Writing
Last month I committed to sitting down and writing 50,000 words in 30 days, as I had done three years previous. Once again I emerged victorious and I beat my word count from the previous years, and for the first time ever, I finished NaNoWriMo but not the book I was working on. As it stands right now I estimate I only have a few thousand words left to finish the novel, but my biggest concern as of a few days ago was hitting 50k and validating before midnight on November 30, which I did. I won my fourth year in a row.
My chart above kind of speaks for itself; I started off the first couple of days strong, but then I fell behind and did not catch up again until the very last day when I won. I would say that the first half of the month went fairly well in terms of ease of writing, but as the month drew to a close and I was nearing the climax of the story I found it more and more difficult to sit down and write. I majorly changed the plot at least twice (something I can fix in January and February) and I was writing a lot of excess dialogue and description that I didn't necessarily need just to fill up my word count. And I still didn't finish the actual novel after all that, ironically. By the time it was the last few days of November I simply did not want to sit down and write. Not because I didn't want to write the story but because the deadline was stressing me out and I hated feeling pressured. But as with three years before I made it through and pulled it off in the end.
I think it's safe to say this NaNoWriMo was probably the hardest one I've done so far. The story I was writing was something I have wanted to rewrite for years but never had the discipline or desire to actually follow through with until this year - and even then I wasn't originally planning to write Follow the Raven for this year's NaNo, as you read in my last couple of wrap-ups. The story still isn't entirely figured out, but at least I have a much better feel for my characters than I did before since I opened up my mind a little and let them tell their own story rather than try to control everything myself. And of course, the stress of that deadline wasn't helping as I neared the end of November. But even though this was the hardest NaNo I've done thus far, I think it was also the most rewarding. I finally did something I've wanted to do for years. I only have a few thousand words left to finish my rewrite of Follow the Raven, rather than the daunting entire novel I was staring at a month ago at this time. I'm really proud of the winner's certificate I got this year. It is hanging proudly for all to see. I freaking did it, guys.
In unrelated and smaller news, I also released the prologue and first chapter of my newest Wattpad story, "The Dimension Keepers." It has been received extremely well so far, and I'm so, so excited to really get into this book and introduce a lot of neat things that I think hardcore fans of Sonic will really enjoy. Since we still don't know much about the Boom universe I've taken many creative liberties with this story. There are lots of references and alternate dimension theories coming soon, along with lots and lots of action. (This is a book about war, after all.) This book went live on November 17, and it already has 74 reads, 10 votes, and 5 comments. Crazy! I'm very excited to release more chapters this month and see what my readers think.
Reading
As November was primarily focused on writing, I did not get much reading done at all. Like, at all. There were a couple of days where I just felt really burnt out from writing and decided to read instead, which was refreshing, but ultimately I only managed to finish the two books I'd already started going into NaNoWriMo.
- Too Many Ghosts by Paul Gallico
- The Silver Eyes by Scott Cawthon
Too Many Ghosts was a book I picked up at the library from our sale/donation cart. At the time they had a bunch of older books on there and this was one of three that I picked up over the course of a couple of weeks. I started it in October because I figured it may be some kind of classic ghost story, and it was, in a sense. It took me forever to get through it because the writing was way different from the kind I'm used to reading in today's YA fiction (Too Many Ghosts was published in the 50s), but ultimately I really enjoyed it. The only part that really freaked me out was the beginning, when we didn't yet know it wasn't actually ghosts doing the things that scared everyone in the mansion. Other than that it was just an enjoyable, classic read.
The Silver Eyes, as I explained last month, is one of a couple of books based on the Five Nights at Freddy's game series that scared the crap out of me a couple of years ago when they first came out. I had hoped that the book would be just as scary if not more so, but there were only one or two parts in the entire almost 400 pages that really had me scared or creeped out. The rest was really bad writing that I ended up skimming through because I'm a nerd and I wanted my answers. A lot of my personal questions/theories were answered/confirmed, but now I'm on the fence about whether I want to read the second book as well. Time will tell.
Now that the insanity of National Novel Writing Month is over, I'm going to shift gears this month and focus primarily on reading. I am currently in the middle of two books - Psion and Everything, Everything - which you'll hear more about at the end of this month when I've finished them. GUYS. I am SO close to reaching my goal of 50 books this year. I've had this goal for the past three years and gotten really close the last two, but I seriously think I'm going to make it this time! Once I finish the two books I'm currently reading I'll be at 46/50. I'm so excited; I'm actually going to reach my goal of 50 this year. 2017 is the year! YES!
That said, I'm going to go read. Make sure to check back here at the end of December to see if I made it to 50, and to find out what I believe were the best books I read and/or discovered this year. See you next time!
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