Hello everyone and welcome to my blog! For the ENTIRE month of December, we'll be seeing content like this from both myself, and from the Featured Authors (going all the way back to the beginning!). Along with each of us sharing first chapters from our novels (all on, or soon to be on, Wattpad!), we'll also be getting an inside look into everyone's writing process, book reviews, and even better - getting to know the contestants trying for Featured Author of The Year 2019! Stick around for the fun!
I'll start off by saying this - I had no clue if I had the gumption to even sign up for National Novel Writing Month this year.
If we go back in time to the tale-end of October, I can remember feeling like I needed something like this; like I needed to feel as though I was actually putting my all into something for the first time in a long time. With all the changes happening in my life (i.e. when I initially signed up for NaNo, my younger sister had just moved out. We'd been attached at the hip since her birth, so you can imagine how daunting it was to even walk past her now empty room), I wanted something stable, or tangible, that I could hold onto - even if it was only for a month.
One of the main things that's stuck with me during the sign up process was not only which book I was prepared to announce (I was so torn between rewriting Something Real or starting fresh with my upcoming teen fiction, The Truth About Chance Dabney), but also there was the fact that I absolutely could not figure out how to change my profile picture. I kid you not friends, I spent about twenty minutes trying to figure out how to upload a picture of my freaking face to the site.
But at the end of the day, all was well! Because I finally got my sh*t together and did it.
In preparation of the month ahead, I did what few authors actually get away with before diving head first into their next novel - I planned... A lot. I had stolen a notebook (every writers dream is new stationary) from my sister before she left and I made sure to write down each and every detail that I wanted to include in each chapter. Along with that, I'd done research (I know), and put it towards the characters. For once I knew who these people were before I started writing - and it wasn't just because this was a rewrite of my original draft of Something Real.
I had finished the new cover, set up a new draft in my Wattpad and in Google Docs, and had written up a few different versions of the first line. I studied like crazy to perfect it - wanting to match the greatness from the other published authors that came before me. An article series linked here helped me more than I could have imagined - and before I knew it, the clock flicked to 12 AM on November 1st.
I was ready to write.
The first chapter of my rewrite for Something Real came along swimmingly. Though as usual, I was short on my goal of 2k words per chapter, I ended up adding details in the following day. I couldn't keep that smile off my face at 2 AM - this was one of the first times (in a very long time) that I was actually happy with what I was writing. I had covered everything that I'd wanted to and even had the motivation to keep going. So when day 2 started up, I banged out Hayden's first chapter in a little over an hour.
From that point forward I was doing great, but there was one factor that I didn't intend on when planning for the month - my health. Suddenly, my plans for the month were coming to a crashing stop on the 8th, which I'm sure in the pictures below that you'll be able to see. In the past I've explained a few of my health issues (the main of which being my endometriosis), but this was a first for me - feeling so utterly exhausted that I could barely get out of bed.
I was iron deficient like I'd never been before.
Having started birth control to get my endometriosis under control, I was losing blood during my monthly cycle more than I anticipated. What usually lasts five to seven days was spreading itself out over a month - only stopping when I finished off that last week of pills. Having that particular wrench thrown into my plans left me with little to no motivation, and by the time I felt like I was on the mend, it was November 30th.
I had worked so hard and for so long on this rewrite, that I couldn't let the fact that I'd only managed 22 - almost 23 - thousand words over the course of 30 days get me down. After having written next to nothing in light of the injury to my wrist last year, I decided to take what had happened to me in stride. I was proud of what I'd accomplished.
So how did I celebrate? I decided to keep my word count going by setting up my own 'Goal Tracker' on the NaNo site - I'm shooting to have another 24-25k written by December 31st. If I keep this up, Something Real is looking to be a 100k word manuscript with just about 50 chapters.
So all in all, I couldn't be happier that I actually signed up for NaNo - and I'll be counting down the days until the next one!
There we have it! Tomorrow we'll get to go back in time and see what our featured authors and myself think of our old stories and writing memories!
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