NaNoWriMo

Less Noise, More Action

Scott Andrew Bailey2 Comments

That kind of sums up my approach to 2020, particularly to writing.

2019 was not overly productive for me. I curated and edited some old work into a new collection – Andervayne’s Dream. I also continued to try and market my existing books, Mankind Limited, A Spring of Dreams and Thirteen Tales of Ghosts. Not to much success.

All this has mean that along with the demands of life, many family illness and dealing with a son with Autism, I have not had much time to actually write anything new. I have kept my blog alive by reposting old work daily.

I tried NaNoWriMo, but again, due to life commitments and stress, did not complete it – though I did come out of it with five drafts of short stories.

So. New years resolutions!

Firstly, it should be noted I have 100% failure rate on these. I can make goals and get there, just not new years resolutions. I think this is because I tend to try and make big life changing ones.

So this year I am going to do two things. One, I am making them public, here and now. Hopefully that will give me kick up the backside to actually complete them. Secondly, I am making them a bit more modest.

So this is my plan for 2020.

One poem a week.

One short story a month

Enter one competition or submit to one publication per month.

These are reasonable and well within my capabilities. 52 poems and 12 short stories. I have done far more that that in a shorter time before.

The other big difference will be that I will not be posting them on my blog. I am keeping them unpublished so I can use them to submit to competitions and publications.

Which means, this blog will be a lot quieter this year.

Less noise, more action.

NaNoWriMo – Shall I?

Scott Andrew Bailey12 Comments

I have been in a writing rut – in that I have done nothing new for ages. Life circumstances have been against me.

It’s time to take a stand against all that. I should set myself a challenge again and give myself the proverbial kick up the arse.

So I am considering going against all the odds and partaking in NaNoWriMo this year. I have completed it once but failed the following year due to some serious illness in the family.

These days, all the demands on me mean I don’t get any time to sit down and write – event doing this today is a very rare occurrence. I have been reduced to reblogging old content.

Well, those demands are going to have to take a back seat for a while. They will need to for my own sanities sake.

My plan is not to try and create novel, novella or even a part of one as I did last time. This time I want to use the push to create 10 drafts of short stories. Each around 5000 words long. I will then use these to enter some competitions with – maybe eventually publish them as a collection as well.

Well, that’s the plan. Let’s see how it goes. Lately, my plans don’t see the light of day – this is a last-ditch attempt. I need some success.

Image from Pixabay

NaNoWriMo Day 9

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Well, we are all home now. Little one much better but I am wiped out and need some time to recover. So writing this year off. Good luck to everyone else having a go.

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NaNoWriMo Day 8

Scott Andrew Bailey1 Comment

Crashed and burned. Spent all day in hospital yesterday with our youngest and looks like same today. So no words yesterday and probably the same today.

I don’t think I’ll be likely to catch up so think I am going to write  it off this year and get back to my short stories at a more relaxed pace.

 

 

 

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NaNoWriMo Day 5

Scott Andrew Bailey4 Comments

Not so good today only 730 words managed. It’s been a hard day. Didn’t leave work until 7:00 for one thing. For another, our youngest has been under the weather and acting a bit strange.

This morning he woke up laughing so hard I thought he was going to be sick. It was the kind of laughing that kids only do when someone is tickling them until they give up.  In our sleeping stupor in the early hours of the morning we all thought one of the others was in there with him, but he was alone.

When we did go in he screamed at us to go way and get off him, even though we were not anywhere near him. He only calmed down and got out of bed when his brother went in to get him. 6 years old and he calmly went in took his hand and lead him out of sleep and into reason.

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NaNoWriMo Day 4

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Well, it was hard today. Work has been very stressful – productive but stressful  – feel like I am doing 15 things at once sometimes.

On top of that I get home to find that I am needed to write a report for our youngest to try to get him some more support. That was 1600 words I could have used for NaNo!

And I had set my target high today – I wanted to hit 10,000 today to try to keep on a roll of being ahead. So how did I do?

I managed 2342 words today – which took me to a grand total on day 4 of 10014 – wohoo!

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NaNoWriMo Day 3

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A struggle today to find the time. Still managed to hit the minimum daily target of 1667 more in fact 1710. Wanted to hit 10000 today but got to 7672.

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NaNoWriMo Day 2

Scott Andrew Bailey1 Comment

 

5962 total now (so 2616 today) – not as many as yesterday but still ahead of the minimum daily target. Got to keep it up.

I finished today’s sprint by finishing chapter one.

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NaNoWriMo Day 1

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Well despite the momentous effort of actually finding some time to do it – and nearly giving up on the whole idea – I actually managed to do well.

3346 words on day one. Let’s see if I can keep ahead.

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To NaNoWriMo or not NaNoWriMo?

Scott Andrew Bailey2 Comments

So I have been a bit quiet lately due to lots of reasons, work, kids you name it it’s fallen on my plate.

One of the things has been sorting out a loft. We recently had loft insulation put in so we had to remove everything from the loft and put it in the garage. There it has stayed all summer, waiting for me to get time to put it back. Being an impossible job to get done with the kids around I finally decided – as the weather gets worse and I have nowhere to park the car to take a day off work and get it done.

There was so much! Had to put down some loft legs to lift the new flooring boards above the level of the insulation.  That alone left me with blistered hands! Then I had to lug the boxes from the garage – (not near our house) – and up the stairs.

It was all worth it, though! Sure I can now park the car again in the garage – instead of half a mile down the road.  But that was just the aim. The extra cherry on the cake?

I found something. In sorting out what was in the boxes I found something I thought I had lost.

The plan for the original idea for a book I had many many years ago. I had actually written about 60% of it but abandoned it for a number of reasons. I did not have the confidence then to complete. I also did not really have the skills, the writing is not good. On top of that another series of books came out with a very similar premise and that discouraged me.

What I did do though is a complete plan. Every scene right to the very end of the plot.

The thing about this book is that I do pick it up every now and then and have a read of the bits I did do. Although the writing is not up to what I think I can do now, it still excites me every time I read it. It’s the project I most enjoy.

I have often though about trying to rekindle it – but then get depressed about trying to remember how the story was going to go.

Now? Well now I have the plan!

So an idea is sparking in my mind now. I had said that I would no do NaNoWriMo this year due to the pressures of life.  Also, I have other projects on the go – editing  a short story collection and not to mention that I had thought that if I did do NaNoWriMo this year I felt I should continue with the project I started last year – which only constitutes about half the story. So in theory I could finish that.

However, I still have to figure out the second part of that story. And I have a few weeks of editing to get as much as I can do on the stories.

Whereas – this plan would allow me to write without having to work out where I was going. I intend to rewrite it anyway and I intend to actually rewrite it – not just edit what I had before. I will ignore that and just work from the plan.

There are some major plot points that I need to address, but I might just ignore them for now and adjust them after.

So the question is to NaNoWriMo or not NaNoWriMo?