Category Archives: NaNo

Good Luck!

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Today is the last day of October…Happy Halloween everyone! 

Halloween is also the last day before I lose my mind writing an insane number of words while drinking an insane amount of caffeine. 

I have a few loose ends to tie up before I start talking about NaNo.

My binder!  I have this binder full of stuff related to my various novels.  I have characters, plot bunnies with varying degrees of planning and notes, potential character names, and random notes.  It’s helpful and I love handwriting my notes.  I like spreading out my notes and my characters, and it’s much easier to refer to them when I need to.  It’s nice having notes that are organized.

I’ll be writing at home, at the library and the Living Room.  It’s one of my favorite places, and I love writing there.  The library is great too, since it’s generally quiet and I can go look things up when I need to.  Plus, I can stay as long as I need without worrying about hogging a table or needing to buy something every couple of hours so I don’t feel bad about buying one thing and staying for a few hours.  And at home, I can write in my pajamas with the t.v. on in the background and walk back and forth to the kitchen as much as I want. 

I don’t have a handwritten sheet of how much I need to write each day, but I do have a spreadsheet ready.  I need some way to keep track of all these words I’m writing and a spreadsheet worked really well last year, so I’m keeping up with tradition!

I don’t know what time of day I’ll be writing, but I figure it’ll be afternoon or the middle of the night…if it’s anything like last year!  But I won’t know until I start writing, and I may find that I’m most productive at a completely different time than I was last year. 

It’ll be a great month, and I’m looking foward to everything that happens next month!

No Plot? Let’s Make It Up As We Go Along!

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Remember that plot bunny I had about the family who only saw each other at events like funerals? 

I don’t want to do that plot anymore.  After coming up with a family tree and working on characters, something that I was excited about is no longer exciting.  And if I’m not excited about writing something, I’m not going to spend a month writing it.

Since I want to have a back-up, what am I to do with all these characters?

Just write and see what happens.  That’s my plan if something doesn’t work out.  I’ve done it before, and the result was hilarious.  Hopefully, everything works out, but if it doesn’t, this could be a very interesting novel.   

In fact, I may need to start looking through the dares thread for ideas.  Another novel based on dares could be very interesting, although I may have to work some in anyway. 

I think that’s it for today, so I’ll be back tomorrow, wrapping up loose ends!

The Official Survival Kit For NaNo

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I’m really becoming a big fan of the NaNo Survival Kit.  It’s different for everyone, but I like having an assortment of things that help me get through the month. 

  • Something to listen to: Whether it’s t.v., music or podcasts, I need to have something to listen to when I’m writing.  It provides inspiration, and sometimes distracting when I feel the need to sing along. 
  • My binder!  I believe this is the first time I’ve mentioned my binder in preparation for NaNo…and I may talk about that on Halloween.  But for me, it has all my characters and plot ideas, plus other useful stuff like names I like.  It has everything I need, complete with index cards, post-its, and pens and sharpies in various colors.  If I need to refer to something, it’s probably in that binder.
  • Food: I’ve going to gloss over food, since I talked about that yesterday.  It’s there and it’s important.  Writing when hungry is not good.
  • I have a writing hat!  It’s this green headpiece kinda thing.  I think I’ll have to post a picture of it…it’s green ribbon, in a circle, with more green ribbon that hangs down from it.  Something a fairie would wear.  I have worn faerie wings in the past, and I think I may need to start wearing them again.  But not in public, because that might look weird.  But then again, who cares about looking weird?
  • A computer wins the obvious award.
  • A flash drive, and any possible way to back up your work.  I’ll be using a combination of my flash drive, dropbox and email to save my work.  And a text file plus Word.  I might be working on multiple computers, and weird things sometimes happen when I save stuff on my flash drive.  At least in Word.  I am not taking any chances, and I will back up obsessively if I have to. 
  • Random things like Pandora, Spotify, Q10 and Write or Die also help me get through NaNo.  Stuff to listen to, and writing software that minimizes distractions and keeps me writing?  That’s pretty cool in my book!
  • Write-ins and the NaNo website: There are some pretty supportive people in NaNo-land, and knowing there are people who will mock me for not finishing my novels is a big help.  Write-ins are helpful too, and I’ll be at a lot of write-ins this year!

Well, that’s all I can think of for now, but I’ll be back tomorrow with a post about my back-up plot!

Guess Who Has A Menu Planned?

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I finally planned a menu for NaNo!  I guess this goal of cooking new things every month actually came in handy in that I put some thought into what I wanted to cook next month.

I’ve decided I’ll my using my Crock-Pot next month!  It’ll be easy: just prep everything the night before, put everything in according to the recipe, and a few hours later, I’ll have food!  I have a few recipes for tofu bookmarked, and a few soup recipes that are also bookmarked.

I decided to abandon my idea of cooking everything this month, freezing it, and then thawing it out as needed in November.  I came across this blog a while ago where the blogger used her slow cooker everyday for a year, and figured that NaNo would be a really good time to actually use my slow cooker.  And the less time I have to worry about food and cooking, the more time I have to procrastinate!

I still have no idea about snacks, especially since I ate some of the snacks I got at the grocery store.  But it’ll be the typical snack stuff: pretzels, maybe some cookies or fruit snacks, popcorn and those fruit cereal bar things.  Some sort of snack-y dessert, like cookies or brownies.  Or other bars.  Cake balls!  Or cake pops.

As for drinks…water.  Hot chocolate and apple cider!  Any drink I can make in the slow-cooker.  And no NaNo is complete without my beloved COFFEE!  Well, caffeine in general…but it’s pretty hard to compete with coffee.

I definitely want to make pumpkin pie…completely from scratch!  It’ll be a good way to procrastinate on my writing.  It’ll be a good break from writing, like when I’m switching from one novel to the other.

Oh, who am I kidding?  I’ll be procastinating like it’s going out of style.  Back to food, though, I have nothing else to add!

Have a great day, and I’ll be back tomorrow with a post about my NaNo Survival Kit.

This Year’s Music, Part 2

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Since I mentioned most of the other things I’ll be listening to this year, I’m going to focus more on the music I have set for my 2nd novel. 

I did want to mention Spotify since I forgot to talk about it when I did my last music post.  It’s fairly similar to Pandora, and while I haven’t used it very much, I think I’ll definitely try to use it next month.

I had a lot of trouble coming up with a playlist for it, because most of what I have doesn’t seem to fit.  I ended up putting a lot of random songs on my playlist, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to add to it as I figure out what’s going on. 

So here’s a sample of what I’ll be listening to next month:

1- The Big Lie by Sara Haze

2- Ordinary Day by Vanessa Carlton

5- Snape To Malfoy Manor from the HP And The Deathly Hallows, Part 1 Sountrack

10- Summer Overture from the Requiem For A Dream soundtrack

16- Criminal by Fiona Apple

17- Flight Of The Order Of The Phoenix from the Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix soundtrack

21- How We Operate by Gomez

22- Virtual Insanity by Jamiroquai

33- I Believe In Nargles by The Whomping Willows

34- Caught In The Lie by Michelle Chamuel (From the Little White Lie soundtrack)

I’ll be back tomorrow with a post about food!

Plot # 2 For 2011!

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So, I was going to do the novel about the funerals, but I decided over the weekend that I didn’t want to write that one.  Instead, I’m switching to the 3rd plot I had.

This novel is about a girl who’s being followed by a group of men in black suits.  I have 3 characters, and I only have the basic details on them.  I think I’ll need to add a few characters, and they’ll just be there.   

The main character is Kaylee, and she is the one being followed.  The direction that I’m going in- at least for now- is that she works for a diplomat (or someone really important) and gets mistaken for someone else.   

Something that’s a distinct possibility is that she stumbles across something she wasn’t supposed to and they realize she could be useful.  Only there’s someone else who stumbles across this mysterious something and they send an assassin out to take care of it.  And of course, the assassin tries to kill her because they somehow mistake her for someone else.       

I still need to add a few characters, and I also need something mysterious that she can stumble upon.  Maybe I should steal an idea from my other novel for the year and have her stumble on a magical creature sanctuary.  I’ll go with that if I can’t come up with anything else. 

This is going to be a short one, since I’m still working out some of the details.  Tomorrow’s post will be about the music I have for this novel.

NaNo Music, Part One

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I have a playlist for The Mermaid Pact!  I don’t know how much I’ll listen to it, since I have an assortment of things to listen to.  I’ll be listening to my podcasts, of course, and I’m sure I’ll be listening to Pandora too, especially since I added a few new stations yesterday.   

I went with a variety of songs this year- there isn’t any particular reasoning behind most of the songs.  I just went with things that seem to fit the characters and the novel itself.

I started making playlists for my novels back in 2008, and while it’s not the only thing I listen to when writing, I have found it useful to occasionally add in music that the characters might listen to.  Basically, I listen to whatever I feel like listening to: whatever may help me keep writing and is providing some inspiration is what I’ll listen to.

And here, we have a selection of songs from a 61 song playlist:

1- Lily’s Theme from HP And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2 soundtrack

3- Lovely by Sara Haze

4- Wave Bye Bye by the Gin Blossoms

6- ’til Death by Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls

8- If I Die Young by The Band Perry

10- Heart of my Own by Basia Bulat

21- Don’t Know Why by Norah Jones

27- The Big Lie by Sara Haze

37- Miss Invisible by Marie Digby

41- Sing by My Chemical Romance

48- Boys and Girls by Pixie Lot

53- Painting Pictures of Egypt by Sara Groves

59- My Sweet Song by Toby Lightman

60- Shine by Sara Haze

61- Dumbledore’s Army from the HP And The Order Of The Phoenix soundtrack

That’s it for this installment of music, and I’ll be back tomorrow with a post about my second novel for the month.

Plot Number One, 2011 Style

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This post officially kicks off my NaNo posting extravaganza!

For all the work I’ve done, I still feel a little behind with my planning.  My idea is as formed as it’ll ever be. 

What is plot 1, you ask? 

It’s about a girl, Poppy, who discovers she’s a mermaid, and it goes terribly wrong.  Originally, I was going to have her die, but now I’m not so sure.  My novel is based on the whole idea that she dies, and I don’t really feel like changing it.  But for now, she dies.   

I had a list of potential creatures, and mermaids were the one group that really jumped out at me.  Plus, I loved the stories!  My favorite one is from One Thousand And One Arabian Nights, where mermaids are anatomically identical to humans, and their children are able to breathe and live underwater.  I found that was the one I could work with the most, and while I don’t have my own mythology for mermaids, and Poppy’s own origin story, I have an idea of what I want to do.

I like the idea of her dad being stationed in the Middle East and meeting her mom.  I have no idea how he’ll end up with her, but he’ll end up with her somehow- her mysteriously showing up at his doorstep seems cliché but I’m working on an inkling.   

As for my own mermaid mythology, mermaids definitely have their own underwater world, with underwater cities all over the world.  I don’t have anything further than that, or how she knows she’s a mermaid.  Or how the child of a human and a mermaid would look.  I mean, what happens when she takes a bath, or otherwise goes into water?  Besides the fact that she’d be a good swimmer- which would be a cliché thing to include- it might be hilarious for her to be afraid of the ocean, and either can’t swim or is really bad at it. 

Actually, that could be a sign that something is wrong with her mermaid side. 

I think for now, her tail could be something that starts to appear when she reaches 16, and only appears when she goes into the ocean, or some other body of water, but not when she’s in a pool or taking a bath. 

One of the big questions is how being a mermaid could kill her.  There are a couple things I settled on.  One- being half-mermaid, she’s really connected to nature.  Pollution is really bad, but for someone so connected to nature, it’s even more toxic, and the more she breathes in polluted air and all that, the more of an effect it has on her.  Being in an underwater city would definitely help her, and while the merfolk in these cities feel some effects, it’s not as bad as it would be if they were living on land like Poppy is.  And with all the processed food, and food recalls, it would not be a good thing for a mermaid.  Two- Something about the human side doesn’t react well with the mermaid side of her, and when combined with pollution and processed foods and everything…it’s disastrous and potentially lethal. 

I did get an interesting idea from Fablehaven that I really want to include.  Oh, and an idea I got from someone in my writer’s group, since they go pretty well together.  First, the Fablehaven inspiration.  There are magical sanctuaries all over the world, where all kinds of magical creatures and being go when their natural environment disappears.  And the idea from my writing group is this: a magical council, who decides on things like a common language for all magical creatures and who can be let in on all the secrets.  I might include some sort of registration system.  I do like someone who knows her- a teacher or neighbor- being on the magical council and suspecting that she’s a mermaid, and keeps asking her questions.  On a related note to how being a mermaid could kill her- if she had known about this magical council, they might have been able to save her.     

Character-wise, I have Poppy and Jordan.  And Poppy’s mom and dad, but I don’t know anything about them yet.  I’ll probably through in a couple friends, a couple neighbors, and maybe a teacher and a few others.  At this point, it’s too late to do complete profiles on everyone, but I only need profiles for her parents, the 2 friends, and the person who suspects she’s a mermaid.  Everyone else, I just need names for. 

Tomorrow’s post will be the novel’s soundtrack plus some other things that I’ll be listening to while I’m writing.