I should have known. Now, I'm pantsing my arse off and have no idea where this story is going or where we'll end up
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Prelude or Not To Prelude

 So I stumbled across a blog article the other day about style called Terrible Writing Advice Everyone Should Ignore and it was pretty good. But it got me thinking... I Did Not Know That some people don't like preludes. Personally I love preludes and can't relate, however, it got me questioning the fact that I have two preludes to begin my story and that might be deemed a little excessive. Even by my standards. Revising the Prelude I've decided to go with the original Preface (or whatever the f*ck it was) and make it the One And Only Prelude. No discussion and the piece is in Final Draft so I'm loathe to mess with it. Then, like J.K.Rowling, just dive right into Chapter One, which is actually a prelude and explains some things a prelude should explain. Which means I could re-write most of it in an attempt to segue the thing into the real beginning of the story. And get rid of some of those pesky adverbs... Cheers!
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Mental Preparation for NaNoWriMo

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 It's all personal, of course, but I've gone a little Pre-live-it-up in the last week or so. I've been mulling over a schedule to train myself into (bad grammar) but have also just discovered THC is actually good  for you in an anti-carcinogenic sort of way. Probably smoking it is the worst way to go but I'm experimenting with oils; this latest one has knocked my socks off. All the while I'm cutting loose and puttering with index cards, I am contemplating "The Schedule". I think Tuesday I will implement it and get the habit-ball rolling - with me as the hamster-in-training. And ganja oil only before bedtime. I Did Accomplish Stuff This Week! Mostly sorting and getting order knocked into the remainder of my notes, but I also unearthed the portion of the story that I've already written. Obviously, these two first chapters (one is actually a preface to explain why and how the world came to have magic and magical beings/creatures) cannot be included in my
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Preptober

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The excitement is building. At least with me. When I tell others I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year, which admittedly aren't many people, they say, "Oh, that's nice," or something equally magnanimous. Which I suppose is better than, "Yeah, right." Nano prep actually started mid-September and I was thrilled to actually be on time, rather than look up from some video game mid-November and go, "Oh... ".  Anyone who knows me knows I like to write and have always aspired to be a writer. Well, this year I am determined to kick off my writing career with 50,000 words. A quiz told me I'm a Plantser with leanings toward the total anarchy of Pantsing. I didn't actually know this and thought all writers wrote like Stephen King until I saw a few YouTube videos about planning and plotting out a novel - which totally scared the beejeebers out of me, by the way - and realized there must be a niche for me. I decided to follow one of the recommended Plottin
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My Sweet Summer Child Approach to NaNoWriMo

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 I took a break today from jotting my random thoughts (turns out there's hundreds knocking around up there) down on the printout version of the " Jot, Bin, Pants " method I found on Nano's website when I took that Quiz last week. I'm giving it a whirl to try and get my chaotic brain into something resembling Writing Mode come November. It started a bit slowly with events/scenes I've had in my head for decades. Then the floodgate opened and I'm currently filling up the BACK of the paper. Answers to troubling questions and continuity bottle-necks are presenting themselves faster than I can jot them down. I FINALLY KNOW WHO MOOL IS !! Next step is to get all these scenes into some sort of Beginning, Middle, End order. I might resort to highlighters for that cuz there's not a lot of room for numbering and more ideas are spawning even as I start to sort. If I end up doing Nano next year, I have oodles of ideas for a sequel. Or ten. I tried doing a brain-d
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