Sharp Words

So, as previously mentioned, I made my 50,000 words. A day early, in fact, despite November having been my month of ‘Two Floods and a Funeral’ and many disruptions to all my plans, writing or otherwise.

I actually wrote some extra on the 30th, and finished with a grand total of 52,254, which I was pretty damn pleased with.

However, unlike previous years when I’ve usually just given up straight away (or last year, when I finished the actual story of the novel on November 30th), I need to keep writing. I’ve promised my husband that I’ll actually finish this novel, and get it ‘published’ using the CreateSpace offer that’s available to all NaNoWriMo winners – meaning that by next autumn, I will have an actual published book in my grabby little hands.

I’m near the end of the story, so finishing it off won’t be too much of a chore (and any words I write towards finishing it will get added to my year’s 50,000 word goal, up in the right-hand sidebar of this blog – 50,000 words which don’t include my NaNoWriMo ones). But I will need to do a fair bit of editing and a large number of general corrections; my timeline got completely muddled, for example, and I kept forgetting the name of various alien species or misspelling alien names. The plot could do with a bit of tidying-up and tightening too, so I’ll maybe sleep on that a couple more days (nights) until I figure out how to finish the story off neatly.

But this is my Pledge to (self-)Publish in 2010. I’ll get this novel finished off and in a form that my husband will be comfortable reading, and then I can be proud of myself.

And in the meantime, I’ll figure out what my proper goals for 2010 are: the ones that will actually help the progress of my writing ambitions. (Otherwise known as the ones that I never actually follow through on… oh well, if I don’t make plans, I wouldn’t even get started at all.)

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I did it. And holy heck, am I relieved about it.

Hopefully normal service will resume soon. In all aspects of my life.

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I wish I could claim that I’ve done nothing but write for the past 16 days and am therefore miles ahead on my NaNovel (like last year), but alas, it’s not the case.

I’ve had a pretty crummy start to November, in fact, with several days when I didn’t write at all… but then I think I have mitigating circumstances in the facts that my friend’s house flooded mid-way through the first week of NaNo (not on the day I posted later, but a few days later), and then I had to fly home to Wales for my Gran’s funeral.

The strange thing about this November though is that I haven’t actually been tempted at all to give up completely on NaNoWriMo this year, despite having some pretty good excuses. I have bailed on a couple of write-ins, and I haven’t managed my daily goals very often, but with the knowledge that I’ve done (and surpassed) 50k in previous years, I’ve always been convinced that I’ll make it.

And I’m still convinced.

So here’s to a goal of 21,500 words by midnight tonight, which will put me 6,833 words behind, but still perfectly positioned to get caught up.

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Because I didn’t go out for Halloween this year, I thought I’d start writing at midnight. And I certainly wasn’t the only one. Six or seven us sat in the WriMo Ireland chat room and started off NaNoWriMo 2009 with a 10-minute word sprint. I managed 820 words in two sprints, about beating my usual first-day-writing record (I don’t typically do that well on day 1), though others managed a couple of thousand words before going to bed.

I’ve spent the day at my friend’s house though (where I was last night too), waiting to see if the flood in the road was going to get any worse, and then later, if it was going to go down again so I could go home. With not much else to do except check sandbags, take photos, and drink coffee, I got quite a lot of words done and haven’t finished yet.

So all in all, I’m feeling pretty damn good about my writing this year. And the flood’s thankfully receding.

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As mentioned several times already in the past month or so, November is National Novel Writing Month.

This will be my seventh year taking part, and hopefully, my fifth time reaching 50,000 words in 30 days. Actually, this year I’m aiming for 75-80 thousand, since I managed 70,000 last year.

I’m extremely excited about it this year. I have a fun story idea to work on; I need to reach 50k on that, and then I can write some of my long-standing in-need-of-rewrite fantasy saga. Or rather, I’ve promised myself for every thousand words of fantasy saga that I write, I can write two thousand of my silly sci-fi. I need to reach 50,000 on a single project to properly fulfill the rules of NaNoWriMo, so that will be on my fun project. But this way, the other one gets a word count boost too.

One of the reasons I’m so excited is that for yet another year, I’m the Municipal Liaison (aka regional co-ordinator) for Northern Ireland. I’ve run a series of “Introduction to NaNoWriMo” sessions this year, both online in our chat room and face-to-face, and so far I’ve talked to 17 other WriMos – which is almost as many as I met during the whole of November last year.

Plus, we have a kick-ass kick-off party lined up for Friday, with a happy number of RSVPs – and even if they don’t all show, we’ll still have plenty of people and a good time. (And lo! the Pumpkin of Sugary Doom shall inflict destruction on all…)

And I can’t wait to get started actually writing on Sunday…

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This November, I’m trying to get people to pay me to write.

Alas, the money won’t be for myself. I’m seeking sponsorship this year for my NaNoWriMo endeavours: 50,000 words (or more; I’m hoping for 70,000 like last year) in just 30 days.

What, you ask? National Novel Writing Month? Why do you want to be sponsored for that?

Well, NaNoWriMo – or more properly, its parent organisation, the Office of Letters and Light – is a nonprofit organisation which provides free resources not just to those adults taking part in NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy, but also for the hundreds of schools which take part in the Young Writers’ Program. And I’m sure we can all agree that getting kids to write can only be a good thing!

Have a look at the NaNoWriMo ‘Where Your Donations Go‘ page to find out more.

Every I donate some of my own money to support NaNoWriMo – and all participants are encouraged to do the same, although sadly less than 10% do so. I also give my time as a Municipal Liaison (aka regional co-ordinator) – come to think of it, that costs me money to.

But this year I thought I’d give myself an additional NaNoWriMo challenge of getting ther people to contribute too. So, I’ve got myself a nice little official GiftTool page and am accepting sponsors (I’ve had my first one already, thanks Ken)!

Unfortunately, sponsoring me directly through the page can only be done by credit card and in specified dollar amounts. (And I ultimately have to submit all my gathered amounts as dollars too.)  However, you can also sponsor me directly in cash (pounds sterling) or via Paypal (currency of your choice) – any money coming that way is counted as a pending pledge until I pay it through, but it still registers against my total.

Please do sponsor me. Thanks.

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