I haven’t done much blogging lately, except for the odd review round-up or a Top Ten Tuesday post, but I did want to talk about NaNoWriMo since I have yet to talk about it this month.

I’m a huge supporter of NaNoWriMo, and I’ve been a fan for years.  For anyone who isn’t familiar with it, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, where writers from all over the world write their own 50,000 word novel in one month.

This is my tenth year doing NaNo, and my blog actually started out as me blogging my way through NaNo.  It was the year I decided to do three 50k novels in one month, and I have never done 3 in one month again.  You can click here to read about my previous NaNo novels, or here to see all of my NaNo posts.

Last year, I wrote a YA paranormal book about an amulet that needs to be destroyed, other humanity will be wiped out.  You can read more about the original idea here.  I had the hardest time with world-building and I wasn’t sure where I wanted it go, but I decided to write it anyway, and found that once I reached my 50k, it was a book I really wanted to re-write.  I’m still not sure how I want it to end, but I have a slightly better idea of what I want to do with it than I did last year.

I think, of all the years I’ve been doing NaNo, this has been the easiest year by far.  I’ve never been one for planning my novels out, because I’m much more of a pantser but I’m actually surprised at how much easier writing is when I have an outline.  There have been 2 or 3 days where I didn’t want to write.  Even though I knew what I was writing, I just didn’t have the motivation to write very much, so I have a few days where I struggled. I’ve been consistently ahead of the 1667 pace, so I felt okay not writing as much because I’ve had a buffer.  If my lowest day is 1000 words, I’m doing pretty good, and I am trying really hard to maintain that buffer, because I don’t want to lose that momentum.  I’m currently at 21,373, so I’m doing really good.  It’s sort of surprising, considering I was sick the first week (waking up sick on November 1st was horrible) and with how much Daylight Savings is really messing with me this year.

It’s vague enough that I feel like I have flexibility in where things go and what I’m writing, but it’s also specific enough that I know where things are going.  I can move things around as needed, and since I have an outline, it’s a lot easier to jump around if writing a particular scene or chapter isn’t working.

I’m using Scrivener this year, and I absolutely love it!  It makes it easier to jump around when I can’t focus on a particular scene, and the split screen feature is completely awesome and super-helpful.  I have the scene I’m writing on one side, and the chapter outline on the other side, which makes it easier to write each scene when I can see how it fits in with the rest of the chapter.

Unfortunately, I didn’t work on any character sketches or world building, and I still need to go through last year’s novel to see if I want to keep any of the world-building or character stuff from last year’s novel.  But this year, as I’m writing, I am adding that information to Scrivener, for when I have the time to properly focus on it. It’s daunting because I have to go through Word, and I don’t even know what I’m looking for, or where to find it.  With Scrivener, even if I’m not completely sure where to find a particular scene, I at least have a general idea of where to find it, and it’ll be easier to stay organized once I’ve worked on characters and the world more, particularly with a series.

I don’t know how much I’ll be talking about NaNo this year- at the very least, I’ll be doing a post at the end of the month, and maybe something in between, but I’m not sure.

If anyone else is participating, you can always add me as a buddy!  I’m wingedcreature (or click here to see my NaNo profile and my progress).

Happy almost mid-November!