Saturday, November 29, 2008

I finished NaNoWriMo with 50,216 words!


The term that they use is "win"; that is, you win NaNoWriMo if you complete 50,000 words on your novel by November 30. I dunno why, but I prefer to use the verb to finish, as in "I finished NaNoWriMo" and that I did indeed do!

This is only half the battle. I'll let the novel "cool" over the month of December while I catch up on things I let go in November. Then sometime in January I'll start whipping this novel into shape as Book Three (no title yet) of my vampires, witches, and geeks series featuring Alicia Anderson and the vampire Wesley.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Still Slogging Away

I made this same text blog on my podcast page. Since people usually subscribe to just the audio feed from that page, they might miss it, so I'm repeating it here.

NaNoWriMo 2008 Progress

I’m still slogging through my manuscript for book three in my vampire series. I had hoped to have a solid outline before I started so that I could just dig in and write sequentially, but I was so busy with appearances in September and October that I didn’t get to it.

When November 1 came, and NaNoWriMo started, I had to just dive in and hope for the best. The first week went well as I wrote the scenes for each returning character and started filling in the background information for the new characters, some mortal and some vampiric.

Then I hit a slump the second week, which I hear is pretty common and felt very similar to the sophomore slump of writing your second book — heck, someone even referred to it as the sophomore slump! I started worrying that the book was crap, that I hadn’t done enough planning, and that I should just give it up for now. But, if you never start writing, you won’t finish, and I finally convinced myself that now is just a good a time as any.

So, I’m still plugging away at the new vampire novel, and if you want to see my progress, go to my home page and look at the word count at the very top of the page.

As soon as I hit my 50,000 words, I’m going to work on the next podcast, the promised interview with Dan and Michelle from Out of the Coffin, and go into more details on the contest I’m running.

Morven

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Reading and Signing at Bay State Paranormal

Saturday, November 08, 2008
Bay State Paranormal Center
20 Broadway, Taunton, MA 02780

At 3:15 pm, I'll give a short talk and a brief reading from my current book, The Old Power Returns, and tell you a little bit about the third book, which I'm working on now. For more info, see www.paranormal-events.info or www.myspace.com/mugshotlizzie

After that, I climb back into my hole, trying to write 1,667 words a day for NaNoWriMo 2008.

Happy November!

Saturday, November 01, 2008

NaNoWriMo -- First day results

1,706 words this morning! Yay! I'm going to try to get ahead of the game this weekend, but I've also got to take down the Halloween decorations and put them away.

Still, I'm happy with my first-day start.

Happy NaNoWriMo!

Morven