Join me for NaNoWriMo!
Monday October 19, 2020 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Writer's life | Leave Comments
Once again I will start National Novel Writing Month. I say start because I haven't "won" since 2010. So it's my tenth anniversary! I missed the last two years but I am giving it the ol' college try again this year. It will be good to get back into a daily writing practice and if you are so inclined you can join me and be my one of my writing buddies!
Here is my NaNoWriMo page: Kardaen
Here is their official announcement on Twitter
If you don't know what NaNoWriMo is I'll briefly explain. It is an annual writing challenge to "write a 50,000 word novel" in one month. The timer starts at midnight of Halloween and goes until midnight of November 30th. In order to stay on pace you have to write 1667 words a day. It can be a daunting task. I know the year I "won" it took almost every free moment I had, and my wife was not happy at me. At all. I vowed I wouldn't do that to her again, and I didn't. And it really is about writing every day. 50k words is not really a novel either. That would qualify as a novella. The year I "won" I felt like I had written half a novel. it could be a series of short stories. Or essays. The entire point, again, is to write every day. Nobody is coming to your house to make sure you are following the "rules." Jut have fun with it and write what you can. If it's only a 100 words a day, then that is still 3000 words by the end of the month. And that is 3000 words more than you had before you started.
I use it to springboard a new story usually. Sometimes I take an old story out and try to add to it. I haven't hit the 50k mark in a decade but this might be the year. If not that's okay, too.
I hope you join me and good luck!
Read MoreHoliday events, life in the Moody House
Friday November 23, 2012 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Uncategorized | Leave Comments
I love Thanksgiving! It has turned into probably my favorite holiday. My wife and I shop together and prep the stuffing and turkey together. I love cooking with her. After the bird is in the oven we have about 4 hours to relax, and call family. It would be great if we were all together but our family is spread all over the country. Today we watched a Kung Fu movie together, about one of Bruce Lee's mentors. Grand Master Ip Man, starring Donnie Yen. It was really enjoyable. The turkey came out golden brown and perfectly moist and delicious, just like always and all the other fixins were hot, and scrumptious. The timing worked out just right. We gorged! Afterwards, I plugged in all my timers for the outdoor Christmas lights today, so the lights are on outside. We did all the prep work a few weeks ago when the weather was nice, got all our clean-up yard work done and all the outside decorations up.
NaNo Prep: Writing Rules updated
Wednesday October 31, 2012 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Uncategorized | Leave Comments
New post on the my other blog http://firefliesandlaserbeams.blogspot.com/2012/10/nano-prep-writing-rules-iii-return-of.html
Read MoreNaNo Prep: Writing Rules III – Return of WriMo
Monday October 29, 2012 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Uncategorized | Leave Comments
NaNoWriMo is merely three days away, and in the spirit of preparation I revamped my Writing Rules again. This time when I went back to review them I realized that they were a hodgepodge of thoughts with no form. So I organized them and revamped them and added some new content. As always I am open to suggestion if you see something wrong or something that needs clarified or plain just doesn't make sense.This is kind of long and I have it posted as it's own page here.
Put your novel through CreateSpace in trade paperback form in POD. That gets it to Amazon. Cost: Free (or $39.00 if you want better distribution into all stores.)
Put your novel through LighteningSource in trade paperback form in POD. That gets it to Ingram. Cost: around $100.00
Next Big Thing Tag
Friday October 26, 2012 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging | Leave Comments
NaNo Fail Whale
Thursday November 17, 2011 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging | Leave Comments
NaNoWriMo is never a waste of time in my humble opinion. I’m not going to hit the target this year of 50k words in 30 days, but the endeavor has its own rewards. Last year I had a great idea and I think it will become my Master’s thesis and I had no trouble moving along. It was a simple idea but very open and I knew where it was going ultimately. I‘ve got stuff on the back burner and a backlog of ideas I want to explore but for this year I decided to try my hand at something completely outside of my comfort zone. The original idea was to try my hand at a YA tie- in to my current novel. But once I conceived of the idea it started to develop its own life. I thought it was just going to be in the same vein as my adult fiction, just from a different perspective, but as the idea started to coalesce it began to morph into more of a substantial piece, and basically even though the setting is several hundred years in the future it is not classic SF. It’s actually literary fiction, which is a completely different animal. What I learned this year is that literary fiction is harder. It requires a lot of introspection and for me at least, has been a lot slower to develop. The story arc for literary fiction is intended to be an internal arc, to see a character mature or change their beliefs in some fundamental way. That is the overarching plot, and of course you can add in lots of small plot-lines that will move the story along. I can see a lot of potential with this, but it’s not what I thought it was going to be. I love that these things are like a living flame that can be stoked into life, just add a little more kindling, a breath of air, bigger sticks and the thing grows. You have to pay very close attention though or the flame can die. But even as they can grow, it helps to know where you’re going. This story is developing but I’m still not sure where I’m going with it and that is the biggest hurdle. I like the characters, and I like the ideas that are developing, but the elephant in the room with me right now is time. I have several projects competing for my time and some have real deadlines. Some are self-induced, but one is outside my control. I seriously want to finish my adult novel and get it out there. I have a series of tests that I need to study for, that are incredible time eaters. Time keeps marching on and as it does my stress level is slowly creeping up. I like the idea that I have something that will challenge me and my skills and it’s something that might actually have something to say and not just entertain. But right now I’m not sure it fits in with my agenda. Ideas are funny things, some are very finite and some are lofty and undefined. This one feels more like the latter, even though I have some concrete concepts developing it has a long way to go to really gel. All this to say I think I am going to put this one back on the rear of the stove again and let it simmer some more. I like knocking things off my to-do list and I have some low hanging fruit that I can take care of if I just focus my energy. The one good thing about stress is that I tend to get more motivated. The stress has reached a point where I need to act and this is the first step. Epic NaNo Fail, but ultimately a victory in my pursuit of happiness. Good luck to the rest of you working toward your 50k goal! Clear Ether! Read MoreNaNoWriMo Take 2
Saturday November 5, 2011 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Uncategorized | Leave Comments
I can see that NaNoWriMo is going to be interrupting my planned schedule for posting this blog. I had to fly on Thursday evening, so I tried to sneak in some writing at work, but it didn't leave me any blog time. Posting the blog at work has been a near disaster so far. The LAN we use is hermetically sealed and I feel lucky I can even get to blogspot at all. I've also been fighting a cold and an abdominal muscle injury that is hampering my workouts considerably, but that really doesn' effect the blog any, just my demeanor. But all that aside, trying to keep pace with my NaNoWriMo story is the real culprit. I could have blogged last night, but I'm doing the exact opposite of what I had planned, which is fall dreadful behind, so I hemorraged words onto the NaNo WIP. I wanted to get out the gate and get ahead. Being ahead in NaNo is the sweet spot. The stress is low, you feel good about where you are, and can just enjoy the experience. I watched in amazement as most of my Writing Buddies racked up 5k and 8k on the first day! I think I hit 600 on day one. I took today off to take my wife to the annual craft fair at the local college, but I should have some time this afternoon to try to catch up. I'm lagging enough to keep myself at least a day off pace. I just need a good 5 K day to catch up and I know I have one of those in me. I know because I've done it before. It's a nice feeling to know that, it's what's keeping me sane at the moment. I looked back at last year and I barely made any posts during November, simply because I spent every waking moment that I had free working on my NaNo project. There are some valuable lessons to be learned from NaNoWriMo. The first and foremost is putting your butt in the chair. Nothing surpasses that one commandment. It's very easy to find just about anything else to do, all the while telling yourself that you are brainstorming. There is more to butt in chair though. Even that isn't always enough, you need to eliminate as many distractions as you can. Hell, even the little word counter in the corner is distracting. I feel my cheating eyes sneaking to the bottom left corner of the page to check our progress, only to be disappointed. Why isn't it moving faster! I spent a good part of day 1 doing research, stuff that I could have done, should have done in advance. So even though my butt was in the chair, I wasn't grinding out words. So my advice is: 1. Sit down, preferably in a place with no internet connection and work those little fingers till they cramp up. Scrivener even takes the word counter out of view, and they even have a PC version beta out now. I think it goes live on the 7th. 2. Don't go back and fix things (unless you must, it's a personality flaw) keep forward momentum. It doesn't have to be good, it just has to keep moving forward. You will have until next November to revise it and make it shine. 3. Don't think it has to be complete by the end of the month, 50K is not really a novel, more like a novelette, which is fine if that's what you want. 4. Try to stay ahead. Believe me on this. You don't want to be where I was last year knowing I needed multiple 5K days to even catch up, frantic in the last week to "win". If you give it a serious attempt it will help you develop a writing habit. I read somewhere that it takes 30 days to develop a habit. I know from practice that more writing makes for better writing. But don't think you know everything, don't stop learning about how to write better. It is a craft that can be continuously honed. Now go out there and mandibulate on the keyboard! Clear Ether! Read MoreNaNoWriMo 2010 is in the can
Wednesday December 1, 2010 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Uncategorized | Leave Comments
It's over at midnight tonight, but I hit the 50k mark last night around 11:30 pm. Big win for me! My first attempt and it was not horribly hard, although there were times I wasn't sure I would make it. The entire trick is to be consistent. I have no idea how people write 15 to 20 thousand words in one day. My best day was about 3500. I had several days over 3k and several under 1k. But I only skipped 4 days I think in the entire month. I want to congratulate everyone that gave it a shot! At least you wrote something. Starting is more than half the battle with writing, IMHO. I know at least one person that had 203k. That's just amazing! And in less than 30 days. I know a couple of people in my region wrote two 50k stories in 30 days, again amazing! I think some people are writing without punctuation or worrying at all about grammar. I can't write like that, at least I haven't been able to write like that and I'm not sure I want to, but I was finding that I could write more and more near the end. I stopped last night once I was comfortably over 50K, but I think I am probably only about 2/3 done with the story. I'm really hopeful that this created a good habit pattern. I'm only 70k words into Vim Dicare and I really want to finish that book next. I will say it's hard to step away from Revelation Void now, it was just getting to the good part. All in all, it was a good experience that I would recommend to anyone. It was never too burdensome, on a few days that I was wiped out I just didn't write, and was able to make up for it on other days when I had energy and the muse was awake. I did have a good plan for the Thanksgiving holiday, but if I were traveling it would have turned out a lot differently. My plan for next year is to get a really good start and try to stay ahead of the line all the way. I know my wife wasn't pleased with me all the time, but overall she was supportive. She joked that they need a support group for NaNoWriMo widows and widowers. I'll post a few more pieces of Revelation Void, but please keep in mind that it was pulled directly out of my rear most of the time. Stream of consciousness almost, but it is not edited. I fear that I may have written the most boring SF adventure story of all time, but editing will help pick up the pace. I just went into detail on some things that would likely bore some readers, but that was where my head was when I was just trying to get some words down.
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