Knowing When to Stop

You know when we start our journey each year or in some cases every six months to undertake writing 50K in 30 days, we have all the rules we intended to stick by.

Just write, do not edit.

Ignore the outside world.

Writing comes first.

Make sure your family knows you will not be available. And so on.

Then one day you get a phone call to say your Mum has spent the night in hospital, but it’s not serious. Then you go down to visit and realise for the normal person a bit of vomiting may not be serious, but for your mother who weighs less than 50 kg, can’t afford to lose any more weight it could turn out a big problem.


This was my weekend, then things got a little more serious on Monday. My Mum had a fall, not that she hurt herself bad, but we have now been told her illness could have started to take a turn for the worse and progress faster than it had been. You see, my Mum has late on setting Huntington's chorea disease. For the past few months, my family and I have watched small things change within my Mum, now instead of the disease taking dolly steps it has moved into giant steps.

My point is that no matter how good you intentions are at the start of the challenge, sometimes life steps in and you have to accept defeat. Not reaching 50Ks is NOT the end of the world, the novel will be there for you when you’re ready to start again.

Sometimes you just have to know when to stop.

Sandie

Mind over Matter

I’ve hit the 25K mark for NaNoWriMo, YAY. Unfortunately I’ve also hit the midway stumbling block. I spent most of today doing anything I could on the computer except write. Well except for 581 words. Better than nothing, yes, but not near enough, or anywhere near what I have been doing.

Here’s the thing, it happens every challenge. I get so far along, either in word count or in days/weeks and I hit the wall. Slow right down for a few days and then I’m right again, ready to write up a storm. Today I started thinking this is crazy, I expect it, I am convincing myself this is going to happen and of course it does. Mind over Matter. I am training my mind to believe this is how it should be, instead of fighting my way through it, pushing myself that little bit harder. So here I sit complaining about not being able to write, yet I’m writing this blog. I wrote my report for RWAustralia web team and my job description thingy. (Mind you these should have been done over a week ago.) Why can’t I write more on my story. I’ve opened the file twice and nothing! Not a thing, it’s like the characters have gone to bed and turned off the lights. Not even CC’s characters are coming out to play. I might have an early night and start fresh tomorrow, that may help.

I’m ‘Not happy Jan.’

Sandie

A Cosy Mystery for NaNo

So here I am at day five of NaNoWriMo and all is going well. Maybe a little too well. The story is coming together even with a couple of added point of views. My original idea was to tell the story from just my granny sleuth, however when I sat down at my computer on day three a second point of view character arrived. That character was my young Detective; I could live with that I thought. Instead of slotting in his point of view scenes in the original work, I decided to open a new file for him, so now I’m working between two files and one has to play catch-up. I should also point out the all my planning and plotting by this stage had been forgotten, didn’t even get a look in really. Maybe the fact that I had written it all down stuck a little because I did still have my original suspects and murder victim.


Come day three and I woke with a headache, not that this is uncommon for me but it did throw me for a while. Why? Because I had a third character wanting a point of view in the story. What could I do? Not much, if a character decides they know best, it is best to go along with them. So open file number three. Yes I’m writing novel between three files each with its own point of view. NOTE: These are in third person POV, I don’t think I do first person very well.

Anyway, today I’ve spent the day playing catch up with my two new POV characters. I think I’m almost there, which is a good thing, now do I continue to work with the three separate files or start a new file with all three POVs. Will have to think on that one.

So far in the story I have, one murdered tap dancer, up until today I had four suspects, this afternoon I gained another suspect and I can tell you I didn’t see this one coming. I have no idea what impact this person will have on the story.

My four amateur senior citizen sleuths are just starting to cause a little bit of havoc for my nice Detective and the manager of the nursing home. Oh, and said detective and manager were once married. Not sure where this is going to go either as they were not in my planning stage. Well they were but not as a once upon a time couple.

To date I’m 30% of the way through, which is great, I have a few non-writing days coming up, so I need to be in front. Word total 15,023 words. For now I’m happy, and I’m really enjoying writing something completely different.

The secret to my word count, is the internet on my laptop has had a major "Male Moment", so no connection, which means I have to come into other office to post comments, email etc. Easy really, no internet means lots of writing time.

Hope your NaNo Month is going well.

Happy Writing.

Sandie