Tag: National Novel Writing Month

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NaNoWriMo Time Again

Kara HartzLeave a comment

This is where I would usually post a widget from the NaNoWriMo website that would show my daily word count or a color coded calendar or something like that. But the website is new and I’m not having any luck finding widgets over there right now. If I track one down I’ll post it later.

Today was a rough day at work, so I’ve gotten about 250 words written today and I’m nodding off, and I need to be up early again tomorrow for work. So I’m off to an amazing start! (At least I’m started).

Happy writing folks!

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NanoWriMo 2017 starting in 2 days

Kara HartzLeave a comment

I’m NaNoWriMo-ing again this year. National Novel Writing Month for those unfamiliar with the term) I haven’t won in a very long time, and I really, REALLY want to win this year. Yet I’m no less overwhelmed and overscheduled than I usually am, so we’ll see how things go.

This year I’m writing with an outline. As my novel revisions are going very well so far, my NaNo novel will be the sequel to that one. The story so far is fresh in my mind, and I’m excited to continue it. I already know the characters fairly well (although new characters will be introduced). So all this is to my benefit I think, as far as quick word counts go.

Logistically, I’m also trying some new things. My laptop has been slowly dying for awhile now. It takes ages to power on, an off, and is just old and sad. Since I’m too broke to just go get a new laptop, and I have a wonderful pocket computer anyway (aka a smart phone) I decided to get a bluetooth keyboard and write on my phone.

I’m trying out the program yWriter, but so far can’t quite figure out how to use it both on my phone and on my desktop. It seems like there is something to do with saving to Google Drive, but I can’t figure out how to do that yet. So I have two days to get my learning curve finished with this program, or I guess I’ll just use Google docs.

Wish me luck!

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The State of the Novel

Kara Hartz1 Comment

I’m still working on my NaNoWriMo novel, but not as much as I had hoped to. We’ve had a lot of excitement at work that has taken more of my attention than usual. Things should be settling down now though, so I won’t have that excuse to throw around any more. I’ve only grown my word count up to about 58,000 since the end of November. For three months of work, even three super busy months, that’s disappointing.

Now, I’m going to do something that most writing advice seems to frown upon. I’m going to start editing and rewriting before my first draft is completely finished. But I believe I have a good reason to do so. I had an epiphany last week about a problem with the story that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I’d set the story up such that a vital element, the base idea that the novel was supposed to be built on, wouldn’t ever happen. At the beginning, I just didn’t want it to seem too easy, but now that I’m so far along, I see that the obstacles I put in place will actually keep it from happening at all. So I need some fundamental changes at the start, and I don’t really see the point of finishing the first draft before these changes are put in.

A lot of what I’ve already written can still be used, but obviously a lot will also need to change. As I worked on the revisions last night and started to realize how much would need to be reworked, I was surprised to find that I wasn’t sad. It was exciting instead. The story no longer felt stale and pointless. It’s going to get back on track. Yea! Hopefully, the new energy I have for the story will translate into speedier progress as well.

While we are on the subject of writing, I’m proud that I have three short stories sent out right now; one with some encouraging feedback so far. It would be great to have a publication to report here soon!

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I Did It At Last!

Kara Hartz2 Comments


*play ‘Chariots of Fire’ here*

After 3 years of NaNoWriMo failure, this year I hit the 50,000 word mark.

*applause*

Thank you, thank you.

My novel isn’t quite done, but it’s getting close to a climax I think. It is also really awful, but that’s okay. I had no plan when I began except for a general idea of a very unstructured plot. I didn’t have any characters ahead of time. The first 20k or so words are mostly me learning who my characters are. It isn’t riveting reading. They spend a lot of time wandering around the space ship thinking stuff. But that’s what it took for me to know enough about them to stat making stuff happen. Now that exciting stuff is happening, NaNoWriMo is over. I’m not stopping though. I probably won’t keep up the pace I have been, because – well- it’s really hard, and I’m really sleepy, but I’m going to do my best to keep working on it every day until it’s done.

I’ve really written so much more this month than I thought I was capable of. I started on Nov 1st planing to lose again this year. I don’t know where my attitude shifted, but I’m so happy it did. I think some credit should go to my friend Amanda. She signed up for NaNoWriMo this year too, and her encouragement and the cometition of having someone to keep up with was a very helpful motivational boost, especially in the beginning when I still thought it was going to be impossible.

So to all the other NaNoWriMo winners out there – a big high five to you! And to any who didn’t hit 50k this year, a high five to you too for trying, and for writing whatever you did. It’s still more than most people do. Yea for us!

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I’m A guest with LK Hunsaker Thoughts and Sketches

Kara Hartz3 Comments

LK Hunsaker invited me to write a guest post for her blog Thoughts and Sketches. She’s doing a series of guest posts on the subject of NaNoWriMo. At first I didn’t think I had anything worthwhile to add to a discussion of NaNo. I’ve failed every year I tried it after all. But as I thought about those failing years, and the fact that, even so, here I was, back at it again, I began to see that I actually did have an opinion or two on the subject.

So a big “Thank You” to LK for the push to do some deep thinking about my NaNo journey. Also, she’s a terrific author. I’ve enjoyed every book I’ve read from her, and am reading Off the Moon right now. I highly encourage you to poke around her website and pick up one of her published novels if you get the chance.

Kara’s NaNoWRiMo guest blog post.

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National Novel Writing Month Starting this Saturday!

Kara Hartz1 Comment

It’s almost National Novel Writing Month again (or NaNoWriMo as it’s affectionately known.) Despite being more overwhelmed in my personal life than ever before, I’m tempting fate (and major burnout) by participating again this year.

I don’t actually care if I reach 50,000 words or not, so that may be part of the reason I’m going for it again this year despite a complete lack of time. I guess that’s a bad attitude for NaNoWriMo, but it’s the best I can do right now.

So if I don’t care, why bother at all you may ask. Fair enough. Well, I’ve learned enough in the last two NaNos that I’ve participated in that there is lot I can learn, both about writing, and about myself, even if I don’t hit that 50,000 word mark. It’s good to push yourself in pursuit of something wonderful and creative that will very likely never amount to anything at all just to see if you can. Or rather if I can.

Again, my novel will be Sci-Fi. I had a dream last year during NaNoWriMo that I thought would make a great story. I wrote a summary of the dream in a notebook because it was complex and I didn’t want to forget an important detail. Well, I lost that notebook. That notebook had a lot of writing in it that was important to me, and I still get upset about it’s loss. So I may end up having to make up a lot of the story without my notes (although, I guess technically, I already made it up in my dream, so who cares, right?) It’s a post apocalyptic, war, romance, time-travel kind of thing. Hope it turns out.

If you ever wanted to try to write a novel. Now’s your chance!
Here’s my profile at the official NaNoWriMo site, if you want to learn more about this whole crazy idea:
Karabu Writes a Novel

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NaNoWriMo

Kara HartzLeave a comment

I’ve been MIA from my blog, so I thought I’d drop in and tell you why.

I decided to join the National Novel Writing Month this November. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but never thought I had the time. This year I realised that I won’t ever feel like I ‘have the time’ to write a novel. No one does. That’s why NaNoWriMo exists in the first place.

The goal is to write at least 50,000 words in a novel during the month of November. That works out to be 1,667 words a day. So for someone with an already full life – a very lot of writing! I’m getting some pretty late bedtimes so far this week.

Here’s my NaNo profile on the website if you’d like to learn more about it:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/204442

Now so far when I tell people I’m doing this, they ask about my novel. The short version is that it’s a Sci-Fi novel about a ship of 1000 people going off to colonise a new planet. It’s a story I was supposed to write 2 years ago. I joined an anthology contest on writing.com about 10 ships that left earth in search of new planets. We wrote a story proposal about what happened to one ship. My story got picked, and I began writing the full story. Then life got in the way and I basically stopped.
Now I’m starting over and using it for my NaNo novel. I don’t think I really want the finial version to be 50,000 or more words long, but I’m writing a lot of background and more in depth character stuff that I probably don’t really need, so when November is over, I hope to have enough material to edit it down to 20-30,000 words worth of good stuff.

That’s the plan.

If you’ve ever Nano-ed, or are Nano-ing now, let me know! Share your tips for getting through the month – and tell me about your novel!