The Home Stretch!

Hey everyone! I’m deep in the NaNoWriMo word war trenches right now, so I apologize for not having a real blog post this week. While writing like crazy, I’m trying not to go crazy!

As of the writing of this post, I’m only a few thousand words away from being declared a winner of my first ever National Novel Writing Month challenge! …But, I’m just far enough away from ‘the end’ that I still stand a chance at losing.

Wait. Scratch that. At this point in the game, I’m not allowed to think like that.

Giving Thanks: Half Empty, Half Full or What?

Cute turkey, photo by me!

"If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul." – Rabbi Harold Kushner

A friend told me a tale last week. He shared a story of a time he was involved in a group of people who were debating the philosophies behind that age-old question: “Is the glass half empty or is the glass half full?”

They were debating the question to learn how people’s brains process things differently.

Now, I like to consider myself as a “glass half full” type of person, by what my friend’s response was to that conversation from their story was this: “Hey, I’m just happy I have a glass!”

This year has been full of ups and downs for me. I’ve been faced with challenges, the likes of which I’d never imagined having to face. I used to think that when a person reached a certain age, they were done growing up. It would seem life wanted to prove me otherwise this past year.

Yet, as we’re in the season of thanksgiving, I find myself giving thanks for the most elementary of things.

The Point of NaNo

During pre-NaNo, I heard a lot of people criticizing the ever-popular writing program. Their point was always something along the lines that NaNoWriMo focused too much on producing high word count which resulted in bad writing.

Awesome and inspiring quote.

But that’s the thing. The idea of NaNo isn’t how pretty the prose of your novel is on December 1st when you sit down to reread it for the first time. That’s not the point.

Well then. What is the point? 

No one, not even the greats, is going to turn out a best seller in thirty days. No one can produce a great first draft that requires no revisions.

Ways to Speak Out – A Guest Post

Today I’m hosting the gals from over at Moxie Writers for the Speak Out Against Book Tour, bringing awareness to the issues of bullying and teen dating violence. Authors Rebecca Green Gasper and Susan Oloier write about those topics in their books Break From You and Outcast. I am excited to help raise awareness for these issues on this blog tour for my friends and loved ones who have fallen victim to bullying and abuse.

Every year, millions of youth will become victims of violence. Some of the most common forms of violence are bullying and dating abuse.

One in four teens will be bullied, and one in three teens will become a victim of dating violence.

And the problems are all too often ignored. Eighty-five percent of the time no one will intervene with bullying, and over eighty-one percent of parents believe that dating abuse is not a problem.

Here are ways to speak out against teen violence:

Marrying NaNoWriMo

It’s taking everything I’ve got to write this post. I mean, it is November after all. I should be NaNo’ing!

 

As of the writing of this post, I am on track with my goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days, but I foresee myself getting behind very soon. What, with my sister’s wedding being tomorrow, I doubt I’ll have time to do any writing for a few days.

Today I’ll be helping decorate the church, the reception area and the dance hall. The rehearsal is tonight also. And tomorrow… I don’t even want to think about everything that has to be done before the “I do’s” take place.

Can the same thing of this quote be said of writing?

While there will be lots of joy and merriment in my sister’s wedding, my NaNoWriMo novel will not be far from my mind. Because while my sister is stressing out about details of her wedding day, I’ll be stressing out about my missing plot ending.

Just One

It’s November 1st, also known as NaNoWriMo, day one.

Welcome.

Today is the first day of a very long month. Thirty days is going to go by very quickly. It’ll help if you get used to the idea of having a lot of work to do.

The challenge of National Novel Writing Month is to write 50,000 words in thirty days. That means writing at least 1,667 words each day for the month of November, or about six pages. It’s overbearing to think in those terms, but I’ve found it easier to take in if broken into simpler terms.

One word, one sentence, one paragraph, one page, one chapter.

One book…in one month.

That’s my goal for November. And while that goal may be made up of 50,000 parts, for today I’m concentrating on tackling one thing at a time. Today I’m locking up my inner critic and putting away all the rules, all that self-doubt, all the questions – Is this story really ready to be told yet? Do you know these characters, this world, as well as you think you do? 

Can you really write 50,000 words in thirty days?