1st November - 2013

So, NaNoWriMo begins! Finally. And scary.

Since there're lots of series this season I want to watch, I'm willing to take a break from a few of them, but there are still 3-4-5 ah, I mean- anyway, a couple of them I must follow. But it's nano. So I decided that I can watch an episode every 1k words. If I couldn't write during the day, then I won't watch until I reach the daily wordcount, only on very special, rare occasions (where it might help overcome some plotholes or a writing block). But those will be very rare.
We'll see if it's enough motivation (and the T-shirt and badges and coupons waiting for me at the beginning of December).

ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH, DEAR FRIENDS, ONCE MORE!

November, here I coooooome~!

It's that time of the year, again. November. The smell of drying, colourful leaves and new TV series in the air, and the perfect time for a cup of hot cocoa or tea, writing your novel in 30 days.

I won't describe Nano again, if you don't know what I'm talking about, nice to meet you, my name is Tika and you can check out this website.

This hopefully means there'll be more posts for the up-coming few weeks AND some whining about the hard life of a novelist with a 42-hour workweek and whatnot. But I'll try to be interesing, or amusing or something so that you won't feel like you're wasting your time reading my lines.

Ahem. And then, thinking back, I still haven't finished my creative writing course series, have I? (No, I haven't.) So maybe I should make it my goal to finish it this year. Say, I'll write those posts in December and finally, I'll be happy I shared the experience with you and I can procrastinate on something else.

Yeah, that sounds like a plan :)

Oh, right. Here's a brand-new website for the Hungarian region of Nanowrimo: HuNoWriMo. This is in Hungarian, though. But don't worry, if you're in Hungary and would like to connect with us, you can find me here, on my blog or pop in to our English speakers' corner on the regional forum. We'll be happy to see you :)
Or if you're Hungarian and can't find infos, then just click that link, please.

Anyway~ See you in November! I'm off to see the wiz- preparations for the Kick-off! ;)

ROW 80 R1 - Final check in

This is actually my third check-in for Round 1. Told you that writing a blog wasn't my forte...

Ahem, anyway~

My last check-in was on 15th January. Let's see what happened after, a quick summary:

The week starting with 16th was all right. I met my goal to write at least 500 words 4 days per week. Even the week after that was successful! But after that...

I wrote on 30th January, then nothing that week.

The week after I was back again to writing more than 500 words for 4 days per week. Then, I wrote 301 words on 19th, 206 on the 20th, then nothing for a long time. It was almost a month later that I managed to get back to writing. I've continued on 16th, 18th, then this week, 20th and today, 24th.

I know Round 1 was finished on Wednesday (21st), but since I already had a month-break, I figured I would continue.

Truthfully, I'm a little ashamed that I didn't manage to reach my goal every week in Round 1. I purposefully set a lower wordcount, so if I had a bad or a busy day, I would be still able to write that amount. But the end of February and beginning of March proved that I was slacking off.

It wasn't that busy. Sure, we had 1 birthday and there was this 4-day trip to relax and enjoy ourselves in a hotel on the countryside, but it wasn't like I couldn't do it if I wanted to. The thing is, I felt I had little energy and hardly any inspiration. I guess the weather was getting to me, finally, plus it didn't help that everything I've started to work on (including my 'brilliant' idea mentioned in the earlier post) ended up in failure or didn't make any difference. My mood was terrible and during those times, sometimes it's better to let the gray, depressing clouds pass and not force myself. I would accidentally end up with a manuscript which needs a whole lot more afterwork than my NaNovel...

So, that's what happened. Still, I feel it was worth it to participate in ROW80, because: I wrote 17 184 words, which is approximately 17 184 words more than I would've wrote otherwise. This is 79 890 characters and currently, I'm at the beginning of page 32. Not as much as I would've liked, but it's still better than what I did the beginning of last year.

So I guess I can think of this as a half-success, right? And I want to participate in Round 2, as well. Even if my check-ins are irregural or my writing in not frequent, I want to continue and ROW gives me support to reach my goals. Just, you know, the thought that this is an event others partake in and that I see a goal in front of myself. It strenghtens my resolve, I think.

Especially that everyone around me (I mean, family members) still think I waste my time the entire day. As if that when I say 'I'm writing', it translates to them as: 'I'm too lazy to do anything, so I'll just play on the computer and don't do anything productive'. It's rather irritating, but I can understand them somewhat. From their point of view, writing probably does seem like that, however much it hurts me to say this.

That's why I need something to hold on, to strenghten my resolve, so I can continue what I really want: write. And I feel ROW80 gives me that something.

Hope you had a more successful Round 1 than I! It's time to plot, draw some conclusions from Round 1 and think about our goals for Round 2.

Good luck, everyone!

NaNoWriMo summary - Week #1.

I... wanted to write every few days or at least once every week, but... well, yeah, it's been hectic. So I'll do a series of 5 posts for every week in the following... weeks. I hope it'll be every few days, then again... I'll try.

We had the Kick-off party on 31st of October, from 4 PM till 8 PM at a café in downtown (the same one we used last year). 16 people showed up and got a little package to survive November, I mean, NaNoWriMo and we had a great time, I think.

Then when we got home, we had a virtual Kick-off from 22 PM until after midnight on the regional chat. Loads of people showed up there, as well. So, I was very happy when I went to sleep after the first wordwar of 2011, which started at midnight ;)

I aimed for 75k this year and to finish my novel. But, it turns out, it was hard enough to write and ML a region. I postponed my 75k challenge to next year or the year after (because, you know, I'll be writing in English next year).

MLing is fun, we created a Facebook page and tried to post there every day (sometimes more than once per day) something that would be useful or inspirational or fun. And we had a regional website this year, which is maintained by Poggi, my senpai ML :)

I think it was the first week when I went around looking for place to have a write-in. I was really excited when a smaller library wrote back - we had 2 write-ins there - and the café near my home was open to us, as well. So all went well, except the 75k goal escaped from me. I don't exactly remember what happened on the 3rd day, but that's when all started to go down. Then I didn't even write on 4th. Not. A. Word.

It's really been like a wavy ocean - this NaNoWriMo :)

I thought I got the second week depression (SWD) earlier, because I wrote more than the minimum average wordcount.

That is, until the third week, but I'll tell you more about that later.

Non-NaNo related events: a birthday get-together at a teahouse on Friday. Ooooh, right! That's when I didn't write a word! It was only in the afternoon, but now that I think back on it - it was hard for me to write before nightfall. Maybe because of the nature of the novel I was writing?

The first part is definitely horror. In the dark.

And I took a day or two off from MLing at the weekend - I needed to get my energies stored back up again (as I've mentioned, MLing is fun, but it's also exhausting) - and Poggi was doing all the work that weekend. Thank you, again, Poggi! That really saved me; actually I think I had sore throat.

Ah, sore throat... it followed me around the entire month...

How did your NaNoWriMo start this year? Did you also struggle with sore throat or other illness during November? :(

PS.: The picture shows the days when I wrote in November and how much I wrote (I mean, the minimum, more, or just something little or even smaller amounts or none).
Feel free to decode it :P
And for my Hungarian friends, especially Poggi: a (piros) pöttyös az igazi!!! ;)