Valerean

I've been a supporter of National Novel Writing Month for the past twenty years, and in the beginning it was a wonderful resource for novelists and writers. I donated, bought their merch and promoted them on my old web sites. I was active in the forums and even joined a group one year to help cheer on my fellow writers. I wrote several first draft novels during the years I participated, and sold one to a major publisher, so I was one of their success stories. It was a great thing. Only then -- rather quickly, in fact -- it wasn't. I noticed the site began pushing for donations -- really pushing -- and they sent countless e-mails trying to wheedle more money out of yours truly. I made a decent donation every year without being asked up to that point. They also endorsing sketchy products and services that were geared more toward profiting off dreams than helping fulfill them. Proving that you actually wrote a novel during November was one of the important points for me...

While on a shopping trip last year I went by Sam Flax, the art store where I snapped the pic of this funny bird mural. It's been painted over now with art I don't like so much, which made me sad, but that's life. I think I'm pretty much finished with participating in NaNoWriMo, which has just become a sad profit-generating shadow of the original concept. What I would like to do is make my own novel writing time challenge for the blog, and set my own rules. I write 72K novels in about six weeks for work, for example, so I could try to write one just for fun in the same amount of time. Maybe from September to October since November has always been a tough month to manage with my holiday depression. I like October better than November or December, too. Anyway, I'll keep you updated on this as I figure it out. I took this pic 11 years ago while having lunch with Kat on the day the world was supposed to end because of the Mayan calendar thing, which frighte...

I have (almost, pretty much, nearly definitely) decided against trying to do National Novel Writing Month this year. I know this will be the second year in a row I've dodged it, but I'm probably going to need the time to write the first book of my next series for work. If I'm not doing that (unlikely), then I might. I don't know. I've tried to be an active and friendly participant, but mostly I think I intimidate other writers just by rep. What do you guys think? Are you joining in, or giving it a pass? Let me know in comments.

I should have decided this last month, but the new puppies (who are my excuse for everything these days) took priority. Here's my clear and final answer on whether I intend to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year: I don't know. Probably not. I want to, but . . . . aka the same way I feel every year before NaNo. I'll probably decide on Halloween night again. I went on their wonky website to see if they posted this year's theme, and had the devil of a time accessing it. I finally had to reset my password just to sign in. Anyway, as of 9/8 there's nothing posted. Are you joining in, Theo? Added 9/9: Apparently they just put up the 2021 theme: Eh. It's not making my writer's heart flutter, but it's better than some of the past themes.

I got another bundle of linen scraps from my Etsy seller, and then found two yards of a gorgeous 60" vintage navy linen on eBay for basically a song; that will serve as the backing. So I have all the fabric I need to make another recycled linen quilt. Yes, I am insane. But very happy, too. Seriously, I'm aware that I'm overloading myself with quilting projects, some of which I may never finish if my hands get worse fast. I don't care. You should do what makes you happy, especially in times when almost everything else does the opposite. I don't need another linen quilt. I need the happiness that comes with the possibility of making another one. And hey, worst case scenario, I'll piece it on my Singer and send it out to be long-arm quilted, which is where I figure I'm heading with my quilting anyway once I can no longer hand sew. One last note on NaNoWriMo 2020: My final wordcount was 75,105. I did not get on the site to update my stats before mi...

Participating in National Novel Writing Month this year for me started out well, took a nasty dive and then may have actually cured a lingering malaise I've been having with writing productivity in 2020. It didn't help that I lost my two pups just before and in the first week of NaNo, and I did consider giving up and waving the white flag. Very glad I didn't. My wordcount as of the writing of this post (10:45 pm on 11/29) was 71,635. I'm going to try to hit 75K tomorrow, but even if I don't, I'm very happy with how much I wrote. What I did differently this go-round: I joined a writing group on the Nano web site, which was low-key friendly but stayed pretty quiet for the most part. Some nice girls in the bunch, but they didn't talk much. I'm hoping I wasn't the reason for that; I tried to stay low-key friendly, too. Although I wasn't really inspired to participate in the forums after running into some pinheads last year, I did t...

As of 11:57 pm last night, 50,015 words written on my NaNoWriMo novel. I'm going to keep working on it to the end of the month, but as I've right now, I won. :)

Tonight I spread all the shibori fabrics out on my sewing table and basically stared at them for two hours as I tried to decide what to do with them. There is definitely enough for a good-size lap quilt. So I stared and brooded and even called Katherine in to give me her opinion. At long last I've decided what pattern to use, and it will be: A shibori card trick. :) The other decision I needed to make -- whether or not to commit to participating in National Novel Writing Month -- was another tough one. Last year I felt rather discouraged by the new web site, the largely negative atmosphere in the forums, and the ongoing commercialization of NaNo. At the same time I wrote 50K+ on Twenty-One , which felt very good. I think this year if I stay off the forums, ignore the money-making crap and just be supportive to my true pals (that would be you, Theo) I can enjoy it a little more. So I'm in. :)

Thanks to National Novel Writing Month I wrote 50K+ more on Twenty-One in November. That was my prime goal, and while I had to juggle it with work I think I did fairly well with the new material. I stopped editing for anything but typos in the second week, so the new content does need a thorough read-through. I plan to finish writing the book this month, because if I put it away again I probably never will. I reached out to a few writers on the new NaNo web site, both as a buddy and in the forums. Alas, except for Theo the buddy reach-outs never responded with anything other than accepting my invite. I thought that was a little weird, but there you go. I had better luck on the forums; interacted with a few interesting writers there. Only one pinhead posted a rude and unsolicited comment to something I posted, which is also pretty good. When a pro weighs in during a public writing discussion there's usually more than one disgruntled snowflake angsting to pick a fight...

I crossed the finish line at 4:00 pm today.

With only nine days left in National Novel Writing Month I'm feeling fairly confident I'll cross the 50K finish line in the next week; I just passed 35K. I've been staying pretty much on course, making my quota of at least 1667 words a day. Last Sunday I wrote 3334 new words so I'm another day ahead of schedule. Starting to feel the burn a little, too -- I didn't take a break in between my last work project and this book -- and I want to get the next work project done early. Too ambitious, probably, but I'd rather push myself than drag my feet. I've been trying to be a better NaNo buddy this past week (Theo, you'll have to grade me on that) and also get over and read some of the topics on the NaNoWriMo forum. Instead of feeling ancient and saying nothing, this week I've made myself leave a few comments where I thought I contribute something useful. That's also good for me, and gives my high horse a rest. I have missed this, a lot. I thi...

By this time this appears on the blog I should be almost halfway to 50K with my novel for National Novel Writing Month. I'm also staying on schedule at the day job, something that worried me a bit. I'm a day ahead on my daily quota, so even if I can't write any extra words for the rest of the month I can take off on Thanksgiving Day and still make 50K. Not writing in my universe for the last five years hasn't hurt me. For the last week the words have just been pouring out of me every time I sit down to write. To keep from beaver-damming myself I've stopped back reading, and I edit only for typos during a fast sweep before I upload. I can't tell you if what I'm writing is decent. I really don't care. At this point I just want to enjoy writing what I like. I've been trying to get over to the forums at the NaNoWriMo web site and socialize a bit, but sometimes I feel positively ancient when I read certain discussions. I see a lot of me-at-13ne...

Our college kid decided to spend the weekend with us, so Saturday I doubled up on my wordcount quota so I could "take off" Sunday to spend with her. Then on Sunday night she went to bed early, so I wrote my daily quota anyway, and now I'm 1667 words ahead of plan. I can't always double up on my quota; it's actually pretty rare for me to do that. The free time + creative energy it requires is harder to come by, especially in the evenings, which is when I usually work on my NaNo novel. It takes me about two hours to write the daily quota. Twice that can take another two or three hours. Also, by the time I get to my writing session for NaNo, I've already spent eight to ten hours working at my day job plus whatever I needed to do for family and home. Still, on the days I do write more than my quota, or I can double up, I feel very good. It's like adding an extra couple of hours or even a whole day to November.

Since this is my fifth year (not in a row) that I've participated in National Novel Writing Month, I thought I'd put together a list of: Ten Things I'd Change About NaNoWriMo A Return to Sanity by Getting Rid of the Change: I'd ditch the new website and go back to the old one. This new piece of crap website is not half as useful or fun, it's constantly glitching, and the Twitter-style messaging is simply pissing me off. People in the forums are seriously discussing starting their own site, and I'm with them. So: go back to what worked, and don't mess with it again. Ban Cheaters: Writing 50K in 30 days is hard freaking work, but you should be able to prove you did it. If you're caught cheating at NaNoWriMo by any means (and by anyone, even your mom), then you should be exposed and banned from participating. For life. Also, I personally think you should be publicly stripped and flogged by a writer who plowed through the thirty days and neve...

I think the first week of NaNoWriMo went well for me. I got my words down, and fell back into the groove of the story. I only had one time where I didn't make quota, and made up for what I lacked in the next session. I'm not feeling any burn from working on work and fun stuff each day. Quite the contrary. What I'd hoped -- that this would help recharge me creatively -- is one of the side effects I'm enjoying. It's also just nice to be me again on the page. In other, unrelated news, this arrived: I bought this vintage sewing basket from eBay, which I plan to clean up and turn into a holiday gift for my daughter. She likes retro, and this is definitely that. It's in good shape, and stuffed with notions. A lot of notions! She won't need all this stuff, so I get a couple presents too.

Today I didn't think I'd have the time to write a single word on my NaNoWriMo project. I had a massive project to finish for work (and work must come first), and that took me all day to wrap up. I even made my guy eat leftovers for dinner so I wouldn't have to cook. By the time I finished my work project I had about an hour and a half left to write for fun -- and I was tired. So tired, in fact, I considered skipping the fun, and then I thought, Nope. Give it a shot. So I did. I just wrote -- I didn't edit, I didn't worry about it, I didn't think -- I just had fun. I wrote right up until midnight, and then calculated my total, and made my daily quota. Okay, to be absolutely honest it was 12:07 when I stopped, but what's seven minutes, right? Some days I feel like I could do this gig all day every day. Then there are days (not many) like today when I actually do. This is when I really love National Novel Writing Month, right at this moment, when ...

Of all the (very few) things I don't hate about the new NaNoWriMo website , the simple wordcount updater is one of them. I hit the plus sign, enter my new total and click update, and I'm done. I also hunted around to see where the verification widget is now. According to what I read in the forums they've done away with it. So I no longer have to cut and paste my manuscript to get the win at the end of November. I think this is going to lead to a bit of cheating, but according to the forums some people had already been cheating on the old site, so there you go. One thing does puzzle me: why would anyone cheat at NaNoWriMo? So they can win? To impress friends? To get the t-shirt? I cannot fathom this. Anyway, to plan and track my wordcount goals these days I use Excel. It does all the math for me, and generates a list I can print out and put on my desk if I think I need daily visual prodding. A wordcount spreadsheet is especially helpful when you're add...

Day Three of NaNoWriMo was a bit more challenging, juggling work with fun writing, but I got my words done. True perverse fact about me: Occasionally readers will ask me about the inspiration and/or meanings behind my titles. Most of the time I'll say it came to me spontaneously, or it seemed like the right title for the story, etc. That's not really the truth. I have mentioned that I often run to poetry to find titles, which is true. I'll also coin words or borrow from archaic language to make titles. But more often than not my titles have multiple meanings, and include something very personal. Generally I think about them a lot before I commit. On the surface, Twenty-One seems straightforward. Including Nex there are twenty survivors from the crash of the Arwe (since he died after the crash we're not counting Koro). Navara makes twenty-one -- or Koro does, if you just want to count bodies. I like the ambiguity of who actually is the 21st survivor. Bu...

You know somewhere online they sell posters and stuff with this quote on it. No lie. Someone sent it to me and asked if it was really me. Yep. I wrote that on PBW. My fourteen years of online fame, distilled into 21 words. Could be worse. They could have snatched something from that dilemma post I wrote about the Albino Robin Hood cover . I always thought that was me at my finest hour. Anyway -- onto how it's going with NaNoWriMo. I caught up on day two and did well, I think. I'm starting to get back into Nex's head -- or centracore, if you prefer -- and pick up where I left off in her adventures. I also wrote a bit of backstory about Navara in the intro to Chapter Nine, which I thought came out well. Everything seems to be falling into place. Since I also got my day job done and vacuumed all the rugs in the house and made dinner, I think it was a productive day. Now if I can just keep that going for another 27 days . . . . How are you doing, Theo? I think...

As expected my family crashed my first day of National Novel Writing Month, and dragged me away from the computer, so I didn't get in all the time I wanted at the keyboard. I also had to work at this silly thing they call a day job. But I knocked out 1580 new words on Twenty-One before midnight, so I'm pretty happy, all things considered. While I was writing I was reminded of the reason I rarely go back to work on partial stories I've done in the past; it's difficult to pick up where my head was when I left off; that shows in the writing. I think it was a bit easier with this one because I've been haunted by Nex's character for the last three years. She's always been a little ghost in the back of my mind whispering "Hey, finish me." Added: Up on the toolbar there I put a link for Twenty-One , so if you want to read along and follow my progress just click on that.