Hello friends!
Here's what I've been up to lately:
Last November I participated in National Novel Writing Month where the goal during the month is to write a complete novel consisting of at least 50,000 words. There are various ways to go about accomplishing the task—such as writing the words “very tough to do” about 12,500 times. Or “Am I crazy for attempting this during the Holidays?” about 4500 times could probably work too.
Some may have chosen that path, but not me—I chose a simpler plan: I divided 50K words by 30 (days in November) and came up with a more manageable (I thought) number of 1667.
National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo as it is apt to be called is a big deal. There are national groups, state groups, county groups, city groups and the group that I belonged to was called the Teal Deers or something like that. They meet regularly at the local Starbucks and talk about who knows what. I’ve never been to an actual meeting (although I have thought about showing up once to see if I’m missing something) and I can’t remember how I got on their mailing list. It's on my long list of things I should probably check out.
In late October for the last five years, I have received a letter that begins: "Dear Teal Deers, It’s time once to prepare yourself for another failure. You will NOT write 50k words in 30 days. It is freaking impossible." (At least that’s what happened to me the past five years.)
The first time I attempted NaNoWriMo was in 2011 and I wrote about 15K words. It was nowhere near a complete novel and fell far short of the daunting 50K finish line.
But still.
But still, I had the inkling for a story and I put the beginning chapters on paper. That was part one of the trilogy that I am currently working on. It took me another four+ plus years to finish the manuscript and I’ve lost track of the revisions. At some point I have to say, ”It’s finished” and move on to the next project. One of the toughest decisions was deciding how many books to write. As a writer new to writing novels, I don’t know if that is good or bad. I know the story line is there and it’s never far from my mind. If I’m not writing on the books, then I am thinking about the plot and characters in my head.
If we’re friends on Facebook or on Twitter (If not, then why aren’t we?) you’ve probably heard me mention “To The Middle and Back” or one of the characters, “Eleanor Ann” and throw out a bit of dialogue in case anyone might want to know what I’m up to. It’s fun when I receive comments and likes and helps me to keep myself moving forward and putting words on the page.
Last July, I started on book two in this trilogy and made significant progress on the beginning chapters of the book. After a late night of surfing the Web, I landed upon a site in China by someone that has the same name of someone I knew—interesting, I thought, so I clicked on a link on the page—it wasn’t the person I knew and by noon the next day my laptop was fried. It was infected by the Crypto virus and my data was being held for ransom by some unknown douche bags halfway across the world.
I know the next question you’re going to ask is “What about your backup?”
Thanks for asking, but it seems I was the douche bag because I wasn’t current on my backup plan. I lost everything. Luckily, I was smart enough to have a paper copy of the first manuscript and had even emailed it to myself and a few of my family members just to be on the safe side. I wasn’t so lucky with my other documents which included the beginning chapters of “Return to the Middle” and a few other projects I was working on.
A minor setback and after a few days of beating myself up about not having a proper backup system in place I got back to work. (I also had a few choice words for the folks that sent me the virus but temper tantrums aren’t nearly as much fun unless the folks that you’re pissed off at can actually see that you’re ticked off so I got over it fairly quickly.)
Over the next several months, I basically ignored my second novel and worked on other things. When late October rolled around again and I received my yearly invitation to participate in NaNoWriWo I ignored it too. I ignored it until several friends mentioned that they were going to participate and had already warned their families that they might have to cook a meal for themselves or go out to eat on occasion. This WAS the year they were going to accomplish this task and nothing was going to stand in their way.
Not hungry family members. Nor a traditional holiday. Not even their usual self-doubt was going to impede them from finishing this 50K word challenge. I thought about it for a second or two and thought “I can do that, too” (and I don’t have any kids) (just a HUGE amount of self-doubt) so why not give it another try.
What made this particular attempt different from the others was the way some of my friends were keeping track of their progress. November is also the month where many on Facebook share 30 days of thankfulness in combination with the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s a simple thing, really, just share a few words in a status post about whatever you are thankful for any given day.
Again, something in my brain clicked and I decided that was indeed something I could do too. I even took it one step further and combined the status post with a mention that I had achieved my daily word count for the day. There it was….out in the open…for everyone to see…or at least all of my Facebook friends. I also planned on walking for 30 minutes every day and writing a small blog post here to let my readers know what I was up too.
I’d be lying if I said it was easy. Not by a longshot. I found out in the beginning if I was writing freely and the words were coming with no trouble then I would keep writing until I needed to stop. I know some friends reported that they wrote every day while others reported writing five days a week. I wrote every day, but on the days I had kept writing, I had stockpiled several thousand words, so I counted those extra words on the days that I fell short of the 1667 daily total.
On several days I wrote late into the night and there were even a couple of days I found myself writing at 3:00 am. After the first ten days or so my friends (who later told me this fact) began tuning in each day to see if I was on task.
I knew early on that I wasn’t going to write a complete novel. My novel is going to be nearly twice the 50K word goal. Another thing I realized to was that I just didn’t want to throw words on a page just for the sake of a word count. I wanted my words to matter. Why I bring this up is many people who have completed the challenge never intend on using the words they worked so hard to share. No way, Jose. Not me. If I was going to put this much effort into something, then you can be sure it’s going to be more than writing “very tough to do” 12,500 times.
And that’s what I did. I completed the whole enchilada. The whole kit and caboodle. I wrote 30 blog posts. I walked for 30 minutes every day. I wrote 50,286 words in 30 days.
And thank goodness there aren’t 31 days in November because the last two days of the month were the most difficult. The electricity was shut off most of that time and my bathroom had a leak that the handyman couldn’t seem to find. It was frustrating to put it mildly, but we worked around each other. I finished NaNoWriMo and the handyman, well, he couldn’t find the leak and was going to Florida for the winter. He’d be back in late May, he said, and if I hadn’t fixed the problem myself (which I do quite often) to give him a call.
And that’s what I did...
In early May, another idea began to form in my mind. I needed another push to propel me forward in my writing. I’ve just recently returned from Dayton, Ohio, where once again I participated in the Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop where writers of all genres, not just humor, gather to celebrate the life of the late Erma Bombeck at her alma mater, The University of Dayton. It was a grand time and I wrote about it in this post.
One of the many highlights of the conference was spending time with my friend, the brilliant Gina Barreca, and being in the presence of someone who definitely brings out the best in others. If you ever get the opportunity to hear her speak, do it, because you’ll leave with more than just a new best friend—you’ll leave exhausted from the camaraderie you feel around her, the inclusiveness and support of someone that has done what you’re trying to do and the message that it’s okay to speak up, to be heard and to make trouble.
The idea that I came up with was what if I could do another version of the NaNoWriMo, but this time do it during the summer months. I can recall seeing an ad somewhere about a hundred days (more or less) of summer and all of the activities that one could do. Why couldn’t I write every day? After a few days of thought I came up with the idea of writing 100k words in 100 days. It’s fairly simple mathematically to figure it out—it’s a thousand words a day for 100 days.
The hardest part was figuring out a day to begin. I kept putting it off and finally settled on June 1. June, July, August and a few days in September—sounds like a fun summer to me. Most people take the summer off but not me, I’m calling this the summer of my discontent and there are certain things I want to accomplish other than just kick back and relax. (Plus, I’m turning 50 on my birthday next year and there have always been certain things that I wanted to have accomplished by then and I seem to have fallen behind in the last ten years.)
The main thing I want to accomplish during this summer of writing is to finish my second novel and be nearing the finish line on my third to wrap up the trilogy. Doable? I hope so, because that’s what my plan is—and sometimes, the hardest part for me is just coming up with the plan.
The first few days of my journey have been a challenge. I started out the month in Savannah where I had time by myself to get started on the writing but spent two full days in the car trying to get through Atlanta traffic. After returning from there, the plans were put in motion to do work on the bathroom so I would need to bring the cats up to my Mom’s house for the duration. The man said it would only take about four days to redo the bathroom and we are already on the eighth day.
I’ve made several trips back to my house to see if I could be of any assistance (to make sure he knew what he was doing and wasn’t stealing anything) but after the fourth trip I showed him where the key was and to be sure and turn the lights off when he leaves for the day. The goal is to be finished sometime in the next few days, but I'm not holding my breath about it. Besides, I’m not really in that big of a hurry to go back to my house because Mom has central air (I don’t) and the cats (me too) love it.
So welcome to my summer of discontent. Not only do I want to write 100K words in a hundred days, but I also plan on having 30 minutes of daily activity and eating better, which I hope, will help me lose 20 pounds.
I’ll be checking in throughout the summer to let you know how I am doing and if you would like to start your own one-hundred-day challenge—whatever it may be—feel free to leave a comment or you can always email me at gianettapalmer@gmail.com. The more the merrier and good luck.
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