In Which I Announce that I am Off My Rocker

This November.

Many of my friends will be spending over an hour a day writing novels, as part of the NaNoWriMo challenge.

I don't do well when it comes to writing an entire novel in a month. (I didn't make it past 20 pages last year, and the year before, my 50,000 word story was gibberish).

However, I can't let them one-up me. I have to prove that I am crazy, too.

And so I am going to do a drawing each day.

For 30 days.

And I'm going to share it on my blog.

Care to join me? It doesn't matter how bad (or good) you are at art. It doesn't even matter if you can't manage to do it each day. Just try it. I hear that drawing every day is good for you (and really good for you if you are an artist like me).

And I'm so not picky that you can go right ahead and not do each day's theme, or do photos instead of drawings, or make a different finger puppet each day-- just do something creative!

If you'd like to join me on this crazy adventure, feel free to leave a link where we can see your art (a blog, flickr, whatever). Use the linky list at the bottom of this post. (The linky is open until the last day of November-- one link per person, please, just link to your main blog/flickr. Daily linkies for individual projects will begin on the first of November).

Now... don't forget to remind me, come November 1st. I'll probably want to forget, or procrastinate, or battle a dragon instead.

{image via, used with permission}

The challenge has begun!

Click {HERE} to see all the art!

Lack of posts? I'm Writing a Novel.

I wrote this post on the second day of November. Since then I've realized that I will not be able to keep up with the 30,000 word goal I originally set. I likely will change my goal to 10 or 15 K and only work on it during the weekends and Thanksgiving break. There is something called school... and major tests... and life being busy...

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For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month) is the Ultimate Challenge. Every year, thousands of writers sign away their sanity and aim for the goal: 50,000 words in 30 days!

The goal is to get you writing... just writing. Leave your inner editor behind the in dust. Revel in typos. And never stop writing.

{Go to NaNoWriMo.org for more info}

Last year I participated with my first novel, Nevdroonia. It was, um... a bit of a flop. I had no idea what I was doing. Never before had I written anything longer than 3 pages, and here I was shooting for 175.

I was also not prepared. My goal was to write what came to me.... Nevdroonia began as an imaginary land that I made up, and my friends and I spent long afternoons jumping off the neighbor's retaining wall, swinging on the rope swing, and landing in a war-torn fairyland. Nevdroonia, the Novel (lol) was my attempt to combine various adventures we had in my backyard. I slapped on some characters and thought I was ready to go.

I had no plot.

That's bad news for any writer.

And did I mention last year was a flop? I finished my 50,000 words and left it.



This year I am going crazy again-- but not to the same degree.

YWP NaNoWriMo (can you tell these people love acronyms?) stands for Young Writer's Program. It's for those 17 and under, and lets you choose your own word goal.

{Go to YWP.NaNoWriMo.org}

I'm starting with a goal of 30,000 words. However, I'm seriously considering lowering that, because I have so many other responsibilities keeping me busy.

Priorities are no fun. Look what order mine are in:

1. Getting caught up in schoolwork
2. Doing OK on all my midterms this week
3. Exercise
4. Settling into the new city
5. Staying ontop of my Shoppe
6. Writing

Family time gets to trump all of that, since we've had so little family time while we were trying to move. My parents are trying to convince me that "cleaning up" belongs at place #4 or 5. And sometime in there I need to sleep.

I'm still not prepared... But at least I have a plot. I am working on my novel Colored Eyes, which I planned out over the summer for the Inkling's Resolve. Unfortunately, the Resolve kind of dissolved after a couple of months, right about the time that I became insanely busy with life.

I found a fun plot and make character sketches... I scribbled down 5 pages of notes...

September came around and all my friends on the Fairy Tale Forum started getting hyped for NaNoWriMo. I loved my Colored Eyes story and wanted to do NaNoWriMo, but knew I was too busy.

I found the Young Writer's Program, and on one fateful October day signed away all my free time. (I mean, I'm still free to quit. But that would be giving me guilty free time. :D )

I did no planning in October. There's something called life and it happens and keeps you from having days of free time. I DID review my notebook, however.


And now it is November! I've been writing during most of my free time (I have writer's block/headache at the moment, which is why I am posting on my blog.) I'm behind because of my first couple days.... I'm seriously concerned about how to advance the plot...


But it's all great. Someday I'll have a novel to show for it.

(Oh, and did you know that my 9-almost-10-year-old-brother is doing the YWP, too? His goal is 2,000 words [aLOT for him] and he is writing about him being the youngest astronaut to go into space. His story is very, very awesome. I'm trying to convince him that I need to be an alien princess who kidnaps him for ransom. He's still thinking about it.)