Welcome to the month after! The month after NaNo that is. It is time to unwind and let the stress of last month wash away. For those of you that finished your NaNo novels, you have my permission to turn your inner editors back on and start working to make your novel the best it can be! Those of you that wrote but haven't finished your whole story (even if you crossed 50k), KEEP WRITING! I can tell you from personal experience, being able to write "THE END" on a piece feels amazing. It opens your eyes to possibilities that you will never realize otherwise. Keep going. You will reach the end of your novel with it is ready to end.

With the end of NaNoWriMo comes the beginning of my new daily posts. Today is Thursday Thought. Watch out for a post later this afternoon. I think I will try to find something about success, or finality, or something else appropriate.

I genuinely hope you enjoyed my NaNo journal, the daily writing prompts, and the little updates here and there. I hope that October's preparations were helpful for at least someone. From today, I will be alternating finishing the last few chapters of Immo2 and the final edit of Immo1. Still working on that cover for Immo1. I'll be there soon. Tentative goal: Immo1 ready for publishing and first draft of Immo2 by January 31st. :) We'll see.

Have a great month everyone. I'm making homemade Christmas ornaments, soaps, and tasty treats for everyone this year. I'll post pictures!

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

NaNo Journal: November 26-30

11-26-11
3:16pm

Nursed a headache all day yesterday. Went to bed at 6pm for a nap and slept til 8 this morning. Still have the headache. 5 cups of coffee and 3 cups of water isn't making it let up either. (I should have known this meant something worse than "just" a headache was happening. Keep reading.)


Nothing written yesterday thanks to that but I'm on it now.

NaNo Journal: November 19- November 25

11-19-11
8:30pm

I wrote for several hours last night before I finally went to bed. I managed 3,727 words. That is still going on today's total. I'm too lazy to go back and amend the last journal entry. :)

Kids are asleep. Parents are headed to bed. Time to get some writing done!

12:32am

I had another great night once everyone went to bed! I'm finally reaching the end of Brausk's story for Immo2. This is going to need to be cut way down but I really like where the story has went the past few days.

NaNo Journal: November 12- November 18

11-13-11 Entry for 11-12-11
1:34am

So technically, this entry is for the events of the 12th because I haven't went to bed yet.

Tonight was the 1/2 Way Dinner for the Cincy NaNo group. It was at an Irish Pub which thrilled me to no end. Had no idea there were Irish Pubs here. And they have Strongbow on tap. Score.

Spent a good hour and a half driving around the Levee trying to find a parking lot that would take debit. I'm an idiot and didn't think to bring cash for parking. Glad I left early! (I have to mention this because I didn't write it in the journal. While driving around, some idiot frat boy walked out in front of my truck. I slammed on my breaks and cracked the window to ask him what he wanted. I thought there might be some sort of emergency. He and his buddy then asked me to take them -somewhere- that I didn't quite understand because they were stupidly intoxicated and couldn't speak without slurring their words. When I told them no, they asked me why I stopped then. It didn't occur to them that if I hadn't stopped I would have ran his stupid ass over.)

NaNo Journal: November 5-November 11

11-5-11
11:30pm

Remember, remember... the 5th of November!

I tried a new place for Fri/Sat evening writing. After the crap at Starbucks last night, I'm not so inclined to go there again for a while. I found the McD's between the house and EC has wireless. Fantastic! They also have the largest play place in what has to be the entire county. Not fantastic! And a single outlet for the entire lobby. Fail beyond fail. It was fairly quiet though so it will work for a bit. At least on Fri/Sat nights.

Got Spotify downloaded to the netbook so I was able to stream better music than the musiak McD's had. Headphones helped block out the beeping from the kitchen and kids screaming in the play place. Nothing could be done about the single outlet being under the booth right beside the bathrooms though. *sigh* Better than listening to someone tune a guitar though.

NaNo Journal: October 31-November 4

10-31-11

8:00pm

NaNo starts in 4 hours. I didn't get anything done today as planned. It is Halloween. I should have expected huge distractions for today since I live with two little girls. They look incredible in their handmade costumes though!

The original plan for NaNo had been to start Immo3 but Immo2 is just too much a WIP (That means Work In Progress for those that don't know.) that I couldn't justify rationalize starting Immo3. Yes, I know roughly how Immo2 will end. But I'm hazy on about 1/2 of the story... because I haven't written it yet, and I'm a pantser so the details just aren't there yet.

Starting Immo3 now would sort of be like reading only the last 3 pages of the 1st book in a series before starting the 2nd. You know *maybe* the resolution of the 1st book but absolutely no context to relate to the 2nd. Lame.

So I am taking being a NaNo rebel to a higher degree than just continuing the next book in a series. Instead, I'm continuing with Immo2. *Gasp* No worries, I'm only counting the new words I write in November. I won't count the 60k I wrote last NaNo. Nor will I count the few thou I added since. Yay rebel NaNo!

First Weekend of NaNo!

So how is everyone doing going into the weekend? I know, Friday is over already. But some people don't officially start their weekend until they wake up on Saturday morning. Or maybe that is just me... Whatever.

NaNo kicked off (as I am sure you know) on Tuesday. 4 full days of writing abandon have officially came and gone. Those sticking to 1,667 words per day or more should be sitting pretty at 6,668+ words now. I stopped writing tonight around 10:30pm. It was an early ending night for me for a couple reasons, one of which I am excited to share with everyone.

In addition to writing my 50k words this year, I decided to keep a journal through NaNo to share on my blog. I wish I had kept a journal for the past 2 NaNo's. It would be interesting to read back through them. Some of my journal entries are/will be pretty short. Others are long (I'm procrastinating after all!). I think Friday evenings are a good night to share my entries for the week. If I don't get to it on Fridays, I will definitely get to them on Saturdays. This is an awesome idea, I swear.

So some things to understand about my journal posts:

• Some entries are/will be written at the end of the night, right before I pass out from exhaustion. I am going to post them verbatim from the journal entry (this is a hand written journal, fyi). I will try to add clarifying notes within/under the entry in italics when they make absolutely no sense.
• Some entries are/will be written throughout the course of the day and will have multiple time stamps. I don't know yet if having *time* for multiple entries is a good or bad thing yet. o.0
• If my entry contains stuff about things not NaNo, please bear with me. The NaNo can make even the sanest of us crazy. I temper that with ranting about life so I don't rant about my novel too much.
• At the end of each entry will contain 3 abbreviations and numbers. The first is DWC (daily word count) is just a daily record of how much I wrote. The second is AWPD (average words per day) which is what I currently need to average daily to reach 50k on time. At some point, this number will reach 0. It starts at 1,667 on Day 1. The third is TWC (total word count) and is the combined total word count. This number will reach 50k and beyond even if I have to strangle a few people along the way to get there. (For the curious and math-o-phobes, the AWPD is easily calculated. Get the current TWC and subtract that number from 50,000. Divide your answer by however many days are *left* in the NaNo and that is your AWPD).
• My first entry is actually from October 31st detailing some very important information that may piss a few folks off... and likely relieve a few others. Check the entry for more details.

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS